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Here to Stay, Remote Work Promises
To Deliver New Levels of Engagement,
Productivity, and Innovation
Transcript of a discussion on new research into the future of work and how unprecedented innovation
could mean a doubling of overall productivity in the coming years.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix.
Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re
listening to BriefingsDirect.
The way people work has changed more in 2020 than the previous 10 years combined -- and
that’s saying a lot. Even more than the major technological impacts of cloud, mobile, and big
data, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated and deepened global behavioral shifts.
The ways that people think about where and how to work may never be the same, and new
technology alone could not have made such a rapid impact.
So now is the time to take advantage of a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime disruption for the better.
Steps can be taken to make sure that such a sea change comes less with a price and more with
a broad boon -- to both workers and businesses.
Stay with us now as we explore research into the future of work and how unprecedented
innovation could very well mean a doubling of overall productivity in the coming years.
We’re here with a panel to hear insights on how a remote-first
strategy leads to a reinvention of work expectations and payoffs.
Please join me in welcoming our guests, Jeff Vincent, Chief
Executive Officer at Lucid Technology Services. Welcome, Jeff.
Jeff Vincent: Good morning, everybody. Nice to meet you all.
Gardner: We’re also here with Ray Wolf, Chief Executive Officer
at A2K Partners. Welcome, Ray.
Ray Wolf: Hey, Dana, it’s great to be part of the conversation.
Gardner: And lastly, we’re here with Tim Minahan, Executive
Vice President of Business Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer
at Citrix. Welcome back, Tim.
Tim Minahan: Thanks, Dana, it’s great to be with you.
Gardner: Tim, you’ve done some new research at Citrix. You’ve looked into what’s going on
with the nature of work and a shift from what seems to be from chaos to opportunity. Tell us
about the research and why it fosters such optimism.
Vincent

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The future of work belongs to technology
Minahan: Most of the world has been focused on the here-and-
now, with how to get employees home safely, maintain business
continuity, and keep employees engaged and productive in a
prolonged work-from-home model. Yet we spent the bulk of the
last year partnering with Oxford Analytica and Coleman Parkes
to survey thousands of business and IT executives and to
conduct qualitative interviews with C-level executives, academia,
and futurists on what work is going to look like 15 years from
now -- in 2035 -- and predict the role that technology will play.
Certainly, we’re already seeing an acceleration of the findings
from the report. And if there’s any iota of a silver lining in this
global crisis we’re all living through, it’s that it has caused many
organizations to rethink their operating models, business models, and their work models and
workforce strategies.
Work has no-doubt forever changed. We’re seeing an acceleration of companies embracing
new workforce strategies, reaching to pools of talent in remote locales using technology, and
opening up access to skillsets that were previously too costly near their office and work hubs.
Now they can access talent anywhere, enabling and elevating the skillsets of all employees by
leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help them perform as their
best employees. They are ensuring that they can embrace entirely new work models, possibly
even the Uber-fication of work by tapping into recent retirees, work-from-home parents, and
caregivers who had opted-out of the workforce -- not because they didn’t have the skills or
expertise that folks needed – but because traditional work models didn’t support their home
environment.
We’re seeing an acceleration of
companies liberated by the fact that they
realize work can happen outside of the
office. Many executives across every
industry have begun to rethink what the
future of work is going to look like when
we come out of this pandemic.
Gardner: Tim, one of the things that jumped out at me from your research was a majority feel
that technology will make workers at least twice as productive by 2035. Why such a newfound
opportunity for higher productivity, which had been fairly flat for quite a while? What has
changed in behavior and technology that seems to be breaking us out of the doldrums when it
comes to productivity?
Minahan: Certainly, the doubling of employee productivity is a factor of a couple things. Number
one, new more flexible work models allow employees to work wherever they can do their best
work. But more importantly, it is the emergence of the augmented worker, using AI and ML to
help not just offer up the right information at the right time, but help employees make more
informed decisions and speed up the decision-making process, as well as automating menial
Companies … realize work can happen
outside of the office. Many executives
across every industry have begun to rethink
what the future of work is going to look like
when we come out of this pandemic.
Minahan

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tasks so employees can focus on the strategic aspects of driving creativity and innovation for
the business. This is one of the areas we think is the most exciting as we look forward to the
future.
