The Future of Small Business: Future Dynamic Functional Structures (FDFS)

Ben Watts, CEO - wattsnext Group

The traditional organisational chart is on life support. The pyramid-shaped hierarchy, rigid, slow-moving, and bloated belongs to an era when work happened in one place, on one timeline, and with one set of people. Today, the world is faster, leaner, borderless, and increasingly digital. It’s time to blow up the old structure, stop fighting hybrid working and embrace the model that will define the next decade: I call this the Future Dynamic Functional Structures (FDFS) and I believe it’s the way to embrace the future of work in the AI age!

What is a FDFS?

A FDFS is not just an evolution of organisational design, it’s a revolution. It tears down the walls between employment types and operational silos to create a fluid, adaptive structure that flexes with the economy, scales at speed, and integrates AI as a core capability.

The FDFS blends:

• Employees: full-time, part-time, casual, and contract talent, working anywhere in the world.
• Outsourced functions: legal, accounting, marketing, IT, HR, and any plug-and-play partnerships.
• Offshored talent: high-skill, low-cost professionals delivering 24/7 capacity across hemispheres and time zones.
• Fractional expertise: on-demand access to senior experienced executives, specialists, and consultants you can afford that deliver quality work to your client base. 
• AI Agents: digital teammates performing tasks, augmenting decision-making, and boosting productivity. Our challenge will be what is the ratio of humans to AI agents, how many digital colleagues can a good human employee manage? 

This is the ‘new architecture of agility’ a core structure designed to thrive in a volatile economy with sporadic and unpredictable opportunities. Overwhelming maybe, but for the non-tech savvy amongst us this is tremendously exciting and most importantly achievable! 

Why a FDFS is the way forward

1. Extreme Flexibility
   Economic cycles no longer move like gentle tides—they crash like shore-breaking waves. Businesses that can scale up or contract without breaking will dominate. FDFS lets you flex your cost base without the emotional trauma of mass redundancies or knee-jerk hiring guesses!
2. Unmatched productivity and capability
   A traditional team is often limited to its headcount and their capacity. An FDFS, by contrast, pulls from a global ecosystem of talent, from offshore developers in Manila to fractional CFOs in New York. Add AI agents that never sleep, and you’ve created a scalable powerhouse.
3. Diversity that drives innovation
   Generational diversity (think 17-year-old’s enthusiasm to 60-year-old wisdom working in sync), geographic diversity, and cognitive diversity (human + AI) create a melting pot of ideas, capable of deep problem solving. 
4. Tech-ready DNA
   Unlike historical legacy structures that bolt on technology, FDFS is built to integrate AI from day one. Whether it’s generative AI drafting your client proposals or predictive analytics steering your strategy, AI is not an accessory, it’s a core and scalable. Human led AI agents or digital colleagues. 

The wattsnext example: a live case study

At wattsnext, we pride ourselves on experimenting and testing what works. We are a future-focused HR consultancy in our a18th year and headquartered in Queensland, Australia. Fascinated by the future of work, we have the capability to run 24/7 across two hemispheres, with resources in six countries, and have six generations in our team. Our team combines local employees (Queensland & New York), offshore coordinators, outsourced legal, accounting and IT partners, fractional experts in training and industrial relations, and are introducing emerging AI agents as digital colleagues. 

The result? It’s early days, but an increase in flexibility, scalability, and capability has led to our largest revenue month in six years with a considerably lower cost base. Our structure can ramp up in weeks, slash costs overnight, and stay ahead of market disruption, while delivering consistent, high-quality outcomes for clients across the world. Put simply we can do more with less and adjust quickly to volatile market conditions. There are not only cost benefits, we have also taken on more complex, interesting, and exciting projects and clients under this dynamic model.

The evidence is in

A recent McKinsey Global Survey (2025) notes that 84% of executives believe flexible talent ecosystems will be the dominant model by 2030, and AI integration is now the top factor for future-proofing business models. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 40% of small businesses will operate with less than half their workforce as traditional employees, the rest will be fractional, outsourced, or AI-driven.

Doing nothing is not a strategy, as futurist Gerd Leonhard says, “Human work will not disappear, but it will transform and organisations that adapt their structures first will lead the charge.”

The future is here

The question is no longer “Should we change?” It’s “How fast can we dismantle the old structure before it dismantles us?” Australian small to medium businesses are not evolving fast enough in this AI led business world. 
Small to medium businesses have a rare advantage: they’re nimble, they’re hungry, and they’re unshackled from layers of corporate bureaucracy. A Future Dynamic Functional Structure can be your secret weapon, the catalyst to evolve, and I believe a blueprint for resilience, scalability, and exponential capacity. 

A game changer and your vehicle to catch up in this global, rapidly changing small business landscape!

Are you ready to blow up the org chart? The future won’t wait!