Work Disrupted E-Book

Jeff Schwartz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 395

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

If you only read one book on the future of work, Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work should be that book. The future of work swept in sooner than expected, accelerated by Covid-19, creating an urgent need for new maps, new mindsets, new strategies-- and most importantly, a trusted guide to take us on this journey. That guide is Jeff Schwartz. A founding partner of Deloitte Consulting's Future of Work practice, Schwartz brings clarity, humor, wisdom, and practical advice to the future of work, a topic surrounded by misinformation, fear, and confusion. With a fundamental belief in the power of human innovation and creativity, Schwartz presents the key issues, critical choices, and potential pitfalls that must be on everyone's radar. * If you're anxious about robots taking away your job in the future, you will take comfort in the realistic perspective, fact-based insights, and practical steps Schwartz offers. * If you're not sure where to even begin to prepare, follow his level-headed advice and easy-to-follow action plans. * If you're a business leader caught between keeping up, while also being thoughtful about the next moves, you will appreciate the playbook directed at you. * If you're wondering how Covid-19 will change how and where you will work, Work Disrupted has you covered. Written in a conversational style by Schwartz, with Suzanne Riss, an award-winning journalist and book author, Work Disrupted offers a welcome alternative to books on the topic that lack a broad perspective or dwell on the problems rather than offer solutions. Timely and insightful, the book includes the impact of Covid-19 on our present and future work. Interviews with leading thinkers on the future of work offer additional perspectives and guidance.Cartoons created for the book by leading business illustrator Tom Fishburne bring to life the reader's journey and the complex issues surrounding the topic. Told from the perspective of an economist, management advisor, and social commentator, Work Disrupted offers hope--and practical advice--exploring such topics as: How we frame what lies ahead is a critical navigational tool. Discover the signposts that can serve as practical guides for individuals who have families to support, mortgages to pay, and want to stay gainfully employed no matter what the future holds. The importance of recognizing the rapidly evolving opportunities in front of us. Learn how to build resilience--in careers, organizations, and leaders--for what lies ahead. Why exploring new mental models helps us discover the steps we need to take to thrive. Individuals can decide how to protect their livelihood while businesses and public institutions can consider how they can lead and support workforces to thrive in twenty-first-century careers and work. "Jeff's marvelous book is a roadmap for the new world of work with clear signposts. His insights will help readers discover opportunities, take action, and find hope in uncertain times. The ideas are fresh, beautifully crafted, and immediately applicable. This is not only a book to be read, but savored and used." --Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; Partner, the RBL Group; Co-author Reinventing the Organization

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Advanced Praise for Work Disrupted

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Our Collective Pause

Our Long and Winding Careers

Our Frame

Our Challenge

Our Opportunity

CHAPTER 1: From Fear to Growth 

Panic or Pivot

Racing with the Machines

We Have Choices

From Disruption to Innovation to Creation

Defining the Future of Work

Maps That Matter

A Twenty-first-century Sherpa

New Technology Has Always Created More Jobs

Growth and Innovation

Signposts for the Future

Notes

PART I: Find Opportunity in a Time of Accelerated Change

CHAPTER 2: People and Machines Working Together

Where Robots Come From

Meaningful Work

Superminds: Humans Working With and Next to AI

Humans + Machines in Healthcare

How to Keep a Job While Racing with Machines

From Superminds to Superjobs and Superteams

Notes

CHAPTER 3: Making Alternative Work a Meaningful Opportunity

The Rise of Alternative Work

The High Price of Flexibility

Identity and Work Routines

Making Alternative Work a Meaningful Opportunity

Notes

CHAPTER 4: Working from Almost Anywhere

Wearing Our Work

The Evolution of Virtual Offices

The Evolution of Physical Offices

Collaborating Across Platforms Inside Organizations and Ecosystems

Finding Human Connection

From Office Wars to “Forever” Remote Work

Notes

PART II: Build Long-Term Resilience for Uncertain Futures

CHAPTER 5: Plan for Many Careers, Not One

More Sliding and STEMpathy

From Flat Water to Whitewater

Bulletproof Your Career

Innovative Approaches to Learning

Learning Precampus and Beyond: The University of Everywhere

Preparing for a Portfolio of Careers: Valuing “Human Capabilities”

