Why AI Efficiency Doesn’t Have to Mean Cutting Headcount

Galen Low: It's no secret that reducing headcount is one of the fastest ways to free up capital and increase operating margin, and I'm not naive enough to think that somehow project professionals are immune to reductions in force. But this approach is always difficult and almost never risk-free. Especially in the world of professional services, mass layoffs can constrain an agency's ability to deliver value for its clients, it can lead to unplanned attrition, and it could even mean needing to rehire just a few months later.

So what's the alternative? Is there a way for agencies to deliver more value using the people they've got? And if so, what's involved and what are the trade-offs? To answer that, I've brought in two delivery strategists who work with professional services organizations to redesign their operating model around their people's strengths.

Together, we'll be challenging the long-term benefits of mass layoffs, breaking down how employers can get better results by doing more than just throwing LLMs at their staff and hoping for efficiency gains, and exploring what the future of our workforce could look like if we focused on skills instead of titles.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines.

Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Oh, and if you've been liking what you've been hearing from us lately, please consider following us wherever you're listening or watching, and maybe even leaving us a review. All right, let's get into it.

Today, we're challenging whether laying off project managers is actually an effective cost-cutting strategy and proposing an alternative that has been proving itself in the market. We'll be exploring where mass layoffs typically have diminishing returns, how activating your existing team can pay better long-term dividends, and what the future workforce may look like as we move beyond job titles like project manager or delivery lead.

With me today are Michael Gold and James Leigh, the co-founders of the human-led, AI-powered project management tool Aria, and both deeply established strategic delivery leaders in their own right. Regular listeners may remember Michael from our episode on the benefits of bringing on a fractional project manager.

As the founder of Gold Strategic Delivery, Michael helps agencies and service-based businesses scale their delivery. He has developed a reputation for shining a light on what's broken about traditional concepts of employment, company loyalty, and work-life balance, and what the new model of work could look like.

James is a strategic delivery and transformation leader who has spent more than a decade working in project and stakeholder management. His work focuses on helping organizations rethink traditional project management roles and develop people into higher value delivery leaders. As AI absorbs more repetitive work, James argues that people can spend more time solving problems, strengthening relationships, and helping organizations navigate change.

As for Aria, it's a human-led, AI-powered project management tool built specifically for the professional services industry. More on that later.

Michael, James, great to have you here.

Michael Gold: Great to be here.

James Leigh: Great to be here, Galen. Thank you.

Michael Gold: What an introduction.

Galen Low: Yeah. Thank you for bearing me with the introduction.

I was like, "Oh, yeah, there's a lot to say about both of you." I'm really excited to have you on the show. I, I hope I did you justice just there.

Michael Gold: I was thinking throughout that how amazing you would be just as a little pocket sort of champion, just to bring you around.

James Leigh: Yeah, yeah.

Michael Gold: You introduced me better than I've ever introduced myself to anyone else.

Galen Low: I mean, we accept sponsorships. Send me a T-shirt.

James Leigh: We can do that.

Galen Low: I love it. Awesome. You know, this topic I'm, I'm glad we landed on it. It hits really close to home, especially for my community and I because a lot of us have either been impacted by AI influence layoffs, or we're, like, trying to navigate in a world where we are basically inheriting the workload of our colleagues that have been let go.

Let's just set the scene with a bit of a controversial question. Because right now, the headlines are declaring that while AI is being given as a reason for mass layoffs, most organizations are just using AI as a scapegoat. Some are theorizing that many businesses are using the opportunity to correct poor hiring decisions made in the wake of things like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Others think that businesses are just trying to placate the demands of their boards, and reducing the workforce is the fastest way to take a big chunk off the balance sheet. Either might make sense in some industries But there are also a plethora of professional services firms that are following suit.

So my question is this: through the lens of professional services businesses, are mass layoffs a sustainable cost-cutting strategy, or is it gonna come back and bite those organizations that took that path?

Michael Gold: I mean, it's, yeah, it's a really interesting point. I think one of the things is that in most industries, when people cut staff, they're, they're just cutting a cost.

But in professional services, ultimately you're cutting what the product is. I mean, the product is how you deliver and speak and work with people. It's a very, obviously, it's a service-led industry, and so by cutting people, you're cutting literally the service that they provide, and so there's only a short-term gain that I think they'll ever get from that.

James Leigh: Yeah, absolutely. We hear a lot about the shareholder value model and how that shows up, you know, in the modern business structure. And I think a lot of people when they're looking at layoffs, and even if they're using AI as an excuse or if it's truthful, maybe that's particularly relevant, people often miss out the key word.

It's shareholder value model, not shareholder squeeze model. You know, if you aren't adding value for your shareholders, and if you are laying off the people like Michael says who do the actual work, how is that value driving? You're actually thinking very short-termist. Yeah, sure, your balance sheet's gonna look great on Friday.

Show me in a month, show me in a quarter. You're gonna feel the pain, and you're gonna have to go and rehire those people probably at an inflated cost.

Galen Low: I really like that framing of like you're actually cutting the product. And then the other framing of yeah, when you're talking about shareholder value, you're right, like on the balance sheet, you know, one day it's gonna look great, but over time it's not gonna necessarily create more value, and it is really putting the squeeze on a business that everyone's got some stake in.

I wonder if we can kind of like u-unpack that a little bit. I mean, what are some of-- We're all delivery people, I guess, so spoiler alert, the answer is probably delivery will suffer. But yeah, like what does it look like in some of the organizations you've seen where they have gone and, you know, cut, you know, reduced headcount, you know, done a reduction in force, laid off maybe even project managers, and yeah, it looks good on Friday, and then walk me through between Friday and when it starts looking bad.

Michael Gold: I would have to say I have a slightly different take, which isn't necessarily that cutting people by definition means something will go wrong. I think it's more about accepting the landscape that we all live in right now, which is AI is helping people push on. And so I think it's more about, and we'll get into this, I'm sure, but it's more about where the delivery culture, delivery managers, project managers, how that's reshaping and the expectation on you.

