Why Your Agency May Survive AI and the Consultancies
Agencies may be the best examples of the knowledge-worker organization of the future — but they will need to be managed differently if they are to survive.
I’m often asked, “Will agencies still exist in the future?” In our industry, many have been predicting the demise of agencies, the result of a perfect storm of automation, the war for creative/innovative talent, and the invasion of the consultancies. The answer is. “Yes, but they will be different, and the biggest change will be the one that we all know is overdue: they will need to be managed differently.”
Misperceived as archaic because of their misogynistic Mad Men past, today’s advertising and marketing agencies, in many ways, represent the future of service organizations.
The Decline of the Consultancies is Coming
The future looks like flexible workforces, a talent-driven economy, and a decline in mundane and repetitive knowledge-work roles that can be automated away by AI and other technologies. The consultancies, which have prospered from their excellent knowledge management technologies, will see those technologies be the platform from which Watson-like AIs replace the legions of consultants.
The last bastions for employed talent in the economy will be twofold:
- those activities not easily automated through robotics, to provide the interface between the machines and the real world, and
- the frothy, blurry pinnacles of human innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, meaning-making and emotional connection; and our innate ability to combine them — the human innovation organization.
Yes, the latter one is what an agency is.
Join us for a hour-plus long look into the future, the future of your agency or knowledge-worker organization, and learn how to ensure yours is still standing when the droids are serving us our morning lattes.
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