Transitions: Learning in the Flow of Life

Notes

CHAPTER 6: The Rise of Teams

Silo Busting

The Rise of Networks of Teams

Market-Oriented Ecosystems

Agility and Adaptability for Resilience

Notes

CHAPTER 7: Leaders as Coaches and Designers 

Leading as Coaches

Leading as Psychologists

Leading as Cultural Anthropologists

Leading as Designers

Leading in the Digital Age

Leading in Teams

Leading in an Age of Paradoxes

Dreaming and Leading in the Language of the Future

Notes

PART III: Playbooks for Growth

CHAPTER 8: Carpe Diem

Seven Key Mindset Shifts for Individuals

Preparing for the Open Road

Tips for the Open Road

Taking Advantage of the Open Road

Notes

CHAPTER 9: Create Opportunity

Seven Key Mindset Shifts for Business Leaders

Choosing Value Creation and Impact

Leading Through Paradoxes

Navigating the Future by Creating It

Notes

CHAPTER 10: Set New Agendas

Seven Key Mindset Shifts for Citizens and Communities

Bridges to the Future

Advice for Twenty-first-century Citizens and Communities

The Social Enterprise

Start Where We Live

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

About the Illustrator

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Advanced Praise for Work Disrupted

“Jeff's fresh work codifies the possibilities—and uncertainties—ahead as organizations everywhere struggle to reshape employment models fueled by the blistering pace of technology advances. Just as importantly, WORK DISRUPTED offers pragmatic, agile solutions for the ever-evolving next normal workforce and workplace.”

—Cathy Benko, Member, Board of Directors, NIKE, Inc.; former Vice Chairman, Deloitte LLP; and best-selling author of Mass Career Customization and The Corporate Lattice

“As the Future of Work becomes the ‘new normal' - finding navigation tools will be crucial. This is exactly what WORK DISRUPTED offers. With a range of case studies and industry insights it brings much needed clarity in these unprecedented times.”

—Professor Lynda Gratton, founder of HSM and author, The New Long Life

“In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the Coronavirus pandemic seemed to challenge everything we know about work. In WORK DISRUPTED, Jeff Schwartz delivers decades of expertise and sheds new light on the topics we’re all grappling with — the intersection of humanity and AI, where and what work looks like today and tomorrow, the rising importance of teams and many fresh nuances on the shifts we can make as leaders. This is a timely must read for managers and associates alike.”

—Jeffrey J. Jones II, President and CEO of H&R Block

“The far reaching impact of the novel coronavirus, the acceleration of digital transformation in our personal and professional lives, and seminal events concerning racial equality and social justice make the case that we need new mental models to confront with challenges to the future of work, careers, business, sports, and education in the years ahead. WORK DISRUPTED provides a compelling, enjoyable, and thought providing journey through the opportunities we are all facing as individuals, organizational leaders, and citizens. Whether you are relating Jeff’s research to a new business model, culture change, civic engagement, diversity and inclusion, or are simply bringing it to a boardroom discussion, this is a timely and important read which will help shift thinking to what’s next, what’s possible, and what choices we want to, and can, make.”

—Cathy Engelbert, retired CEO of Deloitte and Commissioner of the WNBA

“The future of work does not fit in the containers, or structures or mindsets of the past. This book not only explains why but then shows how work will change and then lays out a map to follow to ensure your company and your career will thrive. It's a book both provocative and practical.”

—Rishad Tobaccowala. Author of "Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data" and former Chief Strategist and Growth Officer of Publicis Groupe

“Essential reading for anyone who wants to harness their own power to reinvent themselves for the future world of work. I wish I'd had WORK DISRUPTED when I was navigating my own professional reinvention, from journalism to politics to entrepreneurship. Jeff explores the importance of continuing to learn and grow through careers that will include many chapters.”

—Dorie Clark, Executive Education Faculty, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business; author, Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future

“WORK DISRUPTED is a bracing, engaging tour through what the future has in store for work and what that means for all of us. Jeff Schwartz paints a picture of what challenges, opportunities, and surprises are ahead, and how to adaptively embrace them. This is an important book for anyone wondering how work and organizations will evolve in the coming years.”