Gardner: We’re going to dig into that research more in our discussion. But let’s go to Jeff at
Lucid Technology Services. Tell us about Lucid, Jeff, and why a remote-first strategy has been
a good fit for you.
Remote CIO service keeps SMBs safe, successful
Vincent: Lucid Technology Services delivers what amounts to a fractional chief information
officer (CIO) service. Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need CIOs but don’t generally
have the working capital to afford a full-time, always-on, and always-there CIO or chief
technology officer (CTO). That’s where we fill the gap.
We bring essentially an IT department
to SMBs, everything from budgeting to
documentation -- and all points in
between. And one of the big things that
taught us to look forward is by looking
backward. In 1908, Henry Ford gave us the modern assembly line, which promptly gave us the
model T. And so horse-drawn buggy whip factories and buggy accessories suddenly became
obsolete.
Something similar happened in the early 1990s. It was a fad called the Internet and it
revolutionized work in ways that could not have been foreseen up to that point in time. We firmly
believe that we’re on the precipice of another revolution of work just like then. The technology is
mature at this point. We can move forward with it, using things like Citrix.
Gardner: Bringing a CIO-caliber function to SMBs sounds like it would be difficult to scale, if
you had to do it in-person. So, by nature, you have been a pioneer in a remote-first strategy. Is it
effective? Some people think you can’t be remote and be effective.
Work 2035—Citrix Research
Reveals a More Intelligent Future
Vincent: Well, that’s not what we’ve been finding. This has been an evolution in my business
for 20 years now. And the field has grown as the need has grown. Fortunately, the technology
has kept pace with it. So, yes, I think we’re very effective.
Previously, let’s say a CPA firm of 15 providers, or a medical firm of three or four doctors with
another 10 or so administrative and assistance staff on site all of the time, they had privileged
information and data under regulation that needs safeguarding.
Well, if you are Arthur Andersen, a large, national firm, or Kaiser Permanente, or some really
large corporation that has an entire team of IT staff on-site, then that isn’t really a problem. But
when you’re under 25 to 50 employees, that’s a real problem because even if you were
compromised, you wouldn’t necessarily know it.
We bring essentially an IT department to
SMBs, everything from budgeting to
documentation – and all points in between.

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We leverage monitoring technology, such as next-generation firewalling, and a team of people
looking after that network operation center (NOC) and help desk to head those problems off at
the pass. If problems do develop, we can catch them when they’re still small. And with such a
light, agile team that’s heavy on tech and the infrastructure behind it, a very few people can do a
lot of work for a lot of people. That is the secret sauce of our success.
Gardner: Jeff, from your experience, how often is it the CIO who is driving the remote work
strategy?
Vincent: I don’t think remote work prior to the pandemic could have been driven from any other
any other seat than the CIO/CTO. It’s his or her job. It’s their entire ethos to keep the finger on
pulse of technology, where it’s going, and what it’s currently capable of doing.
In my experience, anybody else on the C-suite team has so much else going on. Everybody is
wearing multiple hats and doing double-duty. So, the CTO is where that would have been
driven.
But now, what I’ve seen in my own business, is that since the pandemic, as the CTO, I’m not
generally leading the discussion -- I’m answering the questions. That’s been very exciting and
one of the silver linings I’ve seen through this very trying time. We’re not forcing the
conversation anymore. We are responding to the questions. I certainly didn’t envision a
pandemic shutting down businesses. But clearly, the possibility was there, and it’s been a lot
easier conversation [about remote work] to have over the past several months.
The nomadic way of work
Gardner: Ray, tell us about A2K Partners. What do you have in common with Jeff Vincent at
Lucid about the perceived value of a remote-first strategy?
Wolf: A2K Partners is a digital transformation company. Our
secret sauce is we translate technology into the business
applications, outcomes, and impacts that people care about.
Our company was founded by individuals who were previously in
C-level business positions, running global organizations. We
were the consumers of technology. And honestly, we didn’t want
to spend a lot of time configuring the technologies. We wanted to
speed things up, drive efficiency, and drive revenue and growth.
So we essentially built the company around that.
We focus on work redesign, work orchestration, and employee
engagement. We leverage platforms like Citrix for the future of
work and for bringing in productivity enhancements to the actual
processes of doing work. We ask, what’s the current state? What’s the future state? That’s
where we spend a lot of our time.
