The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise

by Ravin Jesuthasan, Tanuj Kapilashrami

Overview

How to design and activate the skills-based enterprise that is pivotal for navigating the “next” of work.


As the world navigates the rapid and disruptive effects of AI, climate change, and geopolitical conflicts, the world of work, too, needs to change. Jobs are giving way to skills as the currency of work to ensure a more agile, resilient, and flexible enterprise that cannot just respond but must thrive in the face of these challenges. This pivot from jobs to skills will require us to rethink everything we know about work. Building on his bestselling book Work without Jobs, Ravin Jesuthasan returns, this time with coauthor Tanuj Kapilashrami, an international human resources leader, to provide the framework organizations need to thrive in a world demanding perpetual reinvention.

Many business and management books focus on individual skills and competencies, the power of AI to make companies more agile through enabling “internal gigs,” and the societal and policy implications of the external gig economy. The cases in Reinventing the Organization, however, discuss how leading companies are reinventing themselves to be skills-based organizations and transforming value for customers, communities, and stakeholders. Jesuthasan and Kapilashrami describe the need for new organizational capabilities like work design and AI-driven resourcing, as well as the need to reinvent current work systems, to realize the agility, productivity, and value-creating potential of an organization where skills are at the center of its operating model.

Providing a step-by step guide for both new and seasoned leaders, this practical and informative book shows just how to future-proof organizations for the post–fourth industrial revolution world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262049238
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	825,474
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ravin Jesuthasan, a recognized futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and automation, is Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s steering committee on work and employment. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Work without Jobs (MIT Press), as well as Transformative HR, Lead the Work, and Reinventing Jobs.

Tanuj Kapilashrami is an international banker, currently Chief Strategy & Talent Officer at Standard Chartered Bank. She is a Non-Executive Director of the Board of Sainsbury's PLC, an Associate Non-Executive Director of the Board of NHS England, a member of the Asia House Board of Trustees, and a Board member of Autumn, an integrated digital wealth, health, and lifestyle solutions start-up. She has previously also served as a Board member of the UK Financial Services Skills Commission.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Client expectations, especially around sustainability, artificial intelligence, and technology, continue to evolve rapidly. Skills are increasingly at the center of our operating model in order to drive the organizational transformation that is required in order to keep pace. This drives the strategic decisions we make about how we align evolving demand signals from our clients with the induction, development and deployment of talent. Ravin and Tanuj have penned a business leader’s guide, backed by strong research, on what the journey toward  a skills-powered operating model can look like.”
—Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered
 
“While many look to technology and AI for the next generation of retail businesses, for us, it is about how we bring people, technology and AI together. The skills of our workforce will define success in the future. Jesuthasan and Kapilashrami have provided the clearest roadmap for keeping the ‘human’ in work.”
—Simon Roberts, CEO of Sainsbury’s
 
“The move to skills as the currency of work is a fundamental shift that upends the focus of the last century where work has primarily been organized around jobs. Jesuthasan and Kapilashrami are our clear-eyed guides on this challenging journey that has numerous benefits to businesses, workers and society. The Skills-Powered Organization provides a compelling and practical roadmap to leaders on how they can future proof their organizations by adopting a skills-first strategy, and advances thinking on what is set to be one of the most significant shifts in human capital over the next decade.”
—David Green, coauthor of Excellence in People Analytics: How to Use Workforce Data to Create Business Value; host of the Digital HR Leaders podcast; Managing Partner at Insight222
 
“How do organizations and societies navigate an AI- and technology driven world? Jesuthasan and Kapilashrami show us the way in this insightful book. They take us on a fascinating journey that shows why skills and not jobs or degrees need to be the currency for an equitable and inclusive future of work.”
—Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organization
 
“The Skills-Powered Organization is an important and eye-opening book with the potential to transform the organizations of the future. The authors present a world where, now more than ever, skills-powered organizations foster agility and teamwork across the growing number of areas of expertise that require cross-boundary collaboration.”
—Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School; author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well
 
“The world of work requires a reset. Our traditional beliefs about jobs are being transformed by AI and new ways of working. Jesuthasan and Kapilashrami are our clear-eyed guides for navigating this new world of work and its core building blocks of skills instead of jobs so we can continue to learn, lead and thrive.”
—Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO, Thrive Global