—Amy Wrzesniewski, Professor, Michael H. Jordan Professor of Management, Yale University

“WORK DISRUPTED is a must-read playbook for the Future of Work. It gives us a clear path forward in reimagining how we work — so we can achieve better results and find a greater sense of purpose in the face of rapid change.”

—Matthew Breitfelder, Senior Partner and Global Head of Human Capital, Apollo Global Management

”In this time of significant disruption in the wake of COVID-19, digital disruption and the future of work are top of the agenda for business leaders and students. WORK DISRUPTED lays out a comprehensive, highly readable, and inspiring view of how people, technology, and teams will prepare us for the future of work, business, and life.”

—Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane, Professor of Information Systems, Boston College, Carroll School of Management, author, The Technology Fallacy

“WORK DISRUPTED resonates with the reader by seamlessly balancing facts with empathy and broad research insights with personal experiences in a single book that is of the moment, draws insights from the past, and is relevant to the future.”

—Dr. Mukti Khaire, Girish and Jaidev Reddy, Professor of Practice Cornell Tech and Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

“If you want an up-to-the-second overview of how work is changing, this is it. WORK DISRUPTED draws upon a remarkably broad range of ideas and weaves them into an engaging, compelling, and very practical view of the future of work. From insights about the role of computers and freelance work to detailed playbooks for individuals, business leaders, and communities, this book brings deep theory and riveting personal stories together into detailed guidance for how to navigate these turbulent times. It’s not just enlightening; it’s also inspiring.”

—Thomas W. Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, author, Superminds

“The world of business today is increasingly collaborative, complex, and hybridized. Jeff Schwartz’s WORK DISRUPTED is a deep dive into how to future-proof our career readiness, and a perceptive analysis of next-gen work that recognizes the importance of cross-functional thinking – and doing – to thriving in new economies.”

—Erica Muhl, Dean and Professor of Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation, USC Iovine and Young Academy

“I absolutely loved WORK DISRUPTED. This insightful book is jammed with thoughtful ideas and useful action regarding how we will re-construct the future world of work. We have choice! This is a must-read book for all future business, education and government leaders.”

“Edgy read … thoughtful and provocative … worth the investment.”

—Annmarie Neal, Psy.D., Partner and Chief Talent Officer, H&F, Former Chief Talent Officer Cisco Systems, Author, Leading from the Edge

“WORK DISRUPTED is an indispensable roadmap for business leaders for the future — how we will work, how we will lead, and how organizations themselves must transform in the face of a rapidly changing landscape."

—Doug Ready, Senior Lecturer in Organization Effectiveness, MIT Sloan School of Management

JEFF SCHWARTZ

WITH SUZANNE RISS

ILLUSTRATED BY TOM FISHBURNE

WORK DISRUPTED

OPPORTUNITY, RESILIENCE, AND GROWTH IN THE ACCELERATEDFUTURE OF WORK

Copyright © 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

Cartoons and Illustrations © Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist.com.

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ISBN 9781119763505 (ePDF)

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This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Arlene and Ira, who gave me the wings to live a life of adventure and find work I love, including writing this book, and to my daughters, Rachel and Biz, who now get to be the explorers as they navigate the future of work, along with all of you.

Foreword

A journey like the future of work requires more than a roadmap; it requires a trusted guide. A guide who doesn't jump to answers that don't really exist, but rather frames the questions that must be asked. A guide who has the sensibility—the combination of wisdom, humor, and curiosity—to give you confidence that although the mountain is steep, the ascent will be completely worth it. A guide whose love of exploration reminds us at every turn what is possible. For me, and for so many of our clients in the world of Human Capital, that guide is Jeff Schwartz.

