Book Review: "Work Without Jobs" by Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau

A Wall Street Journal bestseller on how to reboot your organisation’s work operating system.

I have the pleasure of being part of an amazing organization, ING, in which our Human Resources leadership, quarterly, shares new books with us as part of our HR book club initiative. The latest book was "Work Without Jobs" by Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau, for which I would like to share a short book review with you.

Jesuthasan and Boudreau make use of a metaphor to describe their work as ice cubes. In which work is traditionally understood as a "job" with specific job requirements and "jobholders" with specific sets of skills. They explain that this concept of work, like ice cubes, is melting and suggest that the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on work has accelerated the melting. One can imagine a tray of ice cubes melting, turning into water. Symbolizing how work, and traditional "jobs" are merging and becoming more fluid and so too requirements on the "jobholder". They take the metaphor even further, proposing that the melted ice cubes could be reformed into different shapes and sizes to improve how work is delivered, in a concept described as fluid work that can be deconstructed and reinvented.  

An example of this which is presented in the book is how to shift from traditional hierarchies to free-flowing, agile organizations. These examples speak not only to how leaders need to reinvent the way they think of work, but also how we, as human resources professionals, need to re-think the practices that support them. 

The example refers to the shift away from traditional ways of coordinating work through hierarchies, structure, and stable reporting relationships. A manager that previously considered their role as managing or coordinating the work of their team members reporting to them may now be faced with situations where their team members perform a percentage of work for others or even work across projects with a limited line of sight from the manager. One can imagine how this previous stable supervisor/subordinate relationship is melting down. The author also quotes observations from leaders like, "We are trying to implement agile, but things change so fast that no one knows their assignment,", while I can just imagine how our traditional human resources practices can’t stay ahead of the changing job descriptions.  Well, you can’t stay ahead because it melted, and it requires us to deconstruct the capabilities of a traditional "job" and create opportunities for talent to naturally flow through fluid projects and assignments. As a result, leaders will lead talent like project managers as people flow through their projects and business focus areas. 

As seen in the example, the authors propose a new way of looking at work through offering a roadmap to a new "work operating system". suggesting that, "in light of the changing times and rapid acceleration of 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".