Modern organizations were invented in the 19th century, alongside innovations like standardized time and organizational charts, to enable large-scale coordination across geographies. These tools helped professionalize roles and manage information as businesses grew.

Today, leaders face new challenges as AI and automation increasingly drive productivity and collaboration. Organizations must reconsider how decision-making works, what tasks deliver unique value, and how to differentiate in a marketplace shaped by rapid automation. The real opportunity goes beyond just replacing human labor with AI. By fostering close collaboration between people and intelligent machines, we can unlock new capabilities and create exciting possibilities, making the traditional boundaries between humans and AI less defined.

As organizations change, the workforce and jobs will also evolve. Over the past decade, advances like mobile connectivity led to breaking jobs into tasks, fueling trends such as gig work. With agentic technology, this task-based approach may accelerate, raising questions about the future of work and jobs.

However, dividing jobs into tasks has limits, especially for complex work where knowledge and context overlap. Organizations may need to focus less on measuring discrete tasks and more on broader goals and commitments. This shift will affect how teams, roles, career paths, and skill development are structured, and how workers manage their growth.

Organizational changes are reshaping roles for workers, managers, and leaders. For example, middle management positions are declining, with job postings dropping more than 40% between April 2022 and October 2024, as companies create flatter structures. Despite fewer managers, the need for coaching and process redesign is more important than ever, highlighting ongoing tensions in planning for the future workforce.

Roles across all levels are evolving. Entry-level tasks, like taking meeting notes, are now often handled by AI. While this boosts short-term efficiency, it may reduce opportunities for on-the-job learning and hinder the development of future leaders, affecting long-term organizational success.

A software engineer compares the future of “programmers” to the historic role of “computers”—when computers were people doing calculations by hand. As AI transforms coding and other professions, workers may need to rethink both their roles and professional identities. They may have to reinvent what they bring to work, learn new skills, and prepare for career paths that don’t exist yet. In fact, 65% of children in primary school today may eventually work in roles that are yet to be created. With technology skills’ half-life now about 2.5 years, this rapid change challenges not just individuals, but leaders too.

Leaders must balance cultivating skills for today’s needs with developing broader human capabilities to ensure their workforce can learn and adapt as work continues to evolve.