As the leader of Deloitte's Global Human Capital practice, the largest human capital consultancy in the world, I'm proud to have Jeff help spearhead our future of work efforts. And as a new mother, I'm comforted to have Jeff help me ask the right questions to prepare my son for the future—a future that elicits hope, fear, and excitement all wrapped into one. I met Jeff about 15 years ago, when we first worked together, launching a forum on the evolving Chief Human Resources Officer agenda. The discussions that emerged were dynamic investigations of the developing role of HR leaders as future-of-work strategists, risk advisors, cultural stewards, and business partners. My first impression of Jeff was that he fully leaned into “what's next.” This has continued to be true, whether he was establishing one of the first international management consultancies in Moscow or building a technology adoption practice for global SAP projects in Brussels. Jeff's curiosity and explorer temperament have made him especially well-suited to identify and illuminate promising paths and opportunities. He also enjoys sharing new ideas, as he has done for a decade as founder and global editor of Deloitte's influential Global Human Trends Report, a leading longitudinal survey on insights and trends for workforce, organization, talent, and HR issues.

For those of you who have not met Jeff or read his musings on the future of work, this book is the perfect opportunity to gain an introduction to a man who didn't just jump on the future-of-work bandwagon, but rather helped put it in motion. For those of you who know Jeff, sit back and enjoy his famous stories and anecdotes that draw you in and bring to life concepts and theories that may have seemed too academic or conceptual to be put into organizational reality. This is what Jeff knows how to do so incredibly well and what has made him one of my personal guides as I have navigated a long, productive career in the Human Capital space.

Throughout Work Disrupted, Jeff becomes a twenty-first-century Sherpa, presenting us with the maps we need to thrive in the future of work. Like any great guide, he not only presents us with a view of the destination, but with the guideposts we need to follow along the way. He keeps us intrigued about the opportunities ahead, and by sharing the history of how we got here, he increases our own understanding of the future, giving us the gift of resilience by using his knowledge and experience to prepare us for what's coming. That's because, at his core, Jeff is a teacher—someone who has an unparalleled thirst for knowledge, and an even a stronger desire to share that knowledge. I'm just honored to have been one of many he encountered and stopped to educate along the way.

As the future of work has turned from an idea discussed amongst futurists to a reality now accepted by even the most change-resistant organizational leaders, we need teachers and guides more than ever. It now feels as though there are more questions than answers, more unknowns than certainties, and more opportunities to shape the future in completely new directions without the constraints that we find so often in the world of work. I feel an urgency to make sense of our fast-changing world and discern the opportunities that lie ahead, especially for my son Robbie, almost two as I write this. I can imagine no one better to guide us through the disruption at our doorsteps than Jeff, teacher, Sherpa, knowledge seeker, and pathfinder. The future is uncertain, but that's no longer something to fear. With Jeff's guidance, it's something to embrace. There is no doubt that the future of work is here, and no better time to let the journey begin than with Jeff as our guide.

Erica Volini

Global Human Capital Leader

Deloitte Consulting

Introduction

The difficulty is not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

—John Maynard Keynes

I've been traveling somewhere in the world for my work every month—often every week—for the past 20 years; that is, until Covid-19 stopped me in my tracks. Suddenly, I had to pause. All at once, the packing, the rushing, and the business travel ended. I had no idea that my trip to Israel in early March, leading a global panel on the future of work, would be the last time I would board an international flight in 2020. A few days after returning home to New York City from Tel Aviv on March 3, my workplace relocated from the Deloitte Consulting offices at Rockefeller Center to my small home office on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As I sheltered in place, along with the rest of the world, tracking the sobering devastation wrought by the pandemic, I had the chance—perhaps for the first time in my career—to stay in one place for longer than a few weeks and reflect on the changes underfoot and ahead.

My work on this book had been well underway before the global pandemic took hold in early 2020. However, there's no doubt that it brought a new sense of urgency to my exploration of the future of work that had begun seven years earlier. The need to shift to new ways of working, new frames, new expectations, and new possibilities was accelerated by the pandemic. At a time that technologies, including artificial intelligence, are ubiquitous, and, to some, represent a threat to jobs and livelihoods, we have also witnessed our fundamental vulnerability as humans exposed by a virus that has already killed more people in the United States than all wars since World War II. What I have discovered about the future of work, as a global and U.S. pioneer and leader for the Future of Work practice with Deloitte Consulting, in interviews with dozens of leading experts in the field, and in my conversations with business leaders across the globe, is that, above all else, it celebrates our essential human capabilities—innovation, creation, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, empathy, caring, and relationships.

