The founder-operator. Monster. Talent2. Allegis. QuantumWork Advisory. Now back home in Melbourne — without the luxury tax.
I’m Mark Condon — a designer of work, by training and obsession. I run workXdesign.ai from Melbourne — a senior advisory built for the moments that matter to a CEO, CPO, or CHRO. Founder‑led. AI‑native by design. Specialist partner network for the build. The work shows up at the difficult turns: an AI transformation, a talent function rebuild, a skills strategy, an M&A integration, an operating model redesign. Twenty years in the room — drafting the work, running the workshops, sitting with the team in the harder calls.
Most recently, I co‑founded and grew QuantumWork Advisory into a global boutique — winning Fortune 10 engagements against the world’s leading strategy houses and Big Four consultancies, partnering with global technology platforms, and delivering major strategy and execution programmes across banking and financial services, healthcare, and aerospace. Before that, I led the global consulting, technology, digital, and solutions function at AGS — work that doubled that business over three years. The foundation: twenty‑two years at Allegis Group — the largest privately held human capital firm in the world — building practices and advising Fortune 500 organisations on workforce, talent, and the architecture of work itself. Earlier still: a day‑one director at Talent2 in Melbourne. MBA from Melbourne Business School. Trained in design thinking at MIT and IDEO.
AI transformation is a work design problem, not a platform purchase. That’s the conviction the practice is built on — and why senior counsel that’s independent, experienced, and accountable matters more in this cycle than it did in the last.
AI modernisation is a work design problem, not a platform purchase.
That's the conviction the practice is built on — and it's why senior counsel, independent, experienced, accountable, matters more in this cycle than it did in the last. A new species of company is emerging. Synthetic organisations — designed around AI from the foundation up, not retrofitted around it. While incumbents struggle to absorb AI into existing operating models, the gap is widening. And most of that gap is operating‑model debt, not technology debt.
The last decade was about location arbitrage. Move the work to a cheaper geography, take twenty to forty percent out of the cost line, declare victory. The next decade is about something different — and harder. The question is no longer how do we add AI? It's how do we want decisions made, work to flow, and humans to engage where software can act? Which work shouldn't exist at all, which can be automated, which is better done by augmented humans, and then — and only then — where the remaining work should sit geographically.
Every large organisation has an immune system. Layers of process, governance, and incentive structure built to protect stability. AI transformation is, by definition, unfamiliar — so the immune system does its job, and neutralises it. The work is redesigning the operating model while the immune system is still running.
That's the work I'm useful for.
A designer's playbook for AI disruption.
Twenty years of work design, operating-model design, and human-tech interaction design — built across ASX Top 200, Fortune 500, and mid-market work. Four sample toolsets from the wider treasure trove, applied as the work demands.
Personas, journey mapping, service blueprints, moments of truth. This is the lead toolset. It surfaces what process maps miss — the friction operators feel but the documentation hides, the value leaking at the seam between two teams, the workarounds nobody talks about because they shouldn't exist.
Where it shows up: current-state mapping, future-state design, every engagement opens here.
Optimise the whole, not the part. Maps how work, technology, and data connect across teams and time. Stops the most common AI failure mode — a use case that wins locally, breaks something else downstream, and never recovers the value it promised. Reveals where the data has to flow for any of it to work.
Where it shows up: operating model design, integration architecture, coalition building, capability sequencing.
Inventory the work at the task level. Score each task for AI suitability, business value, and how energising it is to do. Then decide — Remove, Reduce, Reallocate, Redesign. Built on Professor Sharon K. Parker's SMART Work Design research at Curtin University, so the future state isn't just efficient — it's work people want to do.
Where it shows up: the work analysis platform, role redesign, the energising vs draining axis most AI programmes ignore.
Once the work is redesigned, capability has to come from somewhere. The 5B framework decides each one — Build it internally, Buy from a vendor, Borrow from a partner, Bot it with AI, Bundle it into a managed service. Sequenced, costed, owned — operating model rebuilt for where the business is going.
Where it shows up: target operating model, sourcing strategy, vendor selection, the make-or-buy conversation at the executive table.
Twenty‑plus years across APAC, the US, and EMEA — ASX Top 200, Fortune 500 boards, C‑suites, and global functions.