Today, resource utilization runs between 40% - 60% in terms of human potential. Organizations are stuck in their old world ways of thinking from their roots in industrial engineering when it comes to resource utilization. Thus far, resource utilization has been focused on physical delivery of products and services using compartmentalized work using the chain-of-command thinking. In the future, more of the work will be done using our minds (via knowledge workers) and this will not lend itself to silos of workers reporting to resource managers walking through isles to oversee productivity. Organizations are already seeing this shift happen, though many are not able to understand it (let alone manage it). This disruptive shift in workforce delivery modes will force organizations to rethink the incentives, monitoring, and measurement of how we get work done. Those companies that build more adaptable management models will reap a greater harvest of mind share. Chain-of-command thinking is quickly getting outpaced by organizations who have adapted "agent-based" models for organizing resources into more autonomous teams that are more highly sensitized to environmental changes and have the empowerment to act upon those changes in near time to create proactive results to address new problems and create new value opportunities.
This type of non-linear resource optimization model will challenge organizations who have expended significant effort & time to create highly structured management models (with built-to-last process models) and measurement models based on historical data.
A few questions ...
How will these organizations shift to this new way of thinking ?
What role will enterprise architecture play in guiding the development of new organizational models ?
How will we measure productivity as more work shifts from the hands to the mind ?
How will organizations measure human potential (to say nothing of trying to tap into it) ?
What new management models will need to be implemented to optimize human potential in the workforce ?
What role with information play as automation begins to augment the knowledge worker of tomorrow ?