Though the future of work is shorthand for some for “the robots are taking our jobs,” what has emerged for many is a growing belief that innovation and creativity will indeed rule the day. We can only automate processes, reduce costs, and increase speed so much—eventually we will need to create something new. We will need to innovate. And that's what many of us did, in ways small and large, during the Covid-19 outbreak. I continued to work with clients and colleagues around the world, no longer in person but over Zoom, WebEx, and similar platforms, while spending every evening and weekend researching and writing this book. This was a time to take stock, feel the discomfort of uncertainty, adapt, and seek out opportunities to do things in new ways. Very quickly, with my colleagues at Deloitte, we figured out how to continue to do our work, remotely, and better. As with the adoption of any new technology, we started by lifting and shifting what we'd done before, to Zoom, Teams, Slack, and other collaborative technologies. Then we saw we could do more. Things we thought we could never do remotely, we did, such as launching large technology systems for organizations without having hundreds of consultants onsite. We discovered we could deliver successful, interactive, online workshops with breakout groups; collaborate on virtual whiteboards; and even brainstorm virtually. We also learned more about each other as we worked from our homes. As I would share with my teams, if we don't hear children and dogs in the background, something is missing. Our lives should be evident in the flow of our work. That's something we don't want to lose as we move into our new normal.

Our Collective Pause

The pause, the uncertainty, the need to adapt remind us that our lives are stories of disruption, adaptability, and survival. I was born the year after the first satellite launched from Earth (Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957), watched the first men walking on the moon when I was 11 (the United States in 1969), and witnessed the first commercial space launches to the International Space Station in 2020. My career has extended across stock market crashes, Y2K, 9/11, the Great Recession, and pandemics (H1NI, Ebola, and Covid-19). And, yes, technology. I wrote my college papers on electric typewriters, before welcoming tablets with the processing power of supercomputers. I've worked as a researcher, teacher, banker, government agency program director, consultant, writer, and professor. I've lived in the United States, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Russia, Belgium, India, and Israel. I realize that I've been learning lessons in adaptability throughout my career. I've shifted my expectations and adjusted to what was occurring, not what I'd imagined would come next.

My daughters received similar lessons in adaptability when Covid-19 upended their routines. My daughter Rachel, 28, a graduate MBA student at Emory University in Atlanta, shifted to virtual learning for the second half of the semester, along with 1.6 billion other college students around the world, and then she took a virtual summer internship. My younger daughter, Bizzie, 25, was three weeks into training as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, when she, along with 7,000 volunteers and trainees around the world, evacuated back to the United States. This was the first time since its founding in 1961 that the entire U.S. Peace Corps returned home. I watched my daughters accept the shifts and grow more resilient.

Our Long and Winding Careers

I learned lessons in adaptability early in my career. In fact, the start of many of my jobs coincided with major world events. After graduate school, I was in the middle of onboarding training for a position as a corporate finance associate at Chemical's Investment Bank, now part of JPMorgan Chase, in October 1987, when the stock market experienced its largest one-day percentage drop since the Great Depression. A few years later, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, I took a leave from my “business” life to become one of the first associate directors of the U.S. Peace Corps as it launched in Russia, following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. I joined Deloitte on September 1, 2001, just days before the 9/11 attacks. Seven years later, we lived through the Great Recession and the global financial crisis.

The challenges were offset by career high points. These include leading the consulting practices for Deloitte in India, both global delivery teams and professionals working with some of India's largest companies. I worked for Reliance Industries from 2011 to 2016, as the company launched Jio (which means “live life” in Hindi), now the largest 4G and mobile company in India. The company introduced its customer operations in September 2016, and by the summer of 2020 had almost 400 million customers, becoming India's largest telecom company with a focus on mobile 4G connectivity. During this time, India was a country in transition—both in its domestic economy and its relationship with the global economy. I was able to contribute in a small way to the creation of the world's second largest 4G telecom company and the rapid introduction to India of smart mobile and app services.