As for a remote-first strategy, I want to highlight that our company is a nomadic company. We
recruit people who want to live and work from anywhere. We think there’s a different mindset
there. They are more apt to accept and embrace change. So untethered work is really key.
Wolf

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What we have been seeing with our
clients -- and the conversations that
we’re having currently today -- is the
leaders of every organization, at every
level, are trying to figure out how we
come out of this pandemic better than when we went in. Some actually feel victims, and we’re
encouraging them that this is really an opportunity.
Some statistics from the last three economic downturns: One very interesting one is that
companies that started before the downturn in the bottom 20 percent emerged in the top 20
percent after the downturn. And you ask yourself, “How does a mediocre company all of a
sudden rise to the top through a crisis?” This is where we’ve been spending time, in figuring out
what plays they are running and how to better help them execute on it.
The companies that have decided to use this as a period to change the business model, change
the services and products they’re offering, are doing it in stealth mode. They’re not noisy. There
are no press releases. But I will tell you that next March, June, or September, what will come
from them will create an Amazon-like experience for their customers and their employees.
Gardner: Tim, in listening to Jeff and Ray, it strikes me that they look at remote work not as the
destination -- but the starting point. Is that what you’re starting to see? Have people reconciled
themselves with the notion that a significant portion of their workforce will probably be remote?
And how do we use that as a starting point -- and to what?
As Work Goes Virtual, Citrix Research Shows
Companies Need to Follow the Talent Fleeing Cities
Minahan: As Jeff said, companies are rethinking their work models in ways they haven’t since
Henry Ford. We just did OnePoll research polling with thousands of US-based knowledge
workers. Some 47 percent have either relocated out of big metropolitan areas or are in the
process of doing that right now. They can primarily because they’ve proven to themselves that
they can be productive when not necessarily in the office.
Similarly, some 80 percent of companies are now looking at making remote work a more
permanent part of their workforce strategy. And why is that? It is not just merely should Sam or
Sally work in the office or work at home. No, they’re fundamentally rethinking the role of work,
the workforce, the office, and what role the physical office should play.
And they’re seeing an opportunity, not just from real estate cost-reduction, but more so from
access to talent. If we remember back nine months ago to before the great pandemic, we were
having a different discussion. That discussion was the fact that there was a global talent
shortage, according to McKinsey, of 95 million medium- to high-skilled workers.
That hasn’t changed. It was exacerbated at that time because we were organized around
traditional work-hub models -- where you build an office, build a call center, and you try like heck
to hire people from around that area. Of course, if you happen to build in a metropolitan area
right down the street from one of your top competitors -- you can see the challenge.
The leaders of every organization, at every
level, are trying to figure out how we come
out of this pandemic better than we went in.

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In addition, there was a challenge around attaining the right skillsets to modernize and digitize
your businesses. We’re also seeing an acceleration in the need for those skills because,
candidly, very few businesses can continue to maintain their physical operations in light of the
pandemic. They have had to go digital.
And so, as companies are rethinking all of this, they’re reviewing how to use technology to
embrace a much more flexible work model, one that gives access to talent anywhere, just as
Ray indicated. I like the nomadic work concept.
Now, how do I use technology to even further raise the skillsets of all of my employees so they
perform like the very best. This is where that interesting angle of AI and ML comes in, of being
able to offer up the right insights to guide employees to the right next step in a very simple way.
At the same time, that approach removes the noise from their day and helps them focus on the
tasks they need to get done to be productive. It gives them the space to be creative and
innovative and to drive that next level of growth for their company.
Gardner: Jeff, it sounds like the remote work and the future of work that Tim is describing sets
us up for a force-multiplier when it comes to addressable markets. And not just addressable
markets in terms of your customers, who can be anywhere, but also that your workers can be
anywhere. Is that one of the things that will lead to a doubling of productivity?
Workers and customers can be anywhere, with ease
Vincent: Certainly. And the thing about truth is that it’s where you find it. And if it’s true in one
area of human operations, it’s going to at least have some application in every other. For
example, I live in the Central Valley of California. Because of our climate, the geology, and the
way this valley was carved out of the hillside, we have a disproportionately high ability to
produce food. So one of the major industries here in the Central Valley is agriculture.
