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.
