in to a job and fail to recognize all of their skills. Before I started my own consulting firm nineteen years ago, I worked for Towers Perrin. While my role description was multi-faceted (Asia-Pac liaison for the Human Capital Management Practice; global thought leader in Career Management, Learning and Development, and Succession Planning), fundamentally I was a consultant in the Human Capital Consulting Practice. But my education and experience went far beyond the type of work we did within this practice area. I have a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, which included eight semesters of advanced statistical training and several courses in research methods. Earlier in my career, I had put this education into practice, and I was a deep expert in research methods.
A few years into my tenure with Towers Perrin, the company began to build a Measurement Practice, which was just forming in the west region. Despite my expertise, I was never allowed to participate in Measurement projects because I was not in that practice. Our organization was very siloed, and those barriers were rarely crossed. Lending my expertise to the Measurement Practice would have been a win-win. The firm would have more access to more expertise in the local market, and I would have gotten to do work that I think is, quite simply, fun.
The experience left a deep imprint on me as a talent management professional. Since that time, I have helped numerous companies (from Fortune 50 to smaller, privately held organizations) improve how they manage employee careers by helping them to deeply understand their own talent: people’s passions, aspirations, past experiences, education and career interests. In my experience, companies can do a better job of understanding all the skills employees have and taking full advantage of the expertise each individual offers, even if it’s not needed in their current role, and particularly during times of organizational transformations.
While Kelley points to her mom as a point of inspiration, I always love to hold up my husband, John Carter, as the ultimate example of a person with a portfolio career. Time and time again, he has understood what he is good at and where his passions lie, and then he has pivoted to doing something new that brings him energy. For example, based on his education in electrical engineering with an emphasis in acoustics, he began his career at Bose (he had studied under Amar Bose at MIT, so this is not a surprise). He quickly advanced in the ranks at Bose to become chief engineer, which gave him both general management skills and the financial acumen required to run a line of business.
With this experience, he pivoted to start a product development consulting firm. Once he realized that he had tired of the daily grind of consulting travel and he really loved managing a team, he sold his firm and became the CEO of a technology start-up. This experience helped him understand that what he really loved in this role was selling the technology the company developed to other companies. So he pivoted once again (and this was a big pivot) to become an investment banker, where he would help companies sell their company (and intellectual property assets) to other companies. After the 2008 downturn, he then decided to restart his product development consulting practice. This is a perfect example of an individual who has pivoted to entirely new careers to follow his interests and fully utilize all the skills he has. In the words of my dear friend Beverly Kaye, “Up is not the only way.”1 John’s portfolio career represents the type of career growth opportunities we are trying to make available for more people.
It is with these experiences that we wish to bring the Inside Gig into action inside your organizations. We hope this book serves as both inspiration and opportunity to take action.
INTRODUCTION
Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities—to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.
—Klaus Schwab
A NEW WAY OF OPERATING
AMYRIAD OF BOOKS DESCRIBE WHY, WHAT AND HOW work is being disrupted. Yet many companies are held captive by out-of-date tools, policies and practices that won’t get them through this disruptive change. It is time to break the cycle.
We are passionate about helping organizations change in ways that will improve both organizational performance and employee experience. For four years, we worked with more than 70 chief human resource officers (CHROs) and HR thought leaders on the CHREATE Project: The Global Consortium to Reimagine HR, Employment Alternatives, Talent and the Enterprise.1 Our collaboration over this time has informed our views about how the world of work is changing and how we need to alter the way we work in response. Specifically, we’ve realized that organization models need to evolve to be more responsive to the rapid shifts in skills, technology and business models. Our leadership roles in the CHREATE project gave us the opportunity to discuss these issues with forward-thinking HR leaders and test the ideas with business leaders of all types.
Since the CHREATE project, we have developed our own ideas about how to build a new talent operating model to help organizations apply the concept of the gig economy inside their firms. This model allows companies to share talent across boundaries by dynamically matching and deploying skills to work. We call it the Inside Gig. It creates competitive advantage through an employee experience that democratizes work, facilitates learning and unleashes internal capacity. We have put our ideas to the test within several organizations across different industries, and we have practical knowledge of how to make this change happen.
This book shares our ideas and experiences to help organizations understand how to move from traditional structures and ways of working into a new paradigm—one that better fits this rapidly shifting, dynamic business environment. It is also a playbook of ideas turned into actions to deploy a new talent operating model to address the needs and pace of work today and tomorrow. This playbook is based on six core principles that lay a foundation for operating in a new way, a way we believe will lead to increased productivity and greater levels of innovation.
THE INTERNAL NETWORK
In today’s competitive landscape, companies need to develop fresh approaches to managing talent by leveraging new technologies and responding to changing business models that redefine employment relationships. It is no longer enough to have the most appealing employer brand, or the best university relations programs or even a best-in-class workspace, because it has become less clear how we define the workforce.
When new methods for competing for human resources via “talent on demand” gave rise to platforms such as Topcoder and Upwork, the idea of a workforce made up of both employees and temporary talent began to make a lot of sense. However, the rise of machine automation and the Internet of Things (IoT) has fundamentally transformed not only the nature of work but the speed at which it’s necessary to learn and deploy new skills that are often in higher demand than supply. This remains true no matter how an organization plans to source talent. We must challenge what we thought was novel in talent management as recently as two to three years ago. Now it’s a race to acquire skills. And just when everything seems under control, another emerging skill domain becomes both critical and scarce. Without a crystal ball, today’s CEOs and CHROs are managing their most valuable competitive resource in the dark.
Enter a new era of competitive talent deployment via the internal gig network. Rather than acquire new skills by hiring from outside, the new and quite disruptive reality is that competitive advantage is now based on the ability to rapidly develop and better leverage the talent supply within a company. So, instead of focusing on competing for hot or in-demand skills that are in short supply and high demand, we suggest concentrating on what you have the power to control:
1.Bring visibility to the internal skills you have and any gaps there are (supply).
2.Learn to accurately predict what skills you might need (demand).