You can’t do what we do here just anywhere because of all those considerations: climate, soil,
and rainfall, when it comes. The fact that we have one of the tallest mountain ranges right next
to us gives us tons of water, even if it doesn’t rain a lot here in Fresno. But you can’t outsource
any of those things. You can’t move any of those things -- but that’s becoming a rarity.
If you focus on a remote-first workplace, you
can source talent from anywhere; you can
locate your business center anywhere. So you
get a much greater recruiting tool both for
clientele and for talent.
Another thing that has been driven by this pandemic is that people have been forced to go
home, stay there, and work there. Either you’re going to figure out a way to get around the
obstacles of not being able to go to the office or you’re going to have to close down, and nobody
wants to do that. So they’ve learned to adapt, by and large.
And the benefits that we’re seeing are just manifold. They go into everything. Our business
agility is much greater. The human considerations of your team members improve, too. They
have had an artificial dichotomy between work responsibilities and home life. Think of a single
parent trying to raise a family and put bread on the table.
[With] a remote-first workplace …
You get a much greater recruiting
tool both for clientele and for talent.

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Now, with the remote-first workplace, it becomes much easier. Your son, your daughter, they
have a medical appointment; they have a school need; they have something going on in the
middle of the day. Previously you had to request time off, schedule around that, and move other
team members into place. And now this person can go and be there for their child, or their aging
parents, or any of the other hundreds of things that can go sideways for a family.
With a cloud-based workforce, that becomes much less of a problem. You have still got some
challenges you’ve got to overcome, but there are fewer of them. I think everybody is reaping the
benefits of that because with fewer people needing to be in the office, that means you can have
a smaller office. Fewer people on the roads means less environmental impact of moving around
and commuting for an hour twice a day.
Gardner: Ray Wolf, what is it about technology that is now enabling these people to be flexible
and adaptive? What do you look for in technology platforms to give those people the tools they
need?
Do more with less
Wolf: First, let’s talk about the current technology situation. The average worker out there has
eight applications and 10 windows open. The way technology is provisioned to some of our
remote workers is working against them. We have these technologies for all. Just because you
give someone access to a customer relationship management (CRM) system or a human
resources (HR) system doesn’t necessarily make them more productive. It doesn’t take into
consideration how they like to do work. When you bring on new employees, it leaves it up to the
individual to figure out how to get stuff done.
With the new platforms, Citrix Workspace with intelligence, for example, we’re able to take those
mundane tasks and lock then into memory muscle through automation. And so, what we do is
free-up time and energy using the Citrix platform. Then people can start moving and essentially
upscaling, taking on higher cognitive tasks, and building new products and services.
That’s what we love about it. The other side is
it’s no code and low code. The key here is just
figuring out where to get started and making
sure that the workers have their fingerprints
on the plan because your worker today knows
exactly where the inefficiencies are. They
know where the frustration is. So we have a
number of use cases that in the matter of six weeks, we were able to unlock almost a day per
week worth of productivity gains, of which one of our customers in the sale spaces, a sales vice
president, coined the word “proactivity.”
For them, they were taking that one extra day a week and starting to be proactive by pursuing
new sales and leads and driving revenue where they just didn’t have the bandwidth before.
Through of our own polling of about 200 executives, we discovered that 50 percent of the
companies are scaling down on their resources because they are unsure of the future. And that
leaves them with the situation of doing more with less. That’s why the automation platforms are
The key here is just figuring out where
to get started and making sure that the
workers have their fingerprints on the
plan because your worker today knows
exactly where the inefficiencies are.

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ideal for freeing up time and energy so they can deal with a reduced work force, but still gain the
bandwidth to pursue new services and products. Then they can come out and be in that top 20
percent after the pandemic.
Gardner: Tim, I’m hearing Citrix Workspace referred to as an automation platform. How does
Workspace not just help people connect, but helps them automate and accelerate productivity?
Keeping talent engaged, optimized every day
Minahan: Ray put his finger on the pulse of the third dynamic we were seeing pre-pandemic,
and it’s only been exacerbated. We talked first about the global shortage of medium- to high-
skills talent. But then we talked about the acute shortage of digital skills that those folks need.
