Hello and welcome to Working It.<\/p>\n
I was in New York last week with the Working It video team, talking to corporate leaders and future of work experts \ud83c\udf07. <\/p>\n
One trend to watch: knowledge work and what used to be called \u201cblue collar\u201d or \u201cdeskless\u201d 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<\/a> has the background on these giant projects.)<\/p>\n We\u2019re going to cover the \u201cblue collar boom\u201d in one of our films \u2014 keen to hear your thoughts\/ideas: isabel.berwick@ft.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n When I talked to US corporate leaders and advisers in New York this month, the \u201cAI issue\u201d was at the heart of many discussions. While generative and agentic AI advances promise to disrupt workflows and jobs across every sector, the reality \u201con the ground\u201d 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 \ud83d\ude47\ud83c\udffe\u200d\u2642\ufe0f. <\/p>\n 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 \u2014 going deep, rather than just picking up the easy wins and time-saving hacks. <\/p>\n Is it time to implement more rollout \u201cstructure\u201d? 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<\/a>, chief executive at Work Forward and executive in residence at Charter<\/a>, the future of work consultancy. He told me: \u201cMany functions have people who are the \u2018operations\u2019 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 \u2014 managing the CRM [customer relationship management] \u2014 and so on. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 a process where I\u2019ve seen AI enable people to take a process that was four to six hours of an account manager\u2019s time and make it 30 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if you haven\u2019t got these types of roles inside your organisation, look for staff who share some common traits. Brian outlined what\u2019s needed: \u201cIt\u2019s also important to find people with a builder\u2019s mindset \ud83d\udc77\ud83c\udffd\u200d\u2640\ufe0f. They can look at a process or system and see opportunities for improvement; they\u2019re 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 \u2014 the software never quite works the way you\u2019re told. An example of \u2018the brochure seldom matches the resort\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian\u2019s advice for leaders? Remember the extra work that AI experimentation involves. \u201cFor those willing and involved, it can be exciting and motivating \u2014 people will put in extra effort. But they can\u2019t be fully weighed down with also delivering everything else piled up on their plates, they\u2019ll burn out.\u201d <\/p>\n \ud83d\udce3 Our next Working It film \u2014 fittingly, on the AI Workplace Rollout, publishes on Monday, October 27. Do let us know what you think. <\/p>\n Want more?<\/strong> New BCG research<\/a> shows only 5 per cent of companies in its global survey of 1,250 businesses have achieved \u201cAI value at scale\u201d. The biggest value from AI is (currently) found in client-related functions and IT. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Rachel Reeves targets tax partnerships in crackdown on wealthy Britons:<\/strong><\/a> The FT\u2019s political and tax teams on the chancellor\u2019s reported Budget plans to impose the equivalent of employer\u2019s national insurance contributions on doctors, lawyers and other professionals in partnerships. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n How endangered craft industries are resisting the AI jobs threat:<\/strong><\/a> A wonderful read from Ben Parr on how AI and automation represents a chance for skilled craftspeople to become even more in demand. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n The bank reunion that felt like an audit of our post-finance years:<\/strong><\/a> 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. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n Could rejection therapy transform workplace risk taking?<\/strong><\/a> I wasn\u2019t familiar with the TikTok trend of rejection therapy \u2014 doing something that is going to lead to being told no, to boost self-belief. Charlotte Guckian explains.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire\u2019s comments about Mamdani:<\/strong><\/a> The FT reports on how the venture capital firm\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n If you live in London or surrounding counties, you\u2019ll know Gail\u2019s 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\u2019s employment practices: \u201cAt Gail\u2019s, what is the human cost behind a \u00a35 loaf of bread?<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n I wrote an FT column about learning to embrace the absurd <\/a>\u2014 and sometimes surreal \u2014 aspects of our working lives. Our readers\u2019 comments were excellent; I especially enjoyed this, from jeffspc88mx<\/em>: <\/p>\n \u201cSome 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 \u2018Sr Hamster, Wheel Development\u2019. 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 \u201cunprofessional\u201d and was told to change it back, but not tell anyone that I was told to change it back. Ah well \u2014 it was a good run.\u201d<\/em> \ud83d\udc39<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s Samantha Rockey<\/a>, a leadership expert who trains leaders using fiction, poetry and other \u201cnon business\u201d texts, to help them get past the absurdity and meaningless jargon of the professional workplace: <\/p>\n \u201cShifting from the deadening language of business to warm hearted, and even more soulful, language, won\u2019t change the uncontrollable but will change our relationship with it. Leaders can be trapped by the language of their profession \u2014 our invitation when we work with professionals is to explore using different words. It remains baffling to us how few senior leaders read novels \ud83d\udcda (and, to take this further, how few male leaders read female novels). Forget business books \u2014 reading literature should be mandatory for all leaders.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n My colleague Andrew Hill wrote a timeless column<\/a> some years ago about the \u201cproblem\u201d of fiction for business leaders. Do let us know what you are reading, and the absurdities you\u2019re tackling at work: isabel.berwick@ft.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n We are deep into conference season, with its chance to travel, and hear different perspectives \u2014 although it\u2019s refreshing to get out of those airless hotel basements and see some sky. Here\u2019s Brian Cleary, global marketing director at NSF: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Brian wins a \u201clucky dip\u201d of management and leadership books. Please send your workplace\/conference views to isabel.berwick@ft.com<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n The FT\u2019s new AI Shift newsletter launches tomorrow, so there\u2019s just time to sign up<\/a> 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\u2019Connor. You\u2019ll need both newsletters in your inbox to stay across the ever-changing future of work \ud83d\ude09. <\/p>\n John and Sarah will be answering readers\u2019 questions to mark the newsletter\u2019s launch at 1pm GMT tomorrow. Submit your questions in advance and watch here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nAI rollout: time to bring in the sales experts? <\/h2>\n
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Five top stories from the world of work <\/h2>\n
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One more thing\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009<\/h2>\n
Why is work so absurd \ud83e\udd37\u200d\u2640\ufe0f? <\/h2>\n
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A view from the Working It community \ud83d\udcf8<\/h2>\n
And finally\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009\u23f0<\/h2>\n
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