So like I always have an example of if you have two sort of competing delivery you know, service-led businesses, and one of them cuts costs and therefore obviously that year maybe they look good to their shareholders, but the other group instead, with the spare time that AI helps them generate, they over service, they work really closely with their clients, they give much more customer support, they understand the pain points much more, they understand the burnout within their own team much more, let-- people are off sick less, people...

You know, there is this sort of momentum that you can drive in the second company. Whereas, yeah, first company A might make more money in the first year, but I think by the second year, they'll start poaching company A's clients because they're now a much more successful service business. And I think that's the-- It's not necessarily that just about cutting cost, it's more about the expectation that people who are using AI to deliver more value rather than using AI to deliver costs, the short-term and long-term picture of what that looks like.

Galen Low: Yeah, that's fair. I wonder like in your world or in this example, I guess, could you be both company A and company B? You're cutting costs, but you're using AI to push people to elevate themselves in their role and take better care of fewer people to deliver more value.

James Leigh: I think by looking at it as a cutting mindset, what you're effectively doing is there's still the same amount of work unless you're downscaling as a company.

And what you're effectively saying to the people who are kept is you're gonna have to do the work that was being done by a multitude of people. Now, if that can be done in a way where that person is being activated using AI tooling or automation or modern thinking for modern problems, that's potentially quite a good thing.

That's giving that person the opportunity to be across a greater swathe of your accounts, but you're then not asking them to be a project manager at that point, you're asking them to be a delivery manager, and I think the two are distinctly different. I'm not sure that's a particularly controversial thing to say in this group.

And the idea that you can then get people operating in that more holistic way with that greater oversight, maybe with an interconnectivity around commerciality and growth, it's almost like back to those old s- producer roles that we used to see, you know, a decade, decade and a half ago, where you were a little bit PM, a little bit CS, and, you know, you, you had all of those various bits.

But you're now being given the tools to succeed in that space rather than just trying to cram it all into a 40, 50-hour week.

Galen Low: I really like that. And so if I'm picking up what you're putting down, you know, there is this sort of traditional and conventional definition of a project manager, which is, you know, all the things that we think of scope, schedule, you know, just managing the budget, but kind of more focused on the process.

Maybe not even being client-facing, maybe not even being asked to think about the business beyond the iron triangle. And what you're saying is that, you know, if we were to say delivery manager, you know, in your mind is different. It's someone who is more involved in the commercials, more client-facing, more responsible for a strategic delivery, not just getting things done and making, you know, like what we say, herding cats, but actually driving impact.

And maybe that involves wearing multiple hats, and I know a lot of my listeners are like, "Yeah, I'm a project manager by title, but I do wear all those hats that James just said." And that might be even empowering for them to be like, "Yeah, I am doing these things." And then I think the other thing you're saying is the organization should support that growth in that direction if they want these individuals to, you know, do more or more formally be responsible for delivering that value, not just herding cats and, you know, getting tasks done.

James Leigh: Yeah, absolutely. I, I'd actually go slightly further. I think that the organization has to empower them in that way. If that's the expectation, there needs to be the push and pull, and if you're not setting those individuals up for success, they are not going to succeed. I know that sounds a really trite thing to say, but if you're not giving people the right tools, the right space, the right, you know, environment to succeed, then the chances of them not succeeding are massively and exponentially increased.

Galen Low: I really like that framing.

Michael Gold: In quite a few of these kind of talks or whenever me and James get together, I keep referencing this networking event we went to a month ago, 'cause it absolutely blew my mind where we were meant to be listening to these industry experts on stage, and we were talking, and project management focused and so delivery focused, and they were talking about the future.

And this woman, and I won't name drop her, her company and, and, and stuff like that, but her-- there was a line that she said that resonates, well, it sticks in my mind, doesn't resonate, sorry sticks in my mind a lot, which was she said she had to pull her team kicking and screaming into kind of the AI revolution.

And kind of speaking to what James was just saying, this idea of pulling someone, like kicking and screaming is the most contradictory thing that you could possibly do. It doesn't enable them. You can't force adoption, and this is a segue to what delivery management is. But we obviously work very closely with change management experts.

It's kind of an overlapping field. And I think change management has become a more important thing than ever, and so we, we partner quite a lot with change management companies. This idea that if you want people to adopt to this new way of life, there's a learning process. It's not just, "Here are the tools. Great, now you're better."

James Leigh: Yeah. That sentence haunts me. I remember we were sitting next to each other. She said it, we just slowly turned to each other like we're in a horror film. We're like, "Oh, no. No, that's not how it is." Yeah, but it's, you know, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I, I can safely say that we did not share that view.

Galen Low: Yeah, it's funny that you say that because I do hear it all the time, right? Dragging people kicking and screaming. Michael, I think you've got a really good point, and my community would agree that you know, the change management and project management are becoming interconnected, I guess I should say, right?

Like you said. And I think there are folks out there who are like, "Yeah, that's the job is to drag people kicking and screaming, then they like, you know, reach the Holy Land, and they'll be fine, you know? But in the meantime, we've gotta drag them across the desert." Whereas, you know, James, you used the word activate earlier, and I wanna get into that.

But in other words, the change management approach to it would not be to drag people kicking and screaming against their will. It would be supporting them more, giving them more of the education around the tools, like leveling up their skills, redefining what their work looks like or helping them redefine what their work looks like, not just dragging them across this unknown land and then being like, "Cool, when you get there, you're gonna love it."

Like you're gonna, you know... This is like road trip to the resort. It's like, "Are we there yet?" "No." It's like, "I, I wanna go home." You're gonna love this resort when you get there, and maybe they will and maybe they won't. But either way, that doesn't, you know... When you say it out loud, you're like, "That doesn't sound like a strategy."

James Leigh: I think interestingly in the way that project management, delivery management as a field, as a profession, has materially changed in a relatively short period of time. I think change management has also massively changed over that same period. If you look back on what change management was in late 90s, early 2000s, it was basically just a euphemism for layoffs.

It was a way of softening people up to the idea that, look, sometimes some of you are gonna be getting fired. What was that book? There was a book w- with a mice. Who Moved My Cheese?

Galen Low: Ah, yes.

James Leigh: This weird parable, right, where it's like trying to basically get people used to the idea that you're just gonna get fired periodically, so just get on the bus with that, and that's not what change management is at all anymore.