The third part is, if you’re lucky enough to have that talent, it’s likely they are very frustrated at
work. A recent Gallup poll says 87 percent of employees are disengaged at work, and that’s
being exacerbated by all of the things that Ray talked about. We’ve provided these workers with
all of these tools, all these different channels, Teams and Slack and the like, and they’re meant
to improve their performance in collaboration. But we have reached a tipping point of complexity
that really has turned your top talent into task rabbits.
What Citrix does with our digital Workspace
technology is it abstracts away all of that
complexity. It provides unified access to
everything an employee needs to be
productive in one experience that travels
with them. So, their work environment is
this digital workspace -- no matter what
device they are on, no matter what location they are at, no matter what work channel they need
to navigate across.
The second thing is it wrappers that in security, both secure access on the way in (I call it the
bouncer at the front door), as well as ongoing contextual application of security policies. I call
that the bodyguard who follows you around the club to make sure you stay out of trouble. And
that gives IT the confidence that those employees can indeed work wherever they need to, and
from whatever device they need to, with a level of comfort that their company’s information and
assets are made secure.
Work Has Changed Forever, So the Best Work Experience
Must Empower Workers Across Any Channel or Location
But what gets exciting now is the intelligence components. Infusing this with ML and AI
automates away and guides an employee through their work day. It automates away those
menial tasks so they can focus on what’s important.
And that’s where folks like A2K come in. They can bring in their intellectual property and
understanding of the business processes -- using those low- to no-code tools -- to actually
develop extensions to the workspace that meet the needs of individual functions or individual
industries and personalize the workspace experience for every individual employee.
So [the employees’] work environment is
this digital workspace – no matter what
device they are on, no matter what
location they are at, no matter what work
channel they need to navigate across.

9. Page 9 of 13
Ray mentioned sales force productivity. They are also doing call center optimization. So, very,
very discreet solutions that before required users to navigate across multiple different
applications but are now handled through a micro app player that simplifies the engagement
model for the employee, offering up the right insights and the right tasks at the right time so that
they can do their very best work.
Gardner: Jeff Vincent, we have been talking about this in terms of worker productivity. But I’m
wondering about leadership productivity. You are the CEO of a company that relies on remote
work to a large degree. How do you find that tools like Citrix and remote-first culture works for
you as a leader? Do you feel like you can lead a company remotely?
Workspace enhances remote-first leadership
Vincent: Absolutely. I’m trying to take a sip out of a fire hose, because everything I am hearing
is exactly what we have been seeing -- just put a bit more eloquently and with a bit more data
behind it -- for quite a long time now.
Leading a remote team really isn’t any
different than leading a team that you look
at. I mean, one of the aspects of leadership,
as it pertains to this discussion, is having
everybody know what is expected of them
and when the due date is, enabling them
with the tools they need to get the work
done on time and on budget, right?
And with Citrix Workspace technology, the workflows automate expense report approvals, they
automate calendar appointments, and automate the menial tasks that take up a lot of our time
every single day. They now become seamless. They happen almost without effort. So that
allows the leaders to focus on, “Okay, what does John need today to get done the task that’s
going to be due in a month or in a quarter? Where are we at with this prospect or this leader or
this project?”
And it allows everybody to take a moment, reflect on where they are, reflect on where they need
to be, and then get more surgical with our people on getting there.
Gardner: Ray, also as a CEO, how do you see the intersection of technology, behavior, and
culture coming together so that leaders like yourself are the ones going to be twice as
productive?
Wolf: This goes to a human capital strategy, where you’re focusing on the numerator. So, the
cost of your resources and the type of resource you need fit within a band. That’s the
denominator.
The numerator is what productivity you get out of your workforce. There’s a number of things
that have to come into play. It’s people, process, culture, and technology -- but not independent
or operating in a silo.
One of the aspects of leadership ... is
having everybody know what is expected
of them and when the due date is,
enabling them with the tools they need to
get the work done on time and on budget.

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And that’s the big opportunity Jeff and Tim are talking about here. Imagine when we start to
bring system-level thinking to how we do work both inside and outside of our company. It’s the
ecosystem, like hiring Ray Wolf as the individual contributor, yet getting 13 Ray Wolfs; that’s
great.
But what happens if we orchestrate the work between finance, HR, the supply chain, and
procurement? And then we take it an even bigger step by applying this outside of our company
with partners?
