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.