And I think some people are still stuck in that mindset, and they're the people who are struggling to see the overlap, the Venn between modern change management and modern delivery management. Whereas if you look at the way that we're describing it as this, you know, you work with the individuals, get the buy-in from them, make them an active participant in the change management, they can then be, back to that word we've been using already, activated delivery folks because it's all an ecosystem.

One does not exist without the other, or if it does, I've never seen it.

Michael Gold: James, I don't know if you remember the stat off the top of your head, but it was something like 54% of transformation projects fail due to lack of adoption or something like that.

James Leigh: It was exactly that number. You remembered it perfectly, Michael.

That was, it was bang on that. So I remember looking at that and thinking, "That is a big number. That's gonna stick in my mind." Yeah, yeah.

Galen Low: I like what you're saying about the evolution of change management, and I've seen it firsthand. You know, like I, I used to work at a consultancy, and change management was a big thing.

But at the time it was like the art of cramming something down someone's throat, right? It was better than the, "You're gonna get laid off sometimes," but it wasn't quite the, "We want you involved in this change, and we wanna involve you early, and we do this together." It was basically like, "How do we put the right memo in the lunchroom so that people...

You know, we could point at it and go 'Oh, didn't you see the memo about your department yeah, being folded in underneath this other department? Yeah. Sorry.'" It was more of that like sort of strategic comms. But I do like the model that we're in right now, or at least the three of us share, that, yes, it should be that we involve people and consult with people, and that they are part of the change.

And yes, that means the change is probably gonna stick, but it also means that the impact will be arguably sharper. I wanted to come back that word activate because, I mean, I think listeners are getting a sense of this, but both of you have, you know, pretty strong opinions, maybe sometimes polarizing opinions about the workforce and what work ought to look like in 2026 and beyond, and especially in agencies, professional services, consultancies, and we've been talking about strategic delivery.

I've seen it in your work as well, right? The phrasing of activating human potential, and it is a, you know, a more people-centric alternative. I'm wondering if it's A alternative to, you know, replacing the human workforce with tools, or if maybe it's more than that. Is it the support we're talking about?

Maybe just can you tell us what activating human potential means to you, and maybe just where it's made a tangible impact in some of the organizations that you help?

Michael Gold: James loves this topic. I mean, you always talk... It's equity of access, right, James?

James Leigh: Yeah, sure. It's all about equity of access. You knew what I was gonna say, Michael.

Yeah. Look, this is about lowering the bar of entry using technology as an equity of access moment, right? So we are currently, as of point of recording this podcast, living in a moment of technological access that is unparalleled in human history. You know, we'll probably get onto this more later around kind of work Michael and I have been doing, but we've been able to work on projects which even a year ago we did not have the ability to even access these kind of pieces.

Now using things like prompting and vibe coding and, you know, the actualization that can come from those kind of opportunities, we are now able to play in a whole new arena we couldn't. And I think that's so liberating and so wonderful. So that's your, kind of your, the macro around activation and the sort of the, the equity of access point.

Where we try to do it in a, not necessarily in the micro, more in sort of the, the transactional moment which we actually go and do with people, it's about those consenting moments. It's about working with the individuals. It's about playing people in the position they are most likely to be actively excellent in, to, to kind of use a bit of a sporting analogy, right?

If you've got somebody within your delivery team who has a specific skill set, and that skill set is of value to your organization, activating that individual by putting them in that position, couching their experience with technology where appropriate, and not just technologists for the sake of it, you're gonna get loyalty from that person, you're gonna get enthusiasm from that person, you're gonna get return on that person, and they're gonna get a great work experience.

They're gonna want to stick around. We all know that hiring is one of the most expensive things you can do, so you know retention is important. You wanna be doing that good stuff And then if you then have a network of delivery folks within your organization or your loose affiliation who are all being placed in the right positions, you get a network effect really quickly.

They all elevate each other. 'Cause why would you want all your delivery folks all doing the same thing as each other? Lean into those minutiae, lean into those differences where those people are uniquely different, and make that a feature, not a bug. And I think that is what I mean by activation. It's about consciously making those choices and making them work for all concerned.

You know, whatever the reverse of zero-sum game thinking is, it's kind of that, I guess. I don't know what the word for it is.

Galen Low: I really like that. I like the idea, you know, you had said couching as in you know, filling in where there may be gaps in a position where someone could otherwise add value.

You got me thinking actually about even the agricultural revolution, right? Pre-farming, you kind of had to be good at everything. And then today we have the same thing where it's like the... You know, I'm, I'm looking at job postings every day for project management roles, for delivery management roles, and you know, it's must be able to do this, must have these qualifications, must have all 10.

And I, I... You know, folks in my community who are in the job search right now, who are in the hunt, you know, it's intimidating. They're like, "Okay, but I'm missing these three things. Do you think I should still apply?" And you know, I think the general guidance is yeah make a case for yourself.

It's not like you're trying to do something where you tick zero of the boxes, right? You're not going from project management into becoming a circus performer without any qualifications. This is you know, there's, there's areas where we can fill in, and if I'm extrapolating what you're saying, it's like, okay, yeah, job titles are confining too, right?

There's like these... Even the, what we view as being a role or, you know, a position on a team is actually kind of a compromise, right? It's like, okay, well, we have to kind of paint everyone with a brush. They all have to do these things. Now we can actually say, "Okay, well, they're really good at this one thing that's different than anybody else on the team," maybe more than one thing.

But are weak in any other areas, or if there's any, any areas where we can lift them up, that's where we should focus the tooling and the training, the technology, and their sort of position within the organization so that it actually creates a lot of value.

Michael Gold: Yeah, and I think it stops what might have historically been...

I mean, I came up through my career and I happened to sit next to some amazing delivery managers, so a lot of my career was shaped by the person I happened to be sat next to. And I think going back to the equity of access, it's enabling that to also become a little bit more a leveler rather than, oh, do you happen to sit next to someone who was able to parse you the secrecy of how to be a good delivery manager?

