Fred Voccola, Chairman & CEO Simpro Group and the author of the book, The Coming Disruption: What It Takes to Lead in the AI-First Era.
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The biggest lie in business today is that AI is a technology shift. It’s not. It’s a workforce reset.
I’ve spent the last 20-plus years founding, building and scaling software companies. I’ve seen multiple technology waves up close, from the internet, to SaaS and cybersecurity. Each one of them changed the way business was done, as well as the critical skills required to succeed in each new era. However, the most recent technology wave is different. It's a disruption the world has never seen. The AI era is here, and with it comes a fundamental restructure of how work gets done.
AI doesn’t just automate work. It eliminates the need for the way work used to be organized. In the pre-AI world, most roles and required skills were focused on compliance, processes, organizational norms and deep, single-function skill sets. The AI era rewards a completely different skill set. Not coding, not prompting and not even deep technical or other specialized knowledge: The defining skill of the AI era is entrepreneurialism.
I am not saying everyone needs to start a company. That is being an entrepreneur. Being entrepreneurial is about outcome ownership. It's refusing to wait for permission. It's the ability to move fast and make decisions with incomplete information. It's the instinct to see inefficiency and eliminate it immediately. It's the ability to be comfortable with change and realize that if there is not constant change, there is no progress.
AI-Based Productivity Increases
We are in the early days of AI-driven organizations, and already I am seeing workforces drastically increase their productivity. This is not the result of working harder, but rather the by-product of leveraging AI. This means we need fewer people. And the people we have need to be dramatically more effective.
This also means the nature of work itself is changing. The AI era does not reward hands-on processes. It demands something more aggressive: hands-dirty execution. With this new mindset, leaders and workers must stay aware of the details, while also embedding themselves in the work itself.
This change is incredible. There were periods of time when the industry had layers of management reviewing, commenting on and aligning on work—but not actually producing it. It felt productive. It wasn’t. It slowed everything down. With an AI workforce, there's little to no room for people-only leaders, those who coordinate, review and comment, but don't produce. If you are not contributing to the output, you're creating friction.
In the AI era, those leaders become liabilities because they slow down the people doing the real work. Over the past 15 months, within the organizations I manage, the average number of direct reports that a manager manages has gone from seven to 14. By flattening the organization, the output per dollar of resource increases, driving higher profitability and growth rates.
How To Do It
While AI is the catalyst, it only works if human workers themselves are entrepreneurial and can take advantage of this new paradigm. AI only optimizes if organizations have workers who possess the entrepreneurial attributes required to leverage AI. Put simply, if output isn’t increasing every quarter, you are falling behind.
At my company, one of our stated goals for each of our executive team members is to demonstrate a 15% (or higher) improvement in output and/or efficiency every quarter. We do this by ensuring that each function in our company has a measurable unit of output, one that is recognizably productive. Sales focuses on the number of deals it closes (not revenue, as that can vary too much), support focuses on the number of tickets it manages, implementation focuses on the number of customers implemented, content marketing focuses on the amount of content created, etc. This is something I've found incredibly valuable at our company, and it's something I'd urge all leaders to focus on.
In doing this at your company, make sure that you have a strong and reliable way to ensure that your teams' quality is consistent. Each group must either increase output by 15% per quarter or deliver the same output (again, normalized for quality) with 15% less cost or resource drain.
This can help create a culture of continuous and relentless improvement. Everyone should be constantly looking for ways to get better, pivot, change and adapt. It's only possible with an entrepreneurial workforce.
The Organization Of The Future
As we move into this new age, I believe organizations that are built on compliance and hierarchy will collapse under their own weight. Organizations built on ownership and entrepreneurship will move faster than anyone can catch. In my own work, this means forcing uncomfortable changes, eliminating layers, redefining roles and pushing decision-making down to smaller teams.
This is where most companies get stuck. They agree with the thesis, and then they change nothing. That’s a mistake.
To make this shift, here are a few tips I have implemented that actually work:
1. Redefine every role around outcomes. If someone cannot clearly state what they own, the role is broken.
2. Aggressively eliminate low-value work. Don't optimize it, and don't improve it. If AI can do it, it should be gone.
3. Increase individual leverage. Every employee should be using AI daily to multiply their output.
4. Collapse layers. Work with fewer people and more capable people. You don't need spectators.
5. Demand hands-dirty leadership. Leaders must produce and engage directly with the work.
6. Measure what matters: outcomes, speed, quality and impact.
The AI era is eliminating people who think like employees—and replacing them with people who think like entrepreneurs. I believe this is the greatest shift of our time. The individuals and organizations that embrace this shift will not just survive. They will dominate.
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