The Future of Work: A Nexus of Strategy and Execution [HBR Survey]

Workfront collaborated with Harvard Business Review to conduct original research about how knowledge workers view the future of work. The result is an in-depth report titled “The Future of Work: A Nexus of Strategy and Execution,” featuring an introductory perspective from Workfront CEO Alex Shootman as well as a range of fresh insights that will benefit you in your journey to make sense of the era of modern work.

We’ll highlight three key findings here, and we recommend that you check out the full report.

First, we asked respondents how many more digital tools, applications, or platforms they use today compared to five years ago. Perhaps surprisingly, only 4% said that they experienced no increase whatsoever. Contrast that with the third of respondents who said that the number of digital tools they use has increased by at least 50%, and you get a sense for the potentially overwhelming nature of the digital landscape today.

Second, we asked knowledge workers to rank impediments to operational coordination in their workplace. What we found was that more than anything people feel like their applications lack interoperability—that an action in one application isn’t automatically recorded in another application, making data analytics and reporting a mess (among other things). Additional barriers to operational coordination include horizontal silos between departments, data silos, legacy technology, and more.

[See Workfront Fusion for info about bringing interoperability to your applications at work.]

Third, we asked respondents what would best help their teams coordinate more effectively. We found that people are seeking above all for a single platform that combines workflow management with intelligent automation and collaboration. They’d also like greater visibility, more automation for mundane tasks, better visibility, and more.

[See what having a single work management platform can do for your team.]

These essential insights are just the beginning of what we uncovered to help you win the digital revolution. As Workfront CEO Alex Shootman noted in the survey report, “winning the digital revolution starts with helping people do their best work, providing focus and prioritization, aligning teams, and orchestrating all the efforts of an enterprise to get things done.” To this end, we recommend reading the report in its entirety.

Full Report: “The Future of Work: A Nexus of Strategy and Execution”