And now you have someone that you can actually access, and also obviously over time as companies get more and more familiar with it, there's one thing talking to Claude as a, or ChatGPT as a general thing, and then there's another thing of when companies start to create their own, what are they called, repositories of their own sort of internal LLM, where when I'm looking for feedback, I'm getting the company ethos feedback, not generic LLM.

So suddenly everyone has a senior manager next to them that they, you know, and they can help that and extrapolate that information around the company rather than just who you happen to be sat next to.

Galen Low: I love that because it's been so important in my career, exactly what you said. I sat at a pod with senior leadership just by chance, not because I had any business being there, open office concept, but I'm here listening to all the conversations.

I'm able to ask questions, you know, along the way. I hadn't really thought of that. Everyone's like, you know, treating their LLM like a, you know, really cocky intern, right? A know-it-all intern, but I don't know if everyone's really thought about the idea that, yeah, it knows some stuff that you can ask it almost like you're sitting next to somebody who is excellent at what they do in an area where you're trying to get better or where you have a gap or, you know, a perceived gap.

Michael Gold: And not everyone is confident in a way, because I also noticed that there was, everyone knows this, that social credit is a way to get ahead in business, and I'm not saying that that's a skill that people shouldn't learn. I think it's a valuable skill in of itself. But there was definitely moments in my career where the reason, not just who I was sat next to, but other reasons of why I might get the inside track to X, Y, or Z was because of this ability I was quite confident and I could go into certain rooms and have those discussions with people.

But there's definitely people who maybe took slightly longer on their career trajectory to get to the same place as me who could have been using something like an LLM to at least learn a little bit more in a social environment that they were more comfortable to ask those questions in until they felt more confident and then could then bring it to a public group.

And there are just different ways that you can now train people, people who might need a little bit more hand-holding than other people, and you can actually give them that time and, and allowance.

Galen Low: That I think is really cool. On the surface, equity of access, I think of well, everyone has the same tools that could help them level up.

But I really like the framing of it provides a different channel that people might feel more comfortable with if they're not the type of people who are just gonna barge into some office and be like, "Give me the answer to this question." You know, if you're not that person, and I'm not saying you have to be, and I'm not saying that always works either, but at least you have the ability to ask the question in, in a way that, you know, jives with your working style and without that whole...

'Cause, you know, I think we kind of, we're that generation. I'm adding myself to your generation, although I'm pretty sure you're significantly younger than me. But we're of that generation where you're like, "Well, you just have to be confident, right? Figure it out, and when you're confident, then you'll succeed.

But if you're not that person, then, then just you may as well, you know, work in the basement with your stapler." It's not that anymore. So I really, I really do like that. I wonder if we could dive into an example because, you know, I've been framing this as, okay, well listen there's a lot of cost cutting going on.

There's mass layoffs. It might not be the only answer. We've been talking about activating humans and change management and, and maybe, you know, shaping new roles that might not exist today. But for folks listening, you know, both folks who are operating an agency or some kind of professional services business or someone who's got, you know, a team that they're leading within that context could we dive into an example of What activating human potential looks like in practice.

Like we've been talking about, you know, the sort of like project manager role. Let's just say like an intermediate project manager. You know, maybe they do see their, their value as just like being really organized and, you know, keeping the tasks flowing. But maybe they're not like super good at like client-facing relationship management, and they're listening and they're going, "Okay.

Well, James says I need to get good at these things. That's the future. That's just the way it's gonna go." How does this idea of activating human potential, especially from the employer side what does it look like?

James Leigh: So I think to, to what you just said right at the end there, out from the employer side I think is the really important bit.

Just quickly before we go on that, I just loved your office space deep cut reference just then in the basement with Abel. I'm like, hang on, I know that. That's a great movie. I'm gonna watch that this weekend. Lovely callback. Excellent. So when we talk about what this looks like for this theoretical individual you put out there, someone who is super organized, great on the flow, like really hitting those key markers for PMs, I don't want anyone to think that I don't think that's valuable.

I do think that's extremely valuable. My own bias is I'm not that person, so I probably Yeah, maybe it's jealousy because I know I don't have that, that as my skill set. When we look, talk about activating individuals, it's not about the individual activating themselves. It's about their employer or their contract owner, you know, whoever's bringing them into that space, working with that individual to activate them.

So the emphasis and the onus is on the person in the leadership position. This is why we talk about equity of access rather than equality of access. So equality of access would say, "Okay, look, you're all getting a super ChatGPT license. You're all getting a new MacBook. You're all getting this stuff.

Figure it out." Like Michael was saying a minute ago about that, that's the kicking and screaming approach, the ram it down people's throats approach. No, completely not that. Flip that logic. Equity of access is about creating differentiated processes that allow for that individual to be excellent, both as an individual, but also as part of a team or a deliverable or an implementation.

So it's incumbent on the employer, the, the delivery leader, the, the person who has the power to make that excellent, to do that with that person. And I'm sure there are many excellent delivery leaders out there who are doing that, and I'm sure right now there are people hearing me say this who fervently disagree with me 'cause I said this on stage at a conference and I got clowned out quite viciously by a guy in the front row.

He did not appreciate the vibe I was putting out with this. And I just would say, "I'm sorry you, you don't agree, but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one. This is the hill I'm willing to die on." This is where you've got to take your responsibilities as a leader, whatever that shows up as, and have the foresight to see the potential of individuals, create the equity of access around them, and see how they're a node within a success matrix.

It's not easy. I'm not pretending like it is, but that's what I'm talking about. That's how this shows up. And what we like to do is work with organizations that are open to that kind of thinking, empowering leaders who want to go down that route and maybe don't know how to make those steps. Maybe they don't know what that looks like, or they kind of need just an excuse to do it.

Sometimes that's enough. They're almost being licensed or agency to go ahead and, and make those moments happen for their team. And there's sometimes a slightly more external consultants, we can come in, say those things, activate, and any sort of friction that that creates, you know, from that person's boss when we leave with that.

So we can kind of sort of absorb some of that negativity. That's pretty fair, isn't it, Michael? That's vaguely in a nutshell.

Michael Gold: Yeah, I mean, I think so, and other things that we haven't touched upon, and Galen, obviously I could have let you maybe come back on James's point 'cause I mean I'm about to take it slightly differently.

