Hello to all Mercer friends out there. Today I have the pleasure to talk to my colleague Ravin Jesuthasan, and some of you might know him. If not, it's about time. Let me quickly introduce Ravin before we get into a dialogue on his latest book.
Ravin is the global leader of Mercer's transformation services business. He's a recognized global thought leader, futurist, and author on the future of work in workforce transformation. Ravin has led numerous research projects for the World Economic Forum, including many of his groundbreaking studies on the transformation of work and the global workforce. He is a regular participant and presenter at its annual meetings in Davos, and he's a member of the Forum Steering Committee on Work and Employment. He has also been recognized as one of the top 25 most influential consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine, one of the top 8 future of work influences by Tech News, and one of the top 100 HR influences by HR Executive. He's the author of four books and over 200 articles on the future of work, including 15 for the Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review. His book Work Without Jobs is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. And here we are. Ravin, thanks for being with us. Welcome.
Thank you, Kai. It's great to be here with you, my friend.
Ravin, your new book has been published in April, and it immediately landed on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. So congratulations. Did you did you expect this kind of success?
Thank you, Kai. You know, honestly, we didn't, right? Because when John and I have written books together, it's really a book that's written with a lot of cases, and it's meant to be a guide for business leaders. I really didn't expect something that I had written to be on a list like that. So it was a pleasant surprise.
I bet it is. And maybe some of that success is also related to the title, which I think is edgy, is cool, and provoking to some extent. Work Without Jobs, well, this is kind of provoking the question if jobs become obsolete, and will that also be the truth for job holders. So what does that mean for job holders when we are talking about that book?
Yeah. You know, Kai, that's a really good question. So in the book, we're not saying that jobs are going away, right? So I know some folks have said to me, oh, the title is clickbait. But actually, far from it.
I think what we're trying to do with the title is to point to the growing inability of what we call the current work operating system, with its foundation of work purely in jobs and that traditional one-to-one relationship between a degree, a job, and a job holder to actually keep up with the pace of change, and the volatility, and the speed of change that we see with the world of work.
What we're trying to do with this book is illustrate what a new work operating system might look like, and try to illustrate this with many case studies and examples to illustrate what a new task and skill-based work system might actually look like to keep up with all of this change and the new options for work.
So you say skill-based. So there is good news in that skills don't become obsolete, and we hopefully can't forget about our degrees right away?
Yes. No, I think that's right. I think for a long time we've used degrees as markers of skills, right? And I think as we see skills becoming the currency of work, I think we're getting to better signals of what people can actually do rather than just a degree.
I see. That brings us to, well, the core ideas of your book. And you've already mentioned the new work operating system. Can you explain what the principles behind this new work operating systems are?
Yeah, absolutely, Kai. So when we wrote the book, we saw what we saw were four key principles that underpin this new work operating system. The first is starting with the work, the current and future tasks that the organization needs to do, and not just how the tasks are organized into jobs. So transcending that legacy of jobs.
The second principle is ensuring we're getting to the optimal combinations of humans and automation. And this was something that John and I wrote about in our third book together, Reinventing Jobs.
But when we lead with the work, the tasks and activities, we see three relationships between humans and automation. We see where human activity is substituted by automation. We see where human activity can be augmented by automation. And we see where new human activity or new skills can be demanded by the presence of automation.
And then the third principle, once we've gotten to the optimal combinations of humans and automation, or talent and technology, is to ask the question of, what's the best way to connect that talent to the work? Should it be a job? Should it be an internal talent marketplace? Should it be a gig worker, a freelancer? Maybe an employee who is in a job, but has the opportunity to express her skills in other parts of the organization. But what is the full array of human work engagements?
And then the fourth is to ask the question of, how do we create a much more agile culture and operating model where talent can continuously flow to work versus only being limited to fixed traditional jobs? So starting to create a much more agile construct. So those would be the four principles.
Thanks. Thanks, Ravin. Can you give us maybe a practical example of how that looks like? Because I assume you have seen examples, which you think will guide us on our way into this new world of working.
Yeah. Absolutely, Kai. And that really is the intent of the book with all its many case studies is to sort of, hopefully, show the leaders the art of the possible, right? To show them that the future is now, as you and I have said many times to our clients.
So one example of that second principle of getting to the optimal combinations of humans and automation is what DHL has been doing in its distribution centers and its warehouses. I have been really impressed by DHL's continuous experimentation with new types of robotics, fundamentally looking at the work that they have, looking at how new work is created, and then perpetually reinventing that work and how to get the best of human capability while taking advantage of some of the advances in automation. So to me, that was a great example of continuously seeking that optimal combination of humans and automation, the second principle.
That's a great example. And I guess it shows that it is not about robots taking our jobs, right?
