different experiences that build new skills. Gaining access to micro-learning opportunities facilitates skill acquisition and career growth more quickly than yesterday’s approaches. Bite-size on-the-job learning and online learning have become the new normal for rapid skill development.
Principle No. 4: Democratize the Work
Millennials bring to the workforce a new set of values and expectations along with an inclination to be more entrepreneurial in nature and more in control of how, when and where they work. This drives a need for a more consumer-like experience, not unlike the ways employees experience their personal lives. They get to choose, for example, which airline to fly and when they want to go to fit their individual needs. When employees are allowed more freedom and choice in how they contribute in the workplace, they can select work that suits them. This flexibility helps employees get unstuck from narrowly defined roles and the boredom that comes with doing the same set of tasks day after day. They are able to use the full breadth of skills they can contribute to their organizations. Using technology and artificial intelligence, companies can automatically match employees to potential opportunities, which opens up possibilities beyond the old boys’ network, which only gives access to new projects to those who are politically connected within the company.
Principle No. 5: Create an Agile Organization
A move away from a traditional hierarchy toward more project-based teams can increase a company’s responsiveness to changing business dynamics. Historically, organizations have been built to be efficient and effective, which was appropriate in a time of predictability. Organizational hierarchy was a natural outgrowth of this desire to be efficient. But the resulting business models created strong silos that discourage cross-boundary collaboration (e.g., sharing information across marketing and engineering). In today’s era of unpredictability and constant business model disruption, organizations must be designed for speed, agility and adaptability to respond to evolving business priorities and customer demands. Part of designing for adaptability is a shift away from hierarchical structures toward models where work is accomplished in teams. Using self-managed work teams and providing appropriate support structures, the management and the workforce become more fluid and responsive to business needs while remaining focused on the goals the teams are designed to achieve.
Principle No. 6: Bust the Functional Silos
Breaking down organizational silos allows for cross-functional collaboration within the company to foster innovation. The resulting cross-pollination of ideas ensures that the product or service is representative of customers in a diverse marketplace. Individuals from different disciplines look at business challenges in different ways. When teams that represent a variety of disciplines focus on the same problem, diverse ideas can be generated and then combined to achieve novel solutions. One of the greatest benefits of cross-functional collaboration is that employees are exposed to a different part of the business and thus gain greater insight into how the company operates as a whole.
A NEW TALENT OPERATING MODEL THAT LEVERAGES TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE AGILITY
Now is the time to disrupt the existing 20th-century operating models and create a new talent operating model that helps companies optimize their internal resources. With the advances made in artificial intelligence and machine learning, there are new and effective tools to deploy talent within organizations. But the technology only enables the process.
We believe the new talent operating model is the most critical component of the Inside Gig. It is about changing the way a company operates to best use and reskill the talent it currently has. To employ talent in a different and more dynamic way, modifications are needed in all areas of the talent operating model: culture, leadership, ways of working, HR programs and processes, team development processes and so on. However, you can’t simply flip the switch and change to a new talent operating model overnight. Our approach lays out a 10-year road map detailing how an organization can build on smaller modifications to shift to the future of work.
Former U.S. president Barack Obama once said: “Change in the abstract is easy.”5 Truer words have seldom been spoken. In Part Four: The Inside Gig in Action, we lay out our recommendations for making a successful transition to a new talent operating model. We share case studies from two organizations—HERE Technologies and Tata Communications—that have made this transition, so you can learn from their experiences of successful implementations.
We believe the future of work will look very different than it does today. Organizations must adapt to become more agile as they shift and change based on new technologies, new skills and new business competitors. This book is a guide to one path to take in, as we like to say, “tiptoeing into the future of work.” You can follow this path to create companies that are more productive and more innovative, while offering employee experiences that drive high levels of engagement and organizational performance.
PART ONE
The Time for the Inside Gig Has Come
In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.
—Walt Disney
CHAPTER 1
Disrupting the Talent Operating Model
Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking, we can get on with creating the future.
—James Bertrand
WHAT IS A TALENT OPERATING MODEL DESIGNED TO DO?
HOW OFTEN DO YOU THINK OF THE OPERATING model your company is built on? You might think about your car’s operating system more than you do about how work flows and gets done—especially when the “check engine” light comes on. Let’s begin by discussing current operating models and then open the door to our ideas about what change is possible and even imminent in the way work is done.
Organizations are built on operating models and systems designed to deliver value to their customers and shareholders. An operating model links strategy, organization design and execution. While many operating model designs can be found in various books and articles, for our purposes we have adopted the one shown in Figure 1.1 Operating Model.
Figure 1.1 Operating Model
Marcia Blenko, Eric Garton and Ludovico Mottura, “Winning Operating Models That Convert Strategy to Results,” Bain & Company, December 10, 2014, www.bain.com/insights/winning-operating-models-that-convert-strategy-to-results.
In this model, strategy and values are defined by an organization’s leadership team; they provide the foundation upon which a company operates. The first three areas of the operating model—structure, accountabilities and governance—are owned by the executive leadership team. Structure refers to the high-level organization chart that sets out how a company organizes itself to take advantage of scale and expertise. It provides an understanding of how resources are organized and coordinated—functional lines of business versus matrixed structures; global centers of operation or distributed authority to regions. Accountabilities delineate the roles and responsibilities for the organization’s primary