In terms of what AI does and people who, you know, like you were saying originally, if it's not their best forte in terms of client facing and they're more like process planning and kind of what happens to them I think there still is a difference between ad- like a, an AI and its admin and it giving you a project plan and it doing it via AI.

But there is still a place for someone who is a process-driven person who is still gonna spot things in the room, but still gonna understand trends and patterns from, from a client point of view, because AI still can't read the room. And so it's not necessarily about the communication skills with the client, but if you're, if you're process-driven, you should still understand what happens when a client is late and what the next steps are to get something back on track.

Even if you have a playbook and it's not emotionally led with communication, like I was saying, but it's just this is how we do things, AI still is only within your computer, right? It, it doesn't read the room of someone's sick or they're working at half capacity today because they have come in, but they are working and like, how do I now shift it?

Or my client needs something done, we're gonna pivot off the schedule and we're gonna deliver them a draft version that we weren't originally gonna give them, but now they desperately need to do their own presentation they've thrown on. You know, so there are still things that like process-driven people can still come up with different solutions that happen in the real world versus AI, which is gonna give you maybe a, a formatted schedule, but it's not gonna give you the reality of like then what to do with that schedule.

Galen Low: Yeah, I love that because it is that instinct and the context around what we're able to pick up with that sort of human nuance, and it is reading the room and, you know, it's like AI is great. Listen, I'm not, not knocking it, but it just, it physically cannot read the room, right? Like it's just like we could tell it about what's going on in the room, but I, I, yeah, like you said, like it hasn't trained on that.

It, it, it doesn't really quite get it, and that is valuable and I'm glad you called that out because it doesn't necessarily mean being, you know, the stereotypical confident extrovert that's great with people and, you know, can persuade people and is, you know, an excellent orator. It's just being able to you know, flag things, call it out in whatever way you do that.

And actually, I think it's it's, it's an interesting one. Could we step through the process a little bit? Like maybe in fast-forward, but you know, James, you're saying, "Okay, listen, well, you know, as a leader within my organization or maybe even, you know, even as the, the, the owner or founder, I need to be able to recognize where my team is strong.

Before I take the spreadsheet with all of the compensation numbers on it and then just draw a random line across the top, how can I sort of like look at it? And I'm imagining it's like, okay, well, listen you know, Jerome over there is great at this. I really appreciate that. If only that was like a role, you know?

Just flagging risks in the r- like reading the room and flagging risks, arguably an important part of the job, but rarely a thing that's like, "That's your job. That's what you do. You just sit in the room and you flag risk and tell us what to do when you see it." Not a full role. And then step me through the rest, because I really like the quality of access versus the equity of access conversation, and I think a lot of folks would be like, "Well, that's great.

I'm gonna give Jerome access to all the LLMs. I'm just gonna, you know, buy some licenses, say listen token your way, you know, go for it. You've got a blank slate. Just get better at the other stuff. Goodbye." Which, as we were talking about, is probably not the right approach. But what is the other approach?

Is it like, "Okay, well, Jerome we're gonna set you up with these tools that like, you know, I'm not just gonna say, 'Go ask ChatGPT.' I'm gonna say, 'Listen let's build like a little GPT that kinda accesses the company information so that you have some of these skills or some of this knowledge because, you know, we, we do both agree, ideally both agree that, you know, there's an area that you could be stronger in, and we can support you in doing that.'"

Is that kind of what it looks like, that next step of going, "Yeah, how can I activate you?"

James Leigh: I'll take that down two routes. One, in like the thinking around this very very quickly, and then how we can go ahead and do that. The first bit I think is stepping away from the idea of job titles, exploding those out into functions.

So r- coming at a, a project or a deliverable or a company and go, "What are the functions that we require to succeed? Let's map those out," and then what we'll do is we'll map those functions onto people who have those skills. So you can call me a project manager. You can call me, you know, Mr. Susan. I, I could not care less, right?

It is just a thing that's on the top of my contract. I'm far more interested in, in outcomes not outputs, right? So if we're looking at outcomes, we're looking at functions, we're looking at what is the actual thing that needs to happen. So when you take that mindset, you know, that to, to go to your Jerome character, kind of get quite attached to Jerome.

I like Jerome. I like what he's about. So let's say we look at Jerome and we go, "Okay, now in the old world, Jerome is called a project manager, does the project management." Bits of PM Jerome does beautifully. Bits that it's not his skill set. He hasn't got that going on. Flip that logic He's now a node where you've got functions with success associated with him, right?

So if you have that with technology empowerment, you then flatten the logic and you can say, "Okay, Jerome, but you are amazing at," let's be fair, "ticket writing," right? You're, you're write- your tickets they- like devs never push back on them, clients can understand them on transparent boards. You're like god tier with this, okay?

So you're gonna do that across 15 projects rather than being stuck on one project where you're doing that bit brilliantly, but you're not doing those bits there. Because now you've disassociated the idea of job title and function. You've decoupled the two. Jerome's now doing what he, he's really good at, and we've used technology to set him up for success.

Not just him, but other people around him, so now you've got this interconnectivity around him. How that shows up, and I know that sounds quite theoretical and, and maybe quite aspirational it's all about getting a truthful and realistic baseline. Okay? Discoveries are so important. This is something that Mike and I have been doing quite a lot of over recent times, is getting a sense from an organization where they really are, you know, with their people, with their processes, with their clients, with their pipeline.

'Cause no one's ever a good narrator of themselves. They always say you shouldn't write your own CV or your own dating profile, and I think people shouldn't write their own company profile either. People don't know their own companies, and I don't know my own company. I'm sure I yeah, people can describe them better to me than I could myself 'cause you're in it too much.

But that's almost table stakes. Get that sorted. Get a sense of it. That's your jump off point. You then start working out what this matrix of success around functions looks like, but it's not linear, right? So you then need to be re evaluating that, taking that back in. Do these functions work? Do these map correctly?

What's the ROI on these functions? Is this actually the right approach? And like all PMs, you've got to iterate constantly in the wild, responding to the stimulus that you have in front of you.

Galen Low: That's cool. I'm glad you explained that 'cause I'm like, wow, this is way bigger than I thought it was when I stepped in the room.