Indeed. Indeed.
So Ravin, you're describing seven elements for the new work operating system? Which are the ones that were short-term? So which are the ones that have an immediate effect on the way we are working and what we are working in? Which of these may work mid to long-term?
I like to think of the seven, Kai, as you framed it, right, being broken up into kind of a couple of buckets. Let me give you the ones that in the near term I think are helpful. I think that first element of work as deconstructed jobs and elements I think is essential. So that principle of deconstruction.
I think secondly, work automation is optimizing task-level combinations of humans and automated work, just like what DHL is doing. I think it's really important and can be done immediately.
I think the third element of thinking of work arrangements as not just being the talent and the job today, but this boundaryless and more democratized work ecosystem where we think of just ever more agile ways of connecting people to work.
And then, as you said at the beginning, right, when we think of what are the capabilities or the skills of the human, seeing all of those skills and capabilities, the unique bundle of skills that is Kai versus Ravin, and the different ways in which Kai can contribute beyond his job today, or Ravin beyond his position today.
So to me, those first four are things that we can do immediately because we have so much of the infrastructure, the tools, the methodologies to do that.
I think the other three perhaps things that require a little bit more systemic change, right, firstly, this mindset of perpetual reinvention of work, which is the fifth, which is the fifth element. Continuously challenging our infrastructure, our processes, our culture, our talent, our structure, our technology to enable work to keep perpetually getting reinvented.
I think the sixth principle, which speaks to leadership and management, I think is one that probably will take some time because we have 140 years of leadership muscle being built around this notion of managing and leading organizations where the job is the fundamental currency, to now say it's tasks and activities, and the change is quite big and significant.
And then the seventh is really what it means for us in the global society and global community, where we have social values and policies that are now much more tied to fluid work arrangements as opposed to the regulation that today in many countries surrounds this thing called a job.
So I think I see four of them in the near term, and maybe the other three as being-- as needing some time to play out more effectively.
And I understand that there is something between the short-term and long-term, let's say, elements, which is, in the infrastructure space, we are seeing talent marketplaces coming up as a topic. Is that a sign for the new world of working as you describe it?
Yeah, absolutely, Kai. It's so fascinating to see how much capital, PE money, venture capital money is flowing into these internal marketplaces. And it's because they have, really, the potential to make a lot of these ideas that we talk about in Work Without Jobs just much more attainable. And we've seen in companies that have done this well just significant gains in productivity, agility, speed, time to fail, requisitions, time to productivity.
In fact, we have a case study in the book of where one organization, as they move to these more agile ways of working with the marketplace realized a 600% gain in the productivity of that data scientist and digital talent.
Wow. That is something. And that maybe gives us an explanation why companies and executives should start that exercise. But I'm still, I would like to ask the question-- we live in uncertain times. Everything is VUCA, and you know, now you're proposing a really different, as you say, operating system. Now, why would an executive or why would an organization start really changing that operating system when pressure is so high and everything is so uncertain? Does it is it a good idea to make a start right now?
Yeah, I actually think, Kai, it now has never been a better time. I think that what is being asked of business leaders and HR leaders is kind of the-- we can't get there by doing the same thing over and over again. I think what we're seeing is this legacy system that we've had, it's still relevant, but it is going to be relevant for ever smaller bodies of work. And the need to perpetually reinvent, the need to think of a mindset and a toolset that can stay relevant for the next of work I think is where we see these opportunities.
And so the really successful companies we see, the Standard Chartereds of this world, the Unilevers of this world, the Schneider Electrics, et cetera, they have put in place the capacity to perpetually reinvent and move towards an environment where skills and tasks are the currency of work. So I think it's kind of, you know, that old adage, right, change or die. And the conditions I think make change ever more pivotal than ever before.
That brings me to my last question, looking at the time. Change or die. Do you dare to give us an outlook, like, five years down the road? What will the world of working look like in your view?
Yeah, Kai, it's a great question. I really think what we're going to see is a fundamental change in how organizations operate. We're already seeing this. This isn't new. But I think it's going to accelerate exponentially.
I often say to my clients, when we look at what this pandemic has done to the future of work, it's not a two-year acceleration that we've seen in digitalization, as Satya Nadella talks about it, but it's more like in the last two years, something like a 20-year acceleration that has been realized in two years.
And I can't see that pace slowing down. And I think what we need is an operating system that is going to help us keep up, that is going to help us design learning into the flow of work, that is going to design space for well-being into the flow of work. And at the same time, ensuring that work is a much more balanced set of relationships between the company, the leaders in the workforce, and work is staying relevant for how all of these changes happen.
So I see more and more of these ideas coming to fruition over the course of the next five years.
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