Organisations get redrawn before the headcount does

Nobody lost their job that day. Accounts moved from one person to another. 2 regions were merged. The map on the wall changed. Everyone kept their title, their targets and their bonuses.

12 months later, the headcount plan had one territory fewer in it, and nobody could point to the meeting where that was decided. There wasn't one. The decision was made the day the map changed. It just took a year to show up.

I've been thinking about that this week because of a report written for HR leaders in Vietnam, and it describes the same mechanism at national scale.

Let's dive in.

The International Labour Organization published a brief in April on generative AI and the labour market in Vietnam. The headline figure is that around 20.8% of employment there - about 11.5 million jobs - is potentially exposed to generative AI. Only 1.8% of jobs - around 1 million - sit in the highest exposure category, where the tasks are standardised enough to hand over wholesale (ILO, April 2026).

The ILO's reading is that AI is more likely to reshape the tasks inside existing roles than to remove whole occupations. Most jobs are bundles of tasks. AI takes some, augments others, leaves the rest alone, and each piece moves at a different speed.

The advice that follows (and it's the advice being given to employers everywhere right now) is to stop planning by job title and start planning by task. Map which tasks are automated, which are augmented, which stay human. Redesign the work before scaling the tools. Build reskilling paths and a credible transition for the people whose roles change.

Sensible. And here's where it gets interesting.

Aon's Human Capital Trends Study found that 74% of Asia-Pacific organisations have deployed or are piloting AI, against 73% globally. Only 21% of them believe they can recruit and retain enough AI talent to make it work (Aon, June 2026).

The tools arrive in months. Job architecture, performance systems and skills take years. Adoption is running well ahead of readiness, which means the task-by-task redesign is mostly still to come. In most organisations it hasn't started.

A Director reads that brief and does what I'd have done. Puts it down to someone else’s problem. Customer service. The ticket queue. Junior finance. The 1.8%.

I think that's the wrong reading, for 2 reasons.

The first is that your job is a bundle of tasks too. A bigger bundle than most, which is what got you the seniority.

Approvals, forecasting, reporting up, translating between functions, sitting in the meetings where things get decided…

When the task audit reaches your layer, and it will, some of those move to a system, some get consolidated, and a few turn out to be there because you were, rather than because anyone needed them.

The job that survives has your title on it and a different shape. And the map of who does what gets drawn a level up, in a workshop you may or may not be present for.

The second reason is the readiness gap. The advice says redesign the work before scaling the tools. Adoption ahead of readiness means most organisations did it the other way round.

The tools went in. The redesign comes later. Later means under cost pressure for your finance partner, once the productivity story has been told to the board and someone asks where the productivity went.

At that point an expensive role whose tasks have already been partly reallocated is the first thing anyone looks at. Seniority moves you up that list, not down it.

None of this concludes as a redundancy announcement. But it triggers a task review. Like a map on a wall.

The territory realignment I signed off was a good decision. The coverage model had changed, the accounts sat in the wrong places, and the business was better for it. I'd make it again.

What I didn't do was tell each person on that map what the new shape of their role meant for them a year out. I wasn't hiding it. I hadn't worked it out yet either. The plan lagged by 4 quarters.

That's the position most senior professionals are in right now, from the other side. The task map of your role is being redrawn. The transition path the reports say your employer should build for you is a plan for the organisation, built around what it needs, and in most places it doesn't exist yet.

So run the audit yourself. First.

Sit down with your own role and split it the way the ILO splits an economy.

Which of your tasks are yours because of judgement you built over years?

Which are yours because you happened to be there when they needed doing?

Which would a system do next year, and which would nobody notice if they stopped?

Then the interesting question:

Of the tasks that are yours because of judgement, which would a board, a fractional seat, a smaller company or a consultancy pay for on their own?

Those are your second option. Most senior people have never listed them.

That's a system, built while you're still employed, and it takes an evening to start.

It's also the exact gap Zelova is built for. The guide runs that audit against your actual role and your actual market, and turns the answer into a plan with options in it.

It's a career strategy service, still being built. If any of this resonates, the waitlist is open at zelova.ai.

When was the last time your role changed without your job title changing? And were you a decision maker when it happened, or did you find out from your boss?

Reply and tell me. I'd like to hear your version.

David