Never Stop Learning and Growing: Interview with Authors Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau
I recently spoke to Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau, co-authors of the new book Work without Jobs. Ravin is a Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer and a member of the World Economic Forum's steering committee on work and employment. John is an Emeritus Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, my alma mater.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Ravin: I think I have been blessed with a number of opportunities that have enabled my own journey of perpetual reinvention and a support system, specifically my wife and children who have been both supportive and incredibly inspiring. I started off as a strategy consultant but really found a home and the space to grow at what was then Towers Perrin which became Willis Towers Watson. I was given a variety of roles in organizational consulting, compensation and talent management to name a few domains, that afforded me the opportunity to connect my analytical and finance skills (I am a Chartered Financial Analyst) to the way organizations and people work. These experiences were foundational to my personal growth and ability to innovate. I have since found an equally welcoming home at Mercer that has further accelerated and expanded my horizons and with that, my ideas about the future of work. In 2007, John and I met and I discovered both a kindred spirit and a source of inspiration whose perspectives on the future of work were very much aligned with mine, as evidenced by our four books and countless articles together. Lastly, my clients and colleagues over the years have been tremendous partners who afforded me countless opportunities to invent and co-create the future.
John:
Growing up as the “child of an IBM’er” and my dad’s work experiences
Realizing in college that I would not be good enough on trumpet to make it my career
Reading “Work in America” in my HR class in 1975
Getting an MBA at Purdue before getting my PhD there
Vastly more talented and insightful mentors and colleagues than I could ever have hoped for (undergrad and graduate-school professors; Cornell academic and industry colleagues; co-authors like Ravin; so many generous and amazing leaders as clients and colleagues and friends)
My lovely bride of 45 years (next August) and daughter.
Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?
Ravin: Our book is about challenging the legacy and status quo of what has defined work for the last 150 years; the traditional notion of jobs and jobholders and the social, educational and economic ecosystem that is aligned to this traditional “work operating system”. The velocity, volatility and variability underpinning the future of work requires a more resilient and agile construct for work. We propose a new work operating system based on deconstructed jobs that are perpetually reinvented. The system optimally combines humans and automation, enables talent to flow to work more seamlessly and is underpinned by skills and capabilities as the currency of work, not jobs.
John:
The legacy of work contained in jobs is an invisible barrier to the future of work and organizations
Society must ask much more of leaders, policy-makers, managers, workers, organizations and governments, to capitalize on the unique opportunities that can make work better.
Whenever you hear the words “jobs,” or “job holder,” or “college degree,” there is a better way to think about work.
Adam: What should leaders understand about the future of work?
Ravin: In William Gibson’s infamous words, “the future is here, it is just unevenly distributed”. Many of the ideas and concepts that we have written about for years and in this book might appear futuristic but in actuality they are here today. We have illustrated our perspectives with dozens of case studies that illustrate contemporary practice. It is important to note that many limit the future of work to the impact of technology or automation on work. Or more lately, to hybrid ways of working or remote work. What John and I have written extensively about is the impact of the convergence of two critical forces; digitalization and the democratization of work. While often ignored, the latter is at least as important as the former given its ability to decouple work from its traditional confines of space, time and structure.
John:
Agile work design today is like agile software or product design in the 1980’s.
The great work experiment is upon us, so the leaders and organizations that thrive will embrace work itself as the focus of their agile experiments
The new work operating system that decouples work from jobs and jobholders is essential to this new experiment.
Adam: What advice do you have for job seekers in light of the changing work ecosystem?
Ravin: We each need a mindset of perpetual reinvention. Each of us needs to continuously deconstruct our work, identify alternative work options (e.g., AI, robotics, gig workers, etc.) that can perform a particular task better and identify new skills required for the remaining and emerging work. Our ability to stay relevant for changing world hinges on our ability to continuously learn and develop new skills. As Alvin Toffler said back in the 70s; “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can’t read and write. It will be those who can learn, unlearn and relearn”
John:
Work is and will be more like technology, perpetually obsolete and upgraded simultaneously (as Kevin Kelly wrote in “The Inevitable”)
Your future work probably hasn’t been invented yet
The best first step to thriving is to admit that neither you nor anyone else knows the future of work.
Your future work and career must embrace work defined well beyond a job and employment contract
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs and executives?
Ravin: 1) How are you going to challenge and stress test the ways in which you are currently doing your work? Specifically, can you give your workforce the needed incentives and security to deconstruct and reconstruct their own jobs? 2) How will you build flexibility and agility into any new work so you are not perpetuating a legacy of work in jobs? 3) How will you create the institutional capacity to keep stress testing your work operating system to ensure it remains fit for purpose?
John:
After this podcast, consider the most pivotal jobs in your organization, and deconstruct them. Then, ask what new solutions to opportunities or challenges arise when you let the pieces live on their own.
Assign accountability for the agile design of work
How could you design your organization as perpetually-reconfigured teams and projects?
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?
Ravin: Leaders really need to think beyond their traditional mindsets of getting work done and answer two pivotal questions:
How will we redesign work to enable talent to flow to it as seamlessly as possible while enabling its perpetual reinvention
How will we re-envision the talent experience to meet all talent where they are and on their terms?
John:
Don’t think about you “building, leading and managing teams,” but rather about supporting and facilitating the teams to build, lead and manage themselves.
The team is frequently a much more vital unit of work than the individual or the job, so what if you reconfigured your entire approach to work (accountability, performance, worker experience, etc.) around the team?
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Ravin: The new work operating system challenges many of our long-held beliefs about what it means to be a leader. From traditional markers of hierarchy like headcount and budget to broader measures of impact and influence. From a traditional emphasis on delegation and control of resources to a broader focus on orchestrating many different types of resources as talent and work options like AI and gig talent flow to work as needed. From utilizing traditional mechanisms like organization structure and job architecture to control work and behavior to the use of culture as the new structure that aligns many disparate interests to a common mission and purpose. This changing paradigm for leadership requires a new set of muscles that traditional leadership development approaches are ill-suited to deliver on.
John:
Passion for empowering others
Values and purpose that provide the keel of the sailboat (to use Jonathan Donner’s analogy)
Constantly asking “why would anyone be led by me?”
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Ravin: Never stop learning and growing.
John:
If you think you know, then you probably don’t know … and vice versa.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Ravin: We are really excited to see how leaders at all types of companies leverage the ideas and frameworks in this book to transform work and realize the exponential gains that are possible.
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.
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