Work without Jobs

In this Wall Street Journal bestseller, why the future of work requires the deconstruction of jobs and the reconstruction of work. Work is traditionally understood as a “job,” and workers as “jobholders.” Jobs are structured by titles, hierarchies, and qualifications. In Work without Jobs, the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau propose a radically new way of looking at work. They describe a new “work operating system” that deconstructs jobs into their component parts and reconstructs these components into more optimal combinations that reflect the skills and abilities of individual workers. In a new normal of rapidly accelerating automation, demands for organizational agility, efforts to increase diversity, and the emergence of alternative work arrangements, the old system based on jobs and jobholders is cumbersome and ungainly. Jesuthasan and Boudreau’s new system lays out a roadmap for the future of work. Work without Jobs presents real-world cases that show how leading organizations are embracing work deconstruction and reinvention. For example, when a robot, chatbot, or artificial intelligence takes over parts of a job while a human worker continues to do other parts, what is the “job”? DHL found some answers when it deployed social robotics at its distribution centers. Meanwhile, the biotechnology company Genentech deconstructed jobs to increase flexibility, worker engagement, and retention. Other organizations achieved agility with internal talent marketplaces, worker exchanges, freelancers, crowdsourcing, and partnerships. It’s time for organizations to reboot their work operating system, and Work without Jobs offers an essential guide for doing so.

Ravin Jesuthasan, a recognized futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and automation, is Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s steering committee on work and employment. John W. Boudreau conducts breakthrough research on human capital, talent, and sustainable competitive advantage. He is Emeritus Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Jesuthasan and Boudreau are coauthors of Transformative HR: How Great Companies Use Evidence-Based Change for Sustainable Advantage, Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment, and Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work.

Series Foreword vii Introduction: Work without Jobs Is the New Work Operating System ix 1 Work as Deconstructed Job Elements versus Stable Jobs 1 2 Work Automation Deconstructed: Not Replacing Jobs with Automation but Optimizing Task-Level Combinations of Humans and Automation 15 3 Work Arrangements beyond Employment: A Democratized Work Ecosystem beyond the Fixed Traditional Organizational Boundary 29 4 Deconstructed Workers: Seeing the Whole Person through Skills/Capabilities versus Simply "Jobholders" 51 5 Perpetually Reinventing Deconstructed Work 69 6 Management, Leadership, and Deconstructed Work Coordination: Collaborative Hubs, Teams, Projects, and Agile Work Innovation versus Hierarchy, Structure, Jobs, and Stable Authority 83 7 The New Work Operating System beyond the Organization 107 Conclusions and Next Steps 135 Acknowledgments 155 Notes 157 Index 171