Organisations and Gen Z are now talking about 'working smarter and sharper' and not just working harder. Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), employees are making use of AI to work smarter.
Microsoft in its special report titled 'Breaking down the infinite workday' says frontier firms are putting the Pareto Principle into practice, thereby focusing on the 20% of work that delivers 80% of the outcomes. “AI makes this not only possible but scalable. By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution,” it says.
In organisations, there are various teams that take care of different functions such as engineering, finance, sales etc. The report says, “But with expertise available on demand through AI and agents, rigid structures add unnecessary friction. Take a product launch: content lives in marketing, data in analytics, budget in finance, and messaging with comms. A simple update like a price adjustment can take days and multiple meetings. It’s time to move from the org chart to the Work Chart—an agile, outcome-driven model in which lean teams form around a goal and use AI to fill skill gaps and move fast.”
The report also talks about how one can become an agent boss. There’s a new generation of professionals that work smarter and not by working more. Microsoft calls them agent bosses. Alex Farach, a researcher at Microsoft, uses a trio of agents to supercharge his work: one collects new research daily, the next runs statistical analysis, and the third drafts briefs to help connect the dots.
“Instead of getting bogged down in manual work, Farach can focus on what matters—fast, high-quality insights that benefit the entire team. This is the future of work: human-agent teams built to adapt and scale,” the report explains.
Talking about the future of work, the report points out that it won’t be defined by how much drudgery we automate, but by what we choose to fundamentally reimagine. “AI can give us the leverage to redesign the rhythm of work, refocus our teams on new and differentiating work, and fix what has become a seemingly infinite workday,” it adds.