The most exciting time for Talent Transformation in 200 years

The coming decade will be the most exciting time for talent transformation since the Industrial Revolution. The gains from the adoption of AI and agentic colleagues will be both profound and profoundly unequal. There is a huge and overlooked opportunity for a significant commercial advantage using AI, and as yet, no one appears to be seriously pursuing it.

It’s not whether or not to deploy AI and replace humans; it’s what we should be asking AI to do and how we should enable the most successful collaboration.

Indulge me for a moment

Society hasn't yet solved the puzzle of correctly valuing knowledge work. Too many leaders and organisations rely on late-industrial era methodologies for measuring unit output over time. Think Henry Ford and his production lines.

‘Total number of units produced over time’ is useful for producing widgets on an assembly line (useful, but far from perfect considering its effect on collaboration), but it has little value for measuring the contributions of a group of knowledge workers, whose work is complex.

If Employee A meets all their targets for the month, and Employee B does not, does that mean that Employee A is better? Well, only if:

• The targets were set correctly,

• The output of both employees' work can be immediately valued, and its overall implications can be wholly understood at a single point in time (i.e. the long-term consequences are known in advance)

• They are performing the same role, with the same constraints, under the same manager.

• Their interactions with colleagues, suppliers, stakeholders, and collaborators were identical, word for word.

In which case, that doesn't really count as knowledge work.

Measurement of knowledge work is a complex and multidisciplinary endeavour. Employee B’s work might have profound and long-lasting implications on the business. They could have redesigned a process, created a new marketplace, or developed a new approach to generate customer insight. It’s possible this work might even be worth thousands of times the value of employee A’s.

And all of that last paragraph can be true even if Employee B discovered the output by accident! In knowledge work, effort is secondary to expertise, serendipity and end result.

Currently, estimating the ROI on knowledge worker output is next to impossible. But now we have AI, and agentic involvement in the knowledge workplace.

Beyond hustle

Will AI help or hinder the creation of knowledge worker output scores? Perhaps AI will provide measurement methodologies to accurately value the contributions of each team member to the bottom line and to the company's overall well-being.

Perhaps relationships and deep work can finally be quantified, ranked and rewarded? Maybe we’ll move beyond OKRs? Possibly AI will help demonstrate the implications of trust, psychological safety and equity in real terms. It could help us understand complex human dynamics, thus freeing up individual and team capacity to achieve the extraordinary.

The quality of management could improve thanks to the use of AI. If all our work, from the keystrokes per hour to the ways in which our interactions inspire our colleagues, could be captured and understood, performance reviews could be data-led and effective in the most profound ways. An AI that could do this could help measure and quantify work impact, allowing humans in the organisation to connect and care for others in the business in deeper ways (not just see them as production units).

Perhaps AI will provide measurement methodologies to accurately value the contributions of each team member to the bottom line and to the company's overall well-being.

We could fully develop a "Talent Marketplace" within businesses. One where we move beyond job titles and apply our strongest activities and skills where and when they are needed most. Businesses would then develop the ability to rapidly shift priorities and gain the compound benefits of better deployment of intellectual, creative, innovation and delivery resources. Imagine that!

Sadly, agentic inclusion in the workplace is most likely to be transactional, designed to assist in the completion of routine tasks. Far from being “low-hanging fruit”, these are poison fruit. Simply transferring low-level productivity tasks (all very Industrial era) to the machine will, for most businesses, have the effect of raising expectations about the amount of work that can be accomplished by each human/agent in tandem. For most companies, AI won’t help employees move beyond an expectation of doing more Industrial Era tasks per hour.

Build agents to take over management, not tasks

But a business that makes performance measurement the heart of the agentic contribution to the workforce could see exponential benefits. Measuring the actual value to the business of “hustle” and “busy-ness” would allow them to see, with certainty, who makes the most impact and how.

Understanding value creation in real terms is no longer a pipe dream. While AI cannot yet do this entirely, an accurate data capture and measurement infrastructure can be built into a business today using established frameworks and AI support. It requires the full backing and commitment of leadership not to do business-as-usual, however

Full adoption of AI-inspired knowledge work will require philosophical bravery, internal realignment, staff learning and development programs, and a significant amount of risk. But, I genuinely believe that the leaders who embrace unlocking potential and transforming talent into true knowledge work will be the ones whose stories are written about in the history books.