We’re working with a very large distributor right
know with hundreds of resellers. In order to close
deals, they have to get into the other partner’s
CRM system. Well, today, that happens with
about eight emails over a number of days. And
that’s just inefficient. But with Citrix Workspace
you’re able to cross-integrate processes inside
and outside of your company in a secure manner, so that entire ecosystems work seamlessly.
As an example, just think about the travel reservation systems, which are not owned by the
airlines, but are still a heart-lung function for them, and they have to work in unison.
We’re really jazzed about that. How did we discover this? Two things. One, I’m an aerospace
engineer by first degree, so I saw this come together in complex machines, like jet engines. And
then, second, by running a global company, I was spending 80 hours a week trying to reconcile
disparate data: One data set says sales were up, another that productivity was up, and then my
profit margins go down. I couldn’t figure it out without spending a lot of hours.
And then we started a new way of thinking, which is now accelerated with the Citrix Workspace.
Disparate systems can work together. It makes clear what needs to be done, and then we can
move to the next level, which is democratization of data. With that, you’re able to put information
in front of people in synchronization. They can see complex supply chains complete, they can
close sales quicker, et cetera. So, it’s really awesome.
I think we’re still at the tip of the iceberg. The innovation that I’m aware of on the product
roadmap with Citrix is just awesome, and that’s why we’re here as a partner.
Gardner: Tim, we’re hearing about the importance of extended enterprise collaboration and
democratization of data. Is there anything in your research that shows why that’s important and
how you’re using that understanding of what’s important to help shape the direction of Citrix
products?
Augmented workers arrive
Minahan: As Ray said, it’s about abstracting away that lower-level complexity, providing all the
integrations, the source systems, the service security model, and providing the underlying
workflow engines and tools. Then experts like Lucid and A2K can extend that to create new
solutions for driving business outcomes.
From the research, we can expect the emergence of the augmented worker, number one. We’re
already beginning to see it with bots and robotic process automation (RPA) systems. But at
With Citrix Workspace you’re able
to cross-integrate processes inside
and outside of your company in a
secure manner, so that entire
ecosystems work seamlessly.

11. Page 11 of 13
Citrix we’re going to be moving to a much higher level, where it will do things similar to what Ray
and Jeff were saying, abstracting away a lot of the menial tasks that can be automated. But we
can also perform at a higher level, tasks at a much more informed and rapid pace through use
of AI, which can compress and analyze massive amounts of data that would take us a very long
time individually. ML can adapt and personalize that experience for us.
Secondly, the research indicates that while robots will replace some tasks and jobs, they will
also create many new jobs. And, according to our Work 2035 research, you’ll see a rise in
demand for new roles, such as a bot or AI trainer, a virtual reality manager, advanced data
scientists, privacy and trust managers, and design thinkers such as the folks at A2K and Lucid
Technology Solutions are already doing. They are already working with clients to uncover the
art of the possible and rethinking business process transformation.
Importantly, we also identified the need for flexibility of work. Shifting your mindset from thinking
about a workforce in terms of full-time equivalents (FTEs) instead of pools of talent. And you
understand the individual skillsets that you need and bring them together and assemble them
rather quickly to address a certain project or issue that you have using digital Citrix Workspace
technology, and then disassemble them just as quickly.
But you’ll also see a change in leadership. AI is going to take over a lot of those business
decisions and possibly eliminate the need for some middle management teams. The bulk of our
focus can be not so much managing as driving new creative ideas and innovation.
How Lucid Technology Services Adapts
To the Work-From-Home Revolution
Gardner: I’d love to hear more from both Jeff and Ray about how businesses prepare
themselves to best take advantage of the next stages of remote work. What do you tell
businesses about thinking differently in order to take advantage of this opportunity?
Imagine what’s possible and prepare to make it work
Vincent: Probably the single biggest thing you can do to get prepared for the future of work is
to rethink IT and your human capital, your team members. What do they need as a whole?
A business calls me up and says, “Our server is getting old, we need to get a new server.” And
previously, I’d say, “Well, I don’t know if you actually need a server on-site, maybe we talk about
the cloud.”
