Discover the new matrix on which all work must be reimagined as ISG’s CMO, Paul Gottsegen, interviews ISG Partner, Prashant Kelker, about workplace of the future trends and predictions for 2022.
Transcript:
Paul
And you mentioned the dynamic environment in the context of workplace services… who's going to go back to the office? When will they go back to the office? What will they expect? What should they expect when they work from home? (Or from somewhere else.) How do you develop a productive team – and an engaged base of employees?
So, I know this is an issue that everyone that works is grappling with – and has been since the pandemic began. As we move into 2022, what are some of the flashpoints in this area?
Prashant
That's a good question, and I guess, as ISG, we were lucky we were born virtual. But we see our clients and other organizations grapple with this topic, so I think, you know… who knows what the word “office” will mean in the future. What is the definition of “office?” What happens to the real estate you own? Do you go there to meet, do you go there to communicate?
I think what's going to happen is that our entire work is going to split into dimensions: what has to be done physically together versus virtually today. Which is going to take us down a rabbit hole of what has to be done synchronously together and asynchronously together.
And think of it as a matrix where you have physical/virtual and synchronous/asynchronous in each quadrant. Work will be reimagined how things get created, how thing gets Brainstorm delivered structured. Processed, shipped together. We're looking for a major reboot coming out of this.
Paul
Yeah, one thing I've noticed is when we all went virtual, you'd actually say, “oh, I'm sorry we can't be there in person” or you’d say “virtually” and you'd mention “this is a virtual event.” And I've noticed the change as we lead into 2022, where it's a new normal people are just dropping that preamble of whether something is virtual or not. It's sort of, it just is and you're attending something or you're in a meeting or you're at a holiday party and you don't have to explanation that “hey, by the way, it's virtual.” Because now it's sort of like how electric toasters were called electric. Now they're just toasters, right? You know that they're electric.
Prashant
Exactly Paul, and who knows what we go back to after this endemic. I guess this pandemic is getting to be an endemic. Who knows what we go back to. I don't know whether we'll ever go back to a room full of attendees. I think we'll always go back to a room which has a few attendees and some dialing in from everywhere. So:
- How do workshops happen there?
- How does whiteboarding happen there?
- Does whiteboarding happen at all?
Paul
You know, we've seen a dramatic change in our event business at ISG that resonates with what you just said. Because it used to be you'd have to get on a plane or at least go to wherever we were holding the event for two days – and that will still come back, as we just had, you know, one of our employees report back that they had a great experience in Las Vegas at the ReInvent event that AWS just had.
But, at the same time, we've seen a huge uptick in attendees. And it's almost like a buffet. People see a “two day” label on things like our Digital Summits, and they'll pick and choose what they care about. There's 10X more engagement by opening up globally and opening it up virtually.
About the authors
Paul Gottsegen
Paul is President, ISG Client Experience, managing the firm’s marketing activity globally, including demand generation, branding and communications. He is a leader in the firm’s work to establish and maintain a leading position in AI and new technologies and to capitalize on the opportunities they present. From 2019 to 2023, Paul led the ISG Research business to great heights, and continues as Chair, ISG Research.
Paul was a classic product marketing leader for PC hardware for the first 20 years of his career, including launching the industry’s first network servers. He has since applied that product marketing experience to CMO roles in large services firms. While marketing is his “center of gravity,” he has led large sales organizations and has been a general manager with full P&L responsibility.
Prior to ISG, he was the Chief Marketing Officer for Mindtree and Infosys, completing end-to-end branding and marketing turnarounds. As Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at HP, Dell Inc., and Compaq earlier in his career, Paul led product marketing, revenue marketing and enterprise alliances for the network server businesses.
Paul is Board Chair of the Gastric Cancer Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brandeis University and an MBA from The Wharton School.
Prashant Kelker
Prashant Kelker is President, ISG DACH, and Chief Strategy Officer. A globally recognized thought leader in AI and technology-led transformation, Prashant is shaping the firm’s strategic blueprint and bringing together all advisory capabilities to guide clients in the DACH region through the convergence of AI, digital technology and enterprise operating models.
Previously, as Partner, Americas Consulting, he led the effort to be the first sourcing advisory firm to establish a reference architecture for applied Generative AI with the 2023 ISG State of Applied Generative AI Market Report and played a key role in the development of our highly successful ISG NEXT operating model in 2020. Prashant joined ISG in 2012.
Before joining ISG, Prashant was a Technology Director at Accenture, where he won and established several new accounts and created digital offerings on mobility and predictive analytics. He earned an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and a BE in Electronics from Bangalore University in India.