Our Frame

I didn't study the future of work or adaptability in school—nobody does. In retrospect, I see that I've been remarkably prepared to help business leaders understand the future world of work in part because of what I learned as an undergraduate and graduate student studying history, philosophy, and government, and then business and economics, and, perhaps most of all, as a result of experiences exposing and preparing me for the breadth of what has been unfolding during our lifetimes. In 1983 I was completing my service as a Peace Corps teacher in Nepal, one of the world's most beautiful and poorest countries, where I taught math and science in a village with no running water or electricity, a village that was a day's walk to a road. Two years later, in the summer of 1985, I was a summer associate in corporate finance on Park Avenue in New York. Somewhere between Nepal and New York City, I'd been lucky to have been exposed to vastly different faces of the human experience.

What I continue to learn, and what I hope my daughters are learning, is that how we frame the world, what we think is relevant and possible, shapes what we can do and what we actually do. New times and new conditions create new opportunities. Unless we reshape our views—our time horizons, relationships, speed—we will miss opportunities. For us as individuals, and as organizations and communities, Covid-19 has indeed been an accelerator to the future. But the future was already underway, with opportunities for people and machines to work together, and careers composed of chapters of reinvention. To embrace all that's possible, a new mindset—a growth mindset—is critical.

The concept of a growth mindset, developed by psychologist Carol Dweck, speaks to our capacity for change and growth. She contrasts a growth mindset with a limiting view, what she calls a fixed mindset. Her research demonstrates that much of what we think we understand about ourselves and what we can do comes from our mindset. This can either propel us forward or prevent us from fulfilling our potential. According to Dweck, whether or not we're aware of our mental models, they can have a profound effect on our skill acquisition, personal relationships, professional success, and many other dimensions of life. People with a growth mindset believe that their most fundamental abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. This view builds a love of learning and a resilience that will serve us well in the future world of work. People with fixed mindsets believe they're good or bad at something based on their inherent nature, closing out the possibility that they can acquire new skills and capabilities. Similarly, editor and anthropologist Gillian Tett teaches us that the way we label and categorize the world indeed influences what we think we can do.

Our Challenge

As Covid-19 proves to be a storm hovering for longer than many of us expected, I remind myself that it has been during times of disruption and stress that we've seen some of the biggest changes in our economy and society. We're living through a period of pivoting and acceleration. Covid-19 has dramatically challenged us to think about the future that we want to create. Reflecting upon the future of work over the last half dozen years, I've been particularly mindful of the fact that, all too often, we've viewed the future of work as a way to produce the same work, using the same work processes, with little bits of new technology thrown in. However, the real opportunities lie not in doing the same things that we're doing today, only a little bit better and a little bit faster. The real opportunities lie in the exploration and journey that allow us to discover how we can do things differently. How can we produce different results with more impact and more meaning? How can we create new combinations of human–machine teams reinforcing the unique capabilities of each? How can we create more flexible ways of working for ourselves and members of the workforce? How can we create workplaces that combine our ability to work virtually and in person? And, finally, how we can create a future of work that not only creates economic value but reflects our social and communal values as well? This book is an attempt to explore these possibilities and advance this dialog.

The fundamental question Work Disrupted raises, is what lens are we choosing as we look ahead? Are we viewing the future as an extension of a predictable past, or are we viewing the future as a broad set of new opportunities that will reflect whatever we think is possible? In other words, are we viewing the future through a fixed or growth mindset? Are we doing more of the same, only faster and cheaper (fixed), or are we creating and innovating? If I were asking this question in 1910 or 1920, I might be asking if you plan to work for the railroad or for the upstart automotive companies.

Our Opportunity

In these pages I share some of what I've experienced and reflected upon, acting as a twenty-first-century Sherpa, as we navigate the accelerating future of work—or the beginning of what I think of as the Human Era. The era has been labeled the Anthropocene, the current geological age, viewed as a period in which human activity has been the leading influence on our climate and our environment. One of the debates coming to the fore that economists have been having for many decades is the interplay of technological innovation and creative destruction. Increasingly, when I look at the history of economic growth, I see that it has been in the process of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creative disruption that we've actually pushed forward what it means to be human, and to create meaning and impact.

I wrote this book to share my view that the future of work, a source of fear for so many, is actually about the opportunities, the resilience, and the growth that we can leverage to do things differently, to establish new priorities and new patterns, and to create a new order in our own lives, and in our communities. Work disrupted is in no way about things stopping. It reflects the continual movement and evolution of how we work. Disruption is hard. It challenges us to change how we frame and prepare for the future, reminding us that a preferred future requires new mindsets—an openness to new ways of working.

