By Janus Boye
Richard Harbridge giving a presentation at the Boye Aarhus 22 conference
We all work to live. But we feel most alive at work, when we are doing something that seems valuable.
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining the very essence of work. Beyond just automation and efficiency, AI holds the promise of making our work more meaningful—but it also poses significant risks.
Richard Harbridge, Chief Technology Officer and Microsoft 365 MVP at Toronto-based Microsoft partner 2toLead, joined a recent members' call, where he unpacked how AI can both enhance and challenge the value of our work.
We delved into the double-edged nature of AI adoption, exploring how it can amplify our skills, foster innovation, and drive deeper connections in the workplace. But with these opportunities come real concerns: AI’s potential to devalue human expertise, disrupt roles, and reshape what we consider valuable in our professional lives.
Richard guided us through the complexities of AI change management, offering insights into how organisations can align AI investments with employee-centric goals to create a harmonious coexistence between technology and employee intent. We also heard about actionable strategies to ensure AI empowers rather than undermines our professional growth. Finally, we wrapped up with some of the big positives and big negatives AI can have for our work.
There’s a clear gap between AI usefulness and results sharing, but as per tradition, we started with the big picture - the “why”.
AI matters today
Richard opened with a comparison that you might have seen before, but still it is helpful to set the stage. Introducing the print press was a big thing for social literacy, but it took generations. In our time, we’ve seen change through the decades with electronic documents, websites and apps enabling new forms of information management and removing communication barriers. Now it is happening even quicker, and AI is removing skill barriers and enabling hyper-personalisation.
At an executive level, Richard made the point that AI can drive value in so many ways, and he brought the attached graph to illustrate where the disruption lies. Companies can and will get disrupted if they fail to reap the value from the right AI investments.
The advice from Richard was to invest to bridge the gap, specifically in:
Scaled security, governance and lifecycle management
Copilots, adaptive automation & intelligent services
Proactive & personalised employee experiences
Continuous champions, communities, Centers of Excellence & council(s)
Migration, modernisation, connection and consolidation
To quote Richard
“AI matters today and will matter more in the future, we must learn how to embrace it sooner so that we and our organisations can thrive in a world increasingly shaped by AI”
Bring your own AI to work
Research from the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn (download as PDF) show that organisations aren’t meeting needs quickly enough and consequently employees across every age group are bringing their own AI tools to work.
Over 70% of employees bring their own AI tools to work according to the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn (download as PDF)
Richard built on this research finding and said that in his experience, the winning formula is not just investing in tools. Rather for AI to really add value, you need to invest in data, processes and people. This will drive competitive advantage.
In his presentation, Richard shared a case study where investing in data, systems, people, processes, adoption, and usage all improved the return and advantage. In particular, the investment in processes drove compound benefits quarter by quarter.
So, how is this calculated? Richard said that initially, what you could call the foundational value, is calculated with productivity gains.
As you move beyond modern AI enablement, you then get to the scale and quality improvements, and what you could refer to as differentiated value. Departmental and role-based process improvement happens in this next stage. Finally, at the topic of the inverse pyramid, value is a strategic and competitive edge based on innovation.
If you listen to the call, you’ll hear Richard talk about processes and dividing them into what he refers to as “lower case p” or “upper case p”. Lower case processes are people based processes, like meetings, emails, notes, while an upper case process could be how you submit your vacation request.
AI can have big positives for us
Getting to how AI changes the value of our work, Richard started with an example of how new affordable and highly accessible technologies like digital assistants give employees' capabilities historically reserved for executives. An example in Copilot for Microsoft 365 is the narrative builder inside PowerPoint.
We also covered how AI can help make collaboration easy and more valuable. Whether for ideation suggestions to sense making and summarisation. As Richard said:
“While today we each use Copilot and AI, the reality is that Team based agents (Team Copilot) will continue to evolve to where the Copilot Agent becomes a part of the shared collaboration”
A part of collaboration that can evoke mixed feelings is the abundance of internal meetings that are a part of the modern workplace. Today, as Richard mentioned, many meetings are only people transacting skills – those low value meetings will be displaced over time and replaced by collaboration with AI. Specifically, AI enables employees and managers to remove low value ‘update me on what you have been doing’ and shift the dialog and focus on ‘how we can do more of or better work on X’. Recent research by Microsoft on the AI Data Drop showed that after 10+ weeks with Copilot, 37% of respondents mentioned that using Copilot allowed them to attend fewer internal meetings.
Beyond meetings, AI-powered tools like Copilot for Microsoft 365 and GitHub Copilot assist users by handling repetitive tasks, freeing them to concentrate on innovative solutions and design.
There’s more change ahead, but to keep things in balance, AI can also have big negatives for us, and there’s fear of AI in the workplace as we approach 2025.
AI can have big negatives for us
By now, we’ve all heard about how security is important for AI to work, but there’s a different kind of insecurity at the moment. Many employees feel imposter syndrome, and it’s easy to feel insecure as a professional, especially as more of our work is remote leading to greater feelings of isolation and self-doubt.
Also, platforms like LinkedIn have been shown to trigger feelings of imposter syndrome. A study from 2023 indicated that the constant exposure to others' achievements and career milestones can exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt.
There’s also the need to reskill and the dilemma of which jobs will go away. Yes, Richard repeated the mantra of “AI Is Not Going To Take Your Job”, but also subtitled it with “People who know how to use AI effectively are going to take your job,“ so what might that mean if you don’t know how to use AI?
We closed with the below packed slide on the gap between AI usefulness and results sharing in organisations. AI is very useful, but many don’t share the results with their employers? Why is that? Fear of punishment, threat to credibility, lack of incentives — there are many good explanations.
As Richard says: “When we talk about the value AI brings to modern work we often talk about security and ResponsibleAI enablement, but we don't talk about or proactively address insecurity and AI insecurity nearly enough
Learn more about how work changes
Employee experience and the future work is a regular topic in our community. We just held a popular members’ call with strategy execution expert Morten Elvang on What is going on at work?. You can meet Morten at the Boye Aarhus 24 conference in November, where we also have a dedicated employee experience conference track led by Brian Tomlinson.
Last year Richard checked in with our global community and shared How work changes with AI and Copilots.
We’ll naturally continue the conversation in our peer groups and conferences. Join us and be a part of the conversation.
Finally, you can also download the slides (PDF) or even lean back and enjoy the entire recording below.