'Cause, you know, we're talking about not just organizational redesign, but like org design from a zero base, right? It's almost like not how to become IBM, you know, from your current org structure. This is like how to just find out who you are and then build your organization around it. How do you like, we talked about change management, and I know job titling, job descriptions, you know, scorecards, that's all like, it can be very jarring and controversial for employees, and we're talking about iterating through. And I've worked for some organizations where we do kind of iterate through job titles and it can be really, really disruptive for people who are still clinging onto this idea that their job title is their identity.

How do you minimize the friction and disruption from the staff who are like, "Wait a minute. Yesterday you told me that, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a project manager. Now I'm a delivery manager. Now you're telling me I'm a ticket writer across 15 projects." What brings that stability for like the staff to allow those iterations to happen?

James Leigh: The key thing here is you said tell them. You don't tell them, you work with them. It's all about consent.

Michael Gold: I was about to go back to change management.

James Leigh: Exactly that.

Galen Low: There you go. Yeah.

Michael Gold: It's doing everything that we described in the way that we would want to work with our other clients, but working with ourselves.

We are no different, an internal project or an external project. It's the same concept. And so Good planning is how things don't change. It's not that they never change. Things evolve over time, but if they're shifting every week, every month, then something has gone wrong in planning, which ultimately probably means on something of this scale, something's gone wrong in the change management process, or there hasn't been a change management process, so it's just a bunch of people going, "I've got a good idea."

And it's probably not a good idea, and they probably haven't validated it, and they haven't probably asked the people who are going through that change, and they haven't done their due diligence. They haven't hired Gold Strategic Delivery to support them in that.

Galen Low: Zing. You know, I think, yeah, you both nailed that.

It's not about telling people that change is happening. Obviously, that is a thing that is disruptive. But also, Michael, what you're saying is there are iterations that build on each other. It's not zinging and zagging. And when you said that, I was like, "Oh, well, I've worked in organizations that zig and zag because, you know, there's indecision or the leadership team's flip-flopping.

They're just like, 'Well, whatever we can-- We're allowed to change our minds. Let's go back to model A, and then let's go to model C, and then let's go to model D.'" But they're all very different things, and I think that's the thing that's most jarring for the staff versus, "Yeah, we're on a journey together.

Here's the path. We've planned out the path. We know where we want to get to. We just can't get there overnight, and we don't know if it's the exact route that we want to take to get there, so let's go through this together." And if I'm understanding you both correctly, it's kind of like, "Hey, listen I noticed that I'm really good at writing tickets and this other thing.

Could that, you know, incorporate into the role?" And it's a conversation, not a dictation.

Michael Gold: Yeah. And then that person might leave of their own account, and then suddenly you don't have that really good ticket writer, and, you know, you're using another of them to cover them. And then when you hire, you might not hire another good ticket writer.

You might hire someone, different skill set. That doesn't mean you've changed or pivoted the plan. It just means that you have a different chemistry makeup of the team, and so you need to plan and work out how that happens. And to use a alienating football analogy, particularly of teams that I don't like as a Tottenham fan, but if you look at the model in which Arsenal have employed since they've had Arteta, stuck with him, grown over time to the point where they won the league.

Obviously, personnel and the makeup of the team have changed every year, but there's been a consistency and an understanding of the direction they were heading in, versus Tottenham, who continually seem to change from an attacking manager to a defensive manager, firing, hiring, bringing on 10 different players, selling them the next summer, and then we finish 17th twice in a row.

As painful as that is to say, I mean, we've now got De Zerbi. I'm very confident we're going to win the league next year. It's fine. But the point to say is that that consistency does not just mean sticking to one plan and it doesn't change. Like you have a five-year plan and nothing in it changes.

But there's a general vision that you've kind of agreed to go on a journey, and it doesn't have to be five years, but it has to be longer than like a month you know, six months, 12 months, and then you reevaluate. You contin- change management isn't necessarily one process that you speak to everyone at the beginning of this five-year journey for one month- Right

and then it's this five-year plan that no one else can ever change again. It's check-in points. It's like quarterly or like a bigger one every six months or annually. Are we on the right track? Does this still make sense? If not, why? Oh, there's new innovations, technological things. Some people have left the team.

There's opportunities to bring different people. Our client base has changed. Things change, but that's more the reason to go through a change management and continually have those conversations, not less.

Galen Low: I like the footy analogy as well, because there are really defined positions on a team, but no team is exactly the same makeup, right?

You're like, okay, you know, like you said well, this person, you know, aggressive striker or someone who's maybe not that aggressive. When we balance it out with the people, yeah, they have positions, you know, but we don't put them in a box. That's not the only thing they can do. And actually, as you're saying that, I was like, earlier, I think, James, you had said something about coming in as a consultant to almost give an organization permission to do something they were already thinking.

And as you guys are talking, I'm like, well, actually, we do this a lot, right? Yes, we're hiring for a project manager or a business analyst or a UX designer, but we're not just taking the template and then just posting it, and then, you know, that's all they can do. We're looking for the right fit, and that fit usually means, okay, well, we do need someone who's excellent at writing tickets.

It's not gonna be in their JD, but that's what we need right now. And Michael, to your point it's fluid. A, everything's changing around us, but B, yeah, people might leave of their own accord, and they might be that excellent ticket writer. And I think everyone listening at that point would be like, "Okay, well, then what do I do?

I can't find somebody who's just an excellent ticket writer. That's not a thing." But actually, we do that anyways. We're like, okay, well, we do need a project manager or delivery manager who has excellent, you know, form in terms of documentation and communication in written form. We would do that, and we'd probe that in the interview process as well.

You know, we aren't just painting all these people with a brush. But unfortunately, job titling is a compromise, so I'm glad you guys are, like, helping organizations move towards that more skill-based configuration. And also hiring is a bit of a compromise, not the interview process, but all the lead up to that, it just every role kind of looks the same, right?

Must have five to eight years of experience doing the thing, you know, excellence in these tools, blah, blah, blah, and you're like, great. You know, ask me again if I fit the cookie cutter mold, right? It's kinda what it feels like. But when you get into the individual nuance, like when you're interviewing, when you're finding out about the opportunity more and seeing, like, how that fits, like we do that anyways to be like, "Oh, you know what?

