Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment

Chapter 1Leading Work—Not Managing Employees

We create boxes to make sense of the world. We talk about organizations and jobs as boxes. Employees sit inside jobs that sit inside organizations. This is how we think things get done. In practice, it's never really so cut and dried, but the simple mental model works—or at least it used to.

Now we are seeing those comfortably familiar boxes begin to disintegrate.

Have you heard phrases like “nonemployment work arrangements,” “freelance talent platforms,” and “labor market intermediaries?” They reflect an emerging trend in which work and workers exist “beyond employment.” Many leaders have hardly noticed the rising frequency with which these terms crop up in discussions about the future of work. ...