Work without jobs 

Amid increasingly rapid change and disruption accelerated by responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders need a new operating system for work—one that deconstructs jobs into more granular units such as tasks, and identifies and deploys workers based on their skills and capabilities, not their job descriptions. This new system supports the high degree of organizational agility required to thrive in today’s environment and better reflects the fluidity of modern work and working arrangements. 

In this article, originally published in MIT Sloan Management Review, Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau examine how the swift evolution of work is making it increasingly urgent for leaders, workers, organizations and society to master deconstructed work. They outline four design principles that are vital for pivoting to this new system and evolving toward “work without jobs.”