So educate yourself as a business leader on what out there is possible. Then take that step,
listen to your IT staff, listen to your IT director, whoever that may be, and talk to them about
what is out there and what’s really possible. The technology enabling remote work has grown
exponentially, even in last few months, in its adoption and capabilities.
If you looked at the technology a year or two ago, that world doesn’t exist anymore. The
technology has grown dramatically. The price point has come down dramatically. What is now
possible wasn’t a few years ago.

12. Page 12 of 13
So listen to your technology advisers, look at what’s possible, and prepare yourself for the next
step. Take capital and reinvest it into the future of work.
Wolf: What we’re seeing that’s working the best is people are getting started anyway, anyhow.
There really wasn’t a playbook set up for a pandemic, and it’s still evolving. We’re experiencing
about 15 years’ worth of change in every three months of what’s going on. And there’s still
plenty of uncertainty, but that can’t paralyze you.
We recommend that people fundamentally take a look at what your core business is. What do
you do for a living? And then everything that enables you to do that is kind of ancillary or
secondary.
When it comes to your workforce -- whether it’s comprised of contractors or freelancers or
permanent employees -- no matter where they are, have a get stuff done mentality. It’s about
what you are trying to get done. Don’t ask them about the systems yet. Just say, “What are you
trying to get done?” And, “What will it take for you to double your speed and essentially only put
half the effort into it?”
And listen. And then define, configure, and
acquire the technologies that will enable
that to happen. We need to think about
what’s possible at the ground level, and
not so much thinking about it all in terms
of the systems and the applications. What
are people trying to do every day and how
do we make their work experience and their work life better so that they can thrive through this
situation as well as the company?
Gardner: Tim, what did you find most surprising or unexpected in the research from the Work
2035 project? And is there a way for our audience to learn more about this Citrix research?
Minahan: One of the most alarming things to me from the Work 2035 project, the one where
we’ve gotten the most visceral reaction, was the anticipation that, by 2035, in order to gain an
advantage in the workplace, employees would literally be imbedding microchips to help them
process information and be far more productive in the workforce.
I’m interested to see whether that comes to bear or not, but certainly it’s very clear that the role
of AI and ML -- we’re only scratching the surface as we drive to new work models and new
levels of productivity. We’re already seeing the beginnings of the augmented worker and just
what’s possible when you have bots sitting -- virtually and physically -- alongside employees in
the workplace.
We’re seeing the future of work accelerate much quicker than we anticipated. As we emerge out
the other side of the pandemic, with the guidance of folks like Lucid and A2K, companies are
beginning to rethink their work models and liberate their thinking in ways they hadn’t considered
for decades. So it’s an incredibly exciting time.
Gardner: And where can people go to learn more about your research findings at Citrix?
Minahan: To view the Work 2035 project, you can find the foundational research at Citrix.com,
but this is an ongoing dialogue that we want to continue to foster with thought leaders like Ray
What are people trying to do every day
and how do we make their work
experience and their work life better so
that they can thrive through this
[pandemic] as well as the company?

13. Page 13 of 13
and Jeff, as well as academia and governments, as we all prepare not just technically but
culturally for the future of work.
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. You’ve been listening to a sponsored
BriefingsDirect discussion on the impacts from a once-in-a-lifetime disruption of how people are
thinking about work. And we’ve learned how a remote-first strategy can lead to reinvention of
work expectations and payoffs -- including perhaps a doubling of overall productivity in the
coming years.
So a big thank you to our guests, Jeff Vincent, CEO at Lucid Technology Solutions. Thank you
so much, Jeff.
Vincent: Thank you guys. I really had a great time being a part of this discussion and I look
forward to the next one.
Gardner: And a big thank you as well to Ray Wolf, CEO at A2K Partners. Thank you, Ray.
Wolf: You’re welcome, Dana. It’s great to explore this topic.
Gardner: And thank you also to Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Business Strategy
and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix. Always a pleasure, Tim.
Minahan: Thanks Dana. I really enjoyed the discussion.
Gardner: And lastly, a big thank you to our audience for joining this Briefings Direct remote
work innovation discussion. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your
host throughout this series of Citrix-supported BriefingsDirect discussions.
Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your community, and do come back next
time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix.
Transcript of a discussion on new research into the future of work and how unprecedented innovation
could mean a doubling of overall productivity in the coming years. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC,
2005-2020. All rights reserved.
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