The Future of Work = Less and More.
( View from downtown campus of Northwestern University Medill School.)
The Future of Work Summit by Northwestern University’s Medill School in Chicago was held yesterday (Saturday, July 26 ) and brought together dozens of leaders from Industry, Start-Ups, Academia and much more sharing and discussing how to thrive in the new world of work.
It was honest and open discussion. Nobody was there to sell tools, technologies or their company. The conference included CEO’s and students, VIP’s and people in transition, seasoned veterans and just out of school folks.
Here a a few points of discussion which many in the work force might find compelling.
Note this is very small fraction of of the points discussed.
Here is a link to the Agenda to see the range of topics and guests.
Less Employees.
Once upon a time the number of employees had in a firm was a vanity metric
Now it may be a sign of bloat
The new metric is revenue per employee
Here is a chart from Leanleaderboard.com (see above) showing that the revenue per employee which is just under 2.5 million dollars per employee.
The most successful marketing services company today has revenue of about $200,000 per employee.
Less Scale.
Tech companies are now past peak employment
This year they have laid off 80,150 workers while 178,296 Federal employees have been laid off this year according to Layoff.fyi
Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft just sent a memo to the entire company which is a must read. Here it is: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/07/24/recommitting-to-our-why-what-and-how/
He address the enigma of a company laying of 9,000 plus employees when every financial metric is moving upwards to the right.
You should read the entire note but here are the key paragraphs:
We must reimagine our mission for a new era. What does empowerment look like in the era of AI? It’s not just about building tools for specific roles or tasks. It’s about building tools that empower everyone to create their own tools. That’s the shift we are driving—from a software factory to an intelligence engine empowering every person and organization to build whatever they need to achieve.
Just imagine if all 8 billion people could summon a researcher, an analyst, or a coding agent at their fingertips, not just to get information but use their expertise to get things done that benefit them. And consider how organizations, empowered with AI, could unlock entirely new levels of agility and innovation by transforming decision-making, streamlining operations, and enabling every team to achieve more together than ever before.
The mission has changed.
These tools being built by Microsoft, ChatGPT, Adobe, Salesforce, SAP and many big companies but also by many new companies will give every David and Danielle the power of Goliath
Technology is the slingshot that allow each talented person to catapult themselves into the future and for companies starting today to start with a clean sheet of paper to combine not just AI and modern technology but but leverage the best talent from all over the world…
Less Space
Even companies mandating five days back to the office are significantly reducing their real estate foot print since most of these companies are expecting attrition due to the forced mandate and are making exemptions for 25% of their employees who have contracts or are too valuable to lose.
Every smart CEO knows that limiting their talent to certain geographies and loading up on expensive real estate just when speed, agility and low cost are imperative makes no sense.
Work is distributed and more and more people will work from anywhere and there will be less and less office space.
Less Managers
As the world moves from vertical to matrix to networked eco-system and work is increasingly done in asynchronously by distributed workforces the need for old style managers who allocate, delegate, monitor, measure and check-in is in free fall. Companies want people who create, build, sell, mentor, make, inspire.
Small companies were already doing this as the chart above shows and now large companies are.
The Great Flattening is real.
Less Jobs
The biggest fallacy is equating jobs to work.
We are moving to a world where there will be fewer full-time jobs but more and more work to be done
Globally 39% of jobs are part-time or free-lancer.
Rather than job descriptions the key is to understand the skills needed and how to train for the expertise.
To be work focussed versus job besotted.
To many companies are architected around jobs versus work.
More
But for companies and individuals willing to learn and re-invent the future is brighter than ever but it will require the following recognition:
a) More Speed: The speed of change is so fast that doing is critical versus cogitating. Fast failing versus navel gazing. The fear of failure has to be reduced.
b) More Non-AI Differentiation: While AI will be key it will be like electricity. Key to compete but not a differentiating advantage. The firm will have to find more edges than AI.
c) The More AI the more HI will matter: AI will replace a portion of many jobs and do many tasks better. People will have to embrace, adapt and complement but humans and talent will be the edge. It will he AI+HI versus only AI or HI.
d) More Investment for Training: One of the key differences will be training and developing people. Investing in AI tools and doing M and A deals without a significant investment in education and training is doomed. As half life of knowledge declines up skilling of expertise is key. Learning will be the new superpower. But today most companies invest less than $1000 per year per employee.
e) More Opportunities: Power is moving to small and talent. This year six million new companies were launched in America all starting with a blank sheet of paper, easy to purchase AI, access to market places for every type of talent and buyer. For every whale there will be thousands of planktons.
f) More Courageous Leadership: Like never before this is the time for more courage and more willingness to reinvent. Leadership will be key. Companies will need to get unstuck by overcoming fear, urgently ending inertia, crafting an ability to bring the outside ( outies) point of view into the inside leadership (innies).
g) More Versatility: Different types of go to market models as well as different approaches for different types of talent. Companies cannot talk about personalization if they do not create different options for their employees and agile and differing organization structures built around client, talent and market competition.
h) More Trust and Integrity: Trust and Integrity will be key both for Brands and leaders. ( Funny how the companies that speak about trust and integrity are monitoring and scanning key badge entries and need to helicopter parent their staff)
i) More Career Ownership: Every individual must invest and take care of their own career. While HR and L&D are critically important enablers to career growth they work for the company and each person must take control of their own careers.