Hello and welcome to Working It.
I was in New York last week with the Working It video team, talking to corporate leaders and future of work experts 🌇.
One trend to watch: knowledge work and what used to be called “blue collar” or “deskless” work are starting to flip, in terms of social status and salary. At one round table, I heard about salaries of $500,000 for skilled tradespeople at an AI data centre in the rural US. (This FT series has the background on these giant projects.)
We’re going to cover the “blue collar boom” in one of our films — keen to hear your thoughts/ideas: isabel.berwick@ft.com.
AI rollout: time to bring in the sales experts?
When I talked to US corporate leaders and advisers in New York this month, the “AI issue” was at the heart of many discussions. While generative and agentic AI advances promise to disrupt workflows and jobs across every sector, the reality “on the ground” is patchy. Many organisations are giving their staff the tools and access to training courses, and then allowing teams and managers to experiment, and figure out their own use cases for AI 🙇🏾♂️.
There are lots of marginal gains going on (writing memos, generating marketing material). Few of us, though, have enough spare time in our schedules to target workflow issues thoroughly — going deep, rather than just picking up the easy wins and time-saving hacks.
Is it time to implement more rollout “structure”? One idea is to provide support for teams by replicating the role of sales operations in an AI context. I heard about this from Brian Elliott, chief executive at Work Forward and executive in residence at Charter, the future of work consultancy. He told me: “Many functions have people who are the ‘operations’ people inside those functions: they help pull together the various pieces of work, run the reports and keep track of progress on key initiatives. Sales Operations, often called Sales Ops, are the folks inside a sales organisation who run the systems and operations: sales forecasting, analytics, software administration — managing the CRM [customer relationship management] — and so on.
“They’re often the best ones to involve in thinking through how to redesign workflows to leverage AI capabilities. How would we automate analytics, and get the data in sales people’s hands faster? Better, they often have a process mindset that helps them help other teams. For example, helping account managers automate the creation of the quarterly presentation for customers — a process where I’ve seen AI enable people to take a process that was four to six hours of an account manager’s time and make it 30 minutes.”
Even if you haven’t got these types of roles inside your organisation, look for staff who share some common traits. Brian outlined what’s needed: “It’s also important to find people with a builder’s mindset 👷🏽♀️. They can look at a process or system and see opportunities for improvement; they’re willing to tinker and test new tools and new ways of working. You also need patience and persistence: experiments often fail, and reworking a process can be frustrating — the software never quite works the way you’re told. An example of ‘the brochure seldom matches the resort’.”
Brian’s advice for leaders? Remember the extra work that AI experimentation involves. “For those willing and involved, it can be exciting and motivating — people will put in extra effort. But they can’t be fully weighed down with also delivering everything else piled up on their plates, they’ll burn out.”
📣 Our next Working It film — fittingly, on the AI Workplace Rollout, publishes on Monday, October 27. Do let us know what you think.
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Want more? New BCG research shows only 5 per cent of companies in its global survey of 1,250 businesses have achieved “AI value at scale”. The biggest value from AI is (currently) found in client-related functions and IT.
Five top stories from the world of work
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Rachel Reeves targets tax partnerships in crackdown on wealthy Britons: The FT’s political and tax teams on the chancellor’s reported Budget plans to impose the equivalent of employer’s national insurance contributions on doctors, lawyers and other professionals in partnerships.
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How endangered craft industries are resisting the AI jobs threat: A wonderful read from Ben Parr on how AI and automation represents a chance for skilled craftspeople to become even more in demand.
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The bank reunion that felt like an audit of our post-finance years: Another great column from former senior banker Craig Coben, on the night he spent with former colleagues and what he learned about their paths since then.
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Could rejection therapy transform workplace risk taking? I wasn’t familiar with the TikTok trend of rejection therapy — doing something that is going to lead to being told no, to boost self-belief. Charlotte Guckian explains.
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Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire’s comments about Mamdani: The FT reports on how the venture capital firm’s chief operating officer, Sumaiya Balbale, left the company after it took no action against Maguire, a partner in the firm who is close to Elon Musk, for his social media rhetoric.
One more thing . . .
If you live in London or surrounding counties, you’ll know Gail’s bakery. The upscale chain has expanded massively in recent years after a US private equity firm bought a majority share. Vittles, the food site, has just published an investigation into Gail’s employment practices: “At Gail’s, what is the human cost behind a £5 loaf of bread?”
Why is work so absurd 🤷♀️?
I wrote an FT column about learning to embrace the absurd — and sometimes surreal — aspects of our working lives. Our readers’ comments were excellent; I especially enjoyed this, from jeffspc88mx:
“Some time ago, through a glitch in the matrix, I was able to change my job title in Teams/O365 without the usual oversight/approvals. I chose ‘Sr Hamster, Wheel Development’. At first no one noticed, but then word got around. It lasted almost 10 years, but after getting leapfrogged for promotion I was told that this was “unprofessional” and was told to change it back, but not tell anyone that I was told to change it back. Ah well — it was a good run.” 🐹
Here’s Samantha Rockey, a leadership expert who trains leaders using fiction, poetry and other “non business” texts, to help them get past the absurdity and meaningless jargon of the professional workplace:
“Shifting from the deadening language of business to warm hearted, and even more soulful, language, won’t change the uncontrollable but will change our relationship with it. Leaders can be trapped by the language of their profession — our invitation when we work with professionals is to explore using different words. It remains baffling to us how few senior leaders read novels 📚 (and, to take this further, how few male leaders read female novels). Forget business books — reading literature should be mandatory for all leaders.”
My colleague Andrew Hill wrote a timeless column some years ago about the “problem” of fiction for business leaders. Do let us know what you are reading, and the absurdities you’re tackling at work: isabel.berwick@ft.com.
A view from the Working It community 📸
We are deep into conference season, with its chance to travel, and hear different perspectives — although it’s refreshing to get out of those airless hotel basements and see some sky. Here’s Brian Cleary, global marketing director at NSF: “I was recently at a life sciences conference in Berlin and went for a post conference stroll into the Brandenburg Gate. This was the beautiful sunset. It was such an arresting scene that I went back on the next two evenings to see it again, but to no avail.”
Brian wins a “lucky dip” of management and leadership books. Please send your workplace/conference views to isabel.berwick@ft.com.
And finally . . . ⏰
The FT’s new AI Shift newsletter launches tomorrow, so there’s just time to sign up for the first issue. (AI Shift is for Premium FT subscribers.) While Working It will continue to cover the trending topics in AI and the wider workplace, AI Shift will be a weekly data-driven dive into how AI is reshaping work, from my talented colleagues John Burn-Murdoch and Sarah O’Connor. You’ll need both newsletters in your inbox to stay across the ever-changing future of work 😉.
John and Sarah will be answering readers’ questions to mark the newsletter’s launch at 1pm GMT tomorrow. Submit your questions in advance and watch here.
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