There’s a shift happening in companies, giving workers greater choice in how they get their work done. Organically, through their selection of software tools, employee choices are trickling up to management. How do managers feel about relinquishing control, and how will it affect productivity and the ultimate direction of businesses?

In the past, centralized teams of project managers doled out tools and instructions to employees. Now, new software is democratizing project design and execution, according to Chris Marsh (pictured), research director of workforce productivity and compliance at 451 Research LLC. For example, Smartsheet Inc.’s software is picking up users outside of the expected domains.

“It’s not the type of people we would have seen using this type of tool four or five years ago,” Marsh said. “It’s leaders within legal teams, finance teams, human resources teams, marketing teams, operations teams.”

And why shouldn’t those closest to the delivery of work design the work in the first place rather than rely on IT or a central team? It could enable agility and what Marsh calls the “liquid enterprise.” But it could also rub well-meaning project managers the wrong way.

Marsh spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Smartsheet Engage event in Bellevue, Washington. They discussed democratization through software, the liquid enterprise, and the future of work applications. (* Disclosure below.)

Liquid assets

“It’s a big cultural shift, but there’s a certain amount of push and pull here,” Marsh said. Different companies will have to figure out the right balance of centralized and decentralized project design.

The most innovative, software-driven companies today have embraced this decentralization and embody the hyper agility of the liquid enterprise, Marsh explained.

“We think that whole pattern of what the kind of optimal digital enterprise will look like is much more able to fluidly marshal its different resources in a way that allows them to respond much more rapidly to changes in their own market conditions,” he said.

This means ability to change not just its offerings, but its own organizational structure on the fly, Marsh concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Smartsheet Engage event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Smartsheet Engage. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE