Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment

Book description

A detailed look at the evolution of employment and its far-reaching implications

Lead the Work takes an incisive look at the evolving nature of work, and how it's affecting management and productivity at the organizational level. Where getting things done once meant assigning it to an employee, today's leaders are increasingly at risk if they fail to recognize that talent can float into and out of an organization. Long-term employment has given way to medium- or short-term employment, marking the first step in severing the bond that once fixed an individual inside an organization. Getting work done by means other than an employee was once considered a fringe event, but now leading organizations are accepting and taking advantage of the notion that talent has shown itself to be mutable. This book explores this phenomenon in detail and provides a new roadmap to help managers navigate this new environment.

The workplace has undergone many changes over the years, but the emerging trend away from traditional employment represents a massive shift that has profound implications for the business model of every organization, large or small. This book describes how management is changing, and how managers must adapt to survive.

  • Examine the dispersed organization and the changing nature of employment

  • Learn how work is becoming impermanent and individualized

  • Find new strategies for managing and leading

  • Get up to speed on the decision science for the new era

  • Workplaces evolve like biological beings; only the strong survive, and it's the competitive edge that ensures continued success. Lead the Work describes the new landscape, and shows you how to adapt and thrive.

    Table of contents

    1. Title Page
    2. Copyright
    3. Dedication
    4. Foreword
    5. Acknowledgments
    6. Part One: The Background
      1. Chapter 1: Leading Work—Not Managing Employees
        1. Work: Escaping Traditional Regular Full-Time Employment
        2. Work Is Leaving Organizations
        3. Talent Platforms Optimize Freelancing
        4. Seeing a Pattern in the Pieces
        5. Notes
      2. Chapter 2: Free Agent World
        1. Why Employment Evolved, and What's Evolving Next
        2. Problems in Job Land
        3. The Less “Regular” Full-Time Job
        4. The Starbucks Office and the Social Acceptability of Free Agency
        5. From Free Agent Nation to Free Agent World
        6. The Implications of Free Agent World
        7. The Remaining Barriers to World Domination
        8. Notes
      3. Chapter 3: Outsourcing and Alliances
        1. The Rise of Outsourcing
        2. The Rise of Alliances
        3. Notes
      4. Chapter 4: The Talent Platforms
        1. Upwork
        2. Tongal
        3. Topcoder
        4. The Less “Regular” Full-Time Job
        5. MTurk
        6. Notes
    7. Part Two: The Model
      1. Chapter 5: Leading the Work Beyond Employment: A Decision Framework
        1. How the Framework Deciphers the Work beyond Employment: The Case of Upwork
      2. Chapter 6: How IBM Leads the Work
        1. IBM's Open Talent Marketplace
        2. The Assignment Agency: Optimizing Work in a Single Unit
        3. The Lesson of IBM
        4. Notes
      3. Chapter 7: The Assignment: How Much to Deconstruct, Disperse, and Detach?
        1. How Small to Deconstruct?
        2. How Widely to Disperse?
        3. How Far from Employment to Detach?
        4. Unlocking the Code: Applying the Three Dimensions of the Assignment
        5. Conclusion
        6. Notes
      4. Chapter 8: The New Organization: Permeable, Interlinked, Collaborative, and Flexible
        1. Organizational Form
        2. How Easily to Permeate?
        3. How Strongly to Interlink?
        4. How Deeply to Collaborate?
        5. How Extensively to Flex?
        6. Making Decisions about the Organization: Permeate, Interlink, Collaborate, and Flex
        7. PICF Pictured
        8. How PICF Makes Leading the Work Easier
        9. Notes
      5. Chapter 9: The Reward: Short-Term, Individualized, and Imaginative
        1. Navigating Rewards beyond Employment
        2. How Short the Time Frame?
        3. How Specifically to Individualize?
        4. How Creatively to Imagine the Reward?
        5. The Value of the New Rewards for Leaders, Clients, and Workers
        6. Optimizing the Reward Dials to Lead the Work: Netflix, Foldit, and SAS
        7. Notes
    8. Part Three: Implications
      1. Chapter 10: Future HR Practices in Leading the Work
        1. HR Beyond Employment: Work Engineering
        2. The Talent Lifecycle
        3. Planning
        4. Attracting/Sourcing
        5. Selecting
        6. Deploying and Developing
        7. Rewarding
        8. Separating
        9. Leading the Work by “Rewiring” HR
        10. Notes
      2. Chapter 11: Future HR Outcomes in Leading the Work
        1. Engagement and Culture
        2. Leadership
        3. Diversity and Inclusion
        4. Performance
        5. The New HR Professional: Leader, Architect, Engineer, and Orchestrator of a Boundaryless Global Workplace
        6. Notes
      3. Chapter 12: Governance and Stakeholders
        1. A Perspective on the Future of Unions
        2. Some Closing Thoughts on Governance and Stakeholders
        3. Notes
      4. Chapter 13: Nations, Citizens, and Children
        1. The Bright Side of a World Beyond Employment
        2. The Dark Side of a World Beyond Employment
        3. Who Is Right, the Optimists or the Pessimists?
        4. What Should We Do?
        5. Conclusion
        6. Notes
    9. About the Authors
      1. Index
    10. End User License Agreement

    Product information

    • Title: Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment
    • Author(s):
    • Release date: August 2015
    • Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
    • ISBN: 9781119040040