That person is excellent at cursive handwriting, and we do need that," right? We have that client who requires status updates to be written in cursive handwriting. This is perfect. We do do that sort of thing. Obviously, that's an extremely ridiculous example, but you know, there are, like, human nuances that we do build into our organizational structure.

I wonder if I can spin it and to the devil's advocate side of things, because, you know, we started this conversation around cost-cutting, it being, like, a very fast way to make the books look good, very popular in big tech, becoming popular in professional services to just say, "Well, listen, like we, we don't need that many people here.

I'm sure people can pick up the slack. Let's just lay some people off." I'm simplifying, of course. They are really difficult conversations. And then we've been talking about activating human potential. We've been talking about, you know, really playing into people's strengths and building roles around them and doing change management with them.

But what are some of the drawbacks maybe of taking this arguably more human approach? You know, if someone is sitting on the fence, they're like, "Yeah, I'm really under a lot of pressure to just cut my team by thirty percent," or I could do this thing that James and Michael are talking about, and it all sounds good, but what does an organization or a team need to be prepared to bear in order to see the value- from this model.

Michael Gold: It takes time, effort And probably to some extent, well, it does because you whether it's additional money or the, the lack of cutting money. So it's money, time, and effort, which no one wants on paper. That sounds awful. Well, it's gonna take me more time, more effort, and it's gonna cost me money. Right.

But that's only if you're looking at the next three months. Like a layoff shows up immediately, whereas the things we're talking about starts to surface in 6 to 12 months, and it's really about that short term versus long term viewpoint. And so there will be scenarios in where people just need to make decisions because, I don't know, they might be cutting their bottom line in order to make it to the next month.

You know? They have to be aware that there are agencies who literally, this sounds good on paper, we do not have the money to do that, so we're gonna muddle through. But there are bigger organizations that definitely can muddle through, like without firing people and could invest in their people, and they have two very clear choices, and they're making one.

It's cutting people. So I think it is just this time and money and effort ultimately. It is that effort. Someone needs to manage it. We spoke about it numerous times, but it is all three of those things, and a lot of companies throw the time and the money at it, but not the effort or something. And so they've said, "Okay, six months, and here are all the tools."

And then it doesn't work, and then they go, "Right, let's fire everyone." And it's just no, you need to do all three together, or don't bother to an extent. And there are different versions of money, effort, and time. You know, there are quick wins that you can get in a month. There are longer term transitions.

There are expensive tools and systems versus, you know, coaching and whatever it might be. So there are different levers to pull on all three of those, but it does kinda require all three of those and a commitment and effort to do that.

James Leigh: Yeah, just to double down on that, you know, if you're not gonna do it, quote-unquote, properly, you may as well just fire 30% of your workforce because that's where you're gonna end up.

If you're not gonna go through the process, and it's not for everyone. You know, there are mitigating factors. You know, we're talking very theoretically here today. We totally respect that people have to make difficult decisions and, you know, w- we are, we're not talking about anyone's specific circumstances here.

But if you're not gonna go through the steps and, and have that self-reflection, iteration, and engagement and activation, you may as well just go and do the plug pull. Because if that's where you're gonna end up in six months, it's quicker and cheaper to do it that way. Now, I would not advocate for doing that.

I think, you know, there is real truthful margin in every sense of that word in doing it the slightly longer term. And take a view, right? If you are out on your numbers by 30%, you can either cut down 30% or grow up 30%, right? If you're looking at that one there. There's so many unseen detriments and so many unseen benefits to picking the wrong paths.

So if you cut your team, okay, well, you've just put the same amount of work onto fewer people. Those people are more likely to leave. They are more likely to feel a lack of job satisfaction. They are gonna be likely to burn out and, you know, that's a, a very real thing that I'm so pleased we can all talk about as a real thing, especially in these shifting and changing expectations of the workspace.

But you also have people, and there are many stats that back this up, that people who aren't laid off are more likely to quit within the year of their colleagues being laid off because it's created instability. It's made them not want to be around. So you've then got to replace those people. You've now got a hidden cost of hiring- Hiring around those people.

If you've gone ahead and unthinkingly cut your team, and then you're not gonna do an equity of access, you do a quality of access, you have to buy loads of expensive tools to try and lift those people up 'cause you're not thinking it through, that's expensive. And those tools are only gonna get more and more expensive.

The cost of having pro licenses on some of those LLMs is gonna creep up in the next year. They've all said it, you know, they, they, they're not hiding it anymore. Whereas you take the other approach, you take the time, you take the effort, you create a real structure for you to get up 30%. Well, you've gone on a journey with those people, you've got some shared history, you've got all these consenting moments where they've been able to input and you've rethought what it is to have a workplace.

I guarantee that's a happier workplace where people are more engaged, and we can come back to it, activated.

Galen Low: Boom. I love that. You made me think about it. You know, you had me thinking about this idea that these are hard decisions. They require certain information that is usually, you know, at the executive table, you know, with the founders, with the owners, with the boards.

But for the folks listening who are, you know, in the middle, right? They're senior leaders, they're director levels, they're, you know, at the VP level, they might not be in the room for some of these discussions. They might not have access to all the information. Throughout this whole conversation, you've given lots of reasons and rationales, like, how to make this case.

But I wonder if we could land out with a crisp elevator pitch style thing for department heads and senior managers who are trying to make the case to their higher-ups that there is value in augmenting and activating their team of humans instead of laying them off. How do we package that sort of vanishing point where there's diminishing returns on the layoffs, the cost of hiring, the cost of tooling?

You know, what's the argument they can make to their higher-ups to be like, "Listen, I wanna try this"?

Michael Gold: I think ultimately it's not like an elevator pitch and it's not a simple reply, but it's, you know, those people understand return on investment. And so to an extent, pitch deck or, or something. Right. You know, it's return on investment, and so I think it's about you have to legitimately make a business case, which I think is fine.

That's how business should work, and even 30% a lot of staff to cut all at once to suddenly rely on this thing that hasn't really been tested as a true replacement. So I guess my argument would be, don't make any huge decisions. Again, I don't own these massive companies where they, they suddenly lay off 10,000 people, but I do question that how do you get into a position where you're looking at your quarters and suddenly you're in a position that 10,000 people need to be fired?

