The Changing Relationship Between Value and Work

Over the past year, I’ve noticed something in conversations with leaders that feels different.

Not theoretical. Not something coming in the future. Something already happening.

Teams are getting smaller, but output isn’t going down. In many cases, it’s increasing.

Work that used to take days is getting done in hours. Research, writing, analysis, even elements of design and development, things that once required specialized roles or additional capacity, are now being accelerated by tools that didn’t exist even a couple of years ago.

And in some organizations, growth is happening without the hiring patterns we would have expected in the past.

That’s new.

For most of modern business history, there has been a relatively consistent relationship between growth and employment. When organizations expanded, they hired more people. When productivity improved, it created space for more jobs, different roles, and, over time, rising living standards.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was predictable.

Growth and employment were connected.

What we’re starting to see now suggests that relationship may be changing.

Artificial intelligence is not just another tool that improves efficiency at the margins. It has the potential to fundamentally change how work gets done, particularly in areas that were previously considered knowledge-intensive or dependent on human expertise.

And if that continues, it raises a question that I don’t think most organizations have fully wrestled with yet.

What happens if organizations can create significantly more value without needing significantly more people?

That’s not a hypothetical question.

It’s showing up in small ways already.

A marketing team that once needed five people to produce a certain level of output might now need three. A consulting team that relied heavily on research analysts can now accelerate that work dramatically. Software development cycles are compressing. Decision-making is being supported in ways that reduce the need for layers of coordination.

None of this eliminates the need for people. But it does start to shift how many people are needed to produce a given outcome.

And over time, those shifts add up.

If you step back, this starts to challenge something that has been foundational to how we think about organizations and work.

Historically, businesses have not just been engines of economic value. They’ve also been engines of employment.

They’ve created jobs, developed skills, built careers, and formed communities. For most adults, work has been one of the primary ways they participate in society.

It provides income, but it also provides structure. It creates a sense of contribution. It connects people to something larger than themselves.

So, when we talk about organizations becoming more efficient, it’s worth asking what else is being affected.

Because if the connection between value creation and employment starts to loosen, even gradually, it introduces a new kind of leadership question. Not about whether we should use these technologies. That decision is already being made in real time across industries.

The question is what it means.

What does it mean for organizations if growth no longer requires the same level of human participation, it once did?

And what does it mean for people if one of the primary ways they’ve historically contributed begins to

change?

I don’t think we have clear answers yet.

But I do think it’s a conversation worth having now, while the changes are still emerging and not fully defined.

Because the decisions leaders make over the next few years won’t just shape how organizations operate.

They may shape how people experience work itself.

And that leads to a second question we need to explore more deeply.

If work changes, what role does it actually play in people’s lives?