Galen Low: Right.

Michael Gold: And then maybe some economist somewhere will tell me how stupid I am, and then it makes perfect sense. But I just don't understand how you end up in that position, and so I would argue that six months before that happened, someone should have been saying, "Should we run a bit of a trial here?

What does activating it looks like? Give us a little bit of budget on this. You can fire 10% of the staff for now, but let me give the other 10% a trial to see if we can do this, and you have 10% to see if the LLMs do replace them. Let's not make any drastic decisions, and let's just monitor it and see." But it does always feel quite drastic, like people are looking for the quickest fix, which is if I fire them, we've got more money.

And it's like, "Oh, how do you continue to make money?" No, no, no, that's- We're not talking, we're not talking about that. I, I need to show that we made money today. How do I do that? And then, yeah, in that instance, it's firing people, but that seems like really bad planning. That they got to the sudden point that 10,000 people needed to be fired.

And then it is bad planning 'cause a lot of those times we've seen them fire 10,000 people, and six months later rehire 4,000 of them. Right. And those are huge numbers. And I, again, I don't go in those companies, I don't know how they work on the intricacies of them, but I cannot fathom the idea of we thought it was a good idea to fire 10,000, and we were off by 40% on that metric- Right and probably more. It's insane.

James Leigh: Yeah. Look just to build on what, what you're saying there, Michael, totally agreed. It's about, you know, working with consideration and thought and intentionality. And a really easy way of doing that is, I was saying earlier, do a discovery. Get some real information. You know, we've been talking very theoretically here today.

You're talking about a specific instance with real projects, real people, real impact. Okay, run a discovery, even if it's an internal one. Model those numbers, but real numbers, real data. What does good look like? How do we take this forward? Because if you try... You go to your boss and you say, "Look, I've got this whole way.

I wanna rethink job titles and explode the whole thing." They'll be like, "What are you talking about?" That's great, but like that's, that's for talking about on podcasts. We've gotta make money right here, right now. Okay. Well, get those numbers, work with those individuals. Be an advocate for your own idea.

Be open to the idea that your idea is gonna need to iterate itself, and I think that's what, what I'd advise is base it in reality 'cause people like hard numbers. It might not be cool, it might be deeply unfashionable to, you know, get the spreadsheets out, but it gets the traction that you need to start implementing change.

Galen Low: I love that. It's a good point that you know, we're talking about a sort of reactionary decision-making after having run out of runway. If you've got any kind of runway at all, and if you're a business that, you know, has a bit of oxygen in the tank, use it to do that discovery, to do the analysis, because there's a lot of hidden costs and risk and unpredictables of just making that snap decision of going, "Okay.

Well, we've reached the end of the runway. We just need to, you know, cut headcount and just hope for the best." There's more that can be done, and the cost-cutting from a reactionary standpoint isn't the only option.

Michael Gold: And, and again, in that discovery run change management, speak to the boots on the ground.

There is so much untapped knowledge within those people. And they might tell you, "Yeah, 'cause we always have to do X, and it's incredibly inefficient." And they'll say, "Well, why are you doing that?" Right. And you'll be like, "I don't know, 'cause Bill, who quit two years ago, said that's how we do it."

James Leigh: Yeah.

Michael Gold: And no one told me since that they can not do it.

And, you know, there are probably loads, particularly a 10,000 people firm of those kind of sizes, there must be so much information within those 10,000 people.

Galen Low: Yes.

Michael Gold: And I would question, are you-- have they really tapped that resource, or is it a stakeholder sitting in a room going, "Oh, they're just not earning enough money and it's inefficient"?

Galen Low: Absolutely love that. More optimization to be found in probably any organization.

Michael Gold: 100%.

Galen Low: Boom. James Michael, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I've had a lot of fun. I've learned a lot. Thank you for, you know, opening my mind to this. And I, again, I think it's so nice and refreshing to have an optimistic conversation about what we can do as the workforce, not just, you know, business owners and not just employees, but the workforce in general.

Is there a path where actually we get to do more of what we're good at and enjoy doing it, and is that viable? It's been, yeah, very refreshing. For folks who are interested in all the things we've been talking about, where can they learn more about you?

Michael Gold: So I guess by the time this goes out, ariaplatform.app will be live.

It's our new PSA tool, one of the first AI native versions of this. But as we hopefully everyone can tell from this, massive advocates of human in the loop. And so it's a PSA tool that allows you to hopefully take away a lot of the admin, but it's still very focused on you being involved in any of the decisions made.

And so give us lots of support within that. We do also have a champion network if anyone fancies working with us on it and helping on the roadmap of, of how we produce that. Otherwise, I own Gold Strategic Delivery, so we do a service very similar to the software. We go in and help companies implement tools like this.

However we are, what I like to say is biased but not agnostic in the sense of I will always present clients numerous ideas, not just Aria. I'm very transparent about my relationship with Aria, and it will be up to them to make the choice. Who are you, James?

James Leigh: You can find both of us all over LinkedIn. We are both prodigious posters, so if you look us up, either look up Aria in the first instance or look for us by our names.

We've both got our profile pictures, so they can look like us if you're watching this on YouTube. And yeah, like Mike said, we've got this champions program around Aria that we are having a lot of fun with. Got some really interesting people who are helping us reshape the future of that project. Lots of ops people, lots of delivery people, lots of strategists.

The audience for this podcast, basically. So, if you're interested in doing that and you wanna find out more, find me on LinkedIn, drop me a DM, and we'd love to chat.

Galen Low: Awesome. I will include all those links in the show notes as well for folks watching and listening. Easy clickables. And I will say, you know, I used an early version of Aria, and I, you know, I do think it lines up with the philosophy.

It didn't feel like it was trying to replace me. It wasn't taking over my brain. It was literally just there to support in the areas that I might not be very strong at. So I really like that you built that into the software itself. I think that's really strong, and, you know, all these ideas I think are, are really great and doable.

So thank you again. Thanks for coming on the show.

Michael Gold: I appreciate that. Thanks for having us.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for today's episode of the Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.