The intersection of the future of work and what we're now experiencing as the Covid-19 era represents a fault line in our lives, a uniquely instructive moment. We're invited to reimagine how we work, our educational institutions, and how we build our careers, our companies, and our communities. Adopting new mindsets and building new capabilities may be one of the critical challenges of our time. My hope as you read this book is that you gain a better sense of the opportunities that await you, the resilience that will serve you, and the growth paths that you can pursue in your own life to create, innovate, and thrive.

Jeff Schwartz

New York

August, 2020

CHAPTER 1From Fear to Growth : Mindsets and Playbooks for Twenty-first-century Careers and Work

When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.

—Paulo Coelho, novelist1

When the coronavirus pandemic took root in the United States, we entered a time machine to the future.2 Practically overnight, people in industries that had restricted telecommuting found themselves crawling out of bed and dialing into Zoom conference calls from their couch. For many teachers, bankers, lawyers, even NASA aerospace engineers, the coronavirus crisis was a trial run for remote work.3 With most of the country under orders to shelter in place, many business leaders pivoted on a dime to reimagine products, reassign workers, reshape supply chains, and reconfigure operations to join the heated race to save lives. Near the top of the critical list of needs was the demand for ventilators, potentially hundreds of thousands of ventilators. In an unprecedented move, Ford and General Motors shut down car production and went into the ventilator production business.4

Overhauling production and ramping up that production beyond anything your company has ever done before are feats of magic that business leaders have known they would be expected to perform in the future world of work. When Anne-Marie Slaughter, the chief executive of New America, said the coronavirus exposed “an opportunity to make the changes we knew we were going to have to make eventually,” and also “deep fissures and failures in our culture,” she captured both the sense of inevitability and vulnerability that many business leaders were experiencing.5 They knew the future world of work would require boosting efficiency, proceeding at warp speed, seeking talent and expertise outside the walls of their organization, and a heavy dose of resourcefulness. However, they did not realize the future would arrive wholesale and so soon. After all, in survey after survey, business leaders consistently reported they did not feel ready for the future of work.6

Enter the coronavirus pandemic, an abrupt fast-forward to the future of work. Changes expected to take decades, occurred within weeks. Slaughter, a former director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State, declared that with the pandemic “the future of work is here.”7 Indeed, the coronavirus has illustrated both the extreme challenges and inspiring possibilities ushered in by a future that swept in sooner than expected.

Panic or Pivot

Around the country, business leaders were among the first to act during the pandemic. Why the need for so many ventilators? The coronavirus often kills through the lungs as patients develop Covid-19 pneumonia.8 Ventilators help the sickest patients stay alive by providing extra oxygen to keep their lungs pumping once they fill with fluid. General Motors scrambled to train workers and locate the 700 parts needed to create a prototype ventilator, sourced from about 80 global suppliers.9 Leaders at the car manufacturer were well-suited to the challenge: Assembling a 700-part ventilator sounds daunting but cars are typically assembled from about 2,500 parts. Auto makers have already demonstrated their ability to mass produce technical equipment quickly. However, the usual pace of production had to spring into overdrive. What normally might take months had to be done in weeks. They had to produce more, faster than ever before. At stake were the lives of acute Covid-19 patients.

Many companies relinquished business-as-usual approaches to tackle a variety of coronavirus-related shortages, including not only vital medical equipment but personal protective equipment (PPE) and hand sanitizer. In New York City, many doctors and nurses improvised, using trash bags to replace medical scrubs and protective gowns. The Gap Inc., parent company of Banana Republic and Old Navy, shifted its factories to create protective cloth masks, gowns, and scrubs. Fanatics, an online seller of Major League Baseball gear, also started producing masks and gowns.10 Meanwhile, Pernod Ricard, the alcohol brand, donated pure alcohol for hand sanitizer. French luxury powerhouse LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, and other high-end brands, also entered the hand-sanitizer business, using its perfume and make-up factories to produce hydroalcoholic gels.11

To keep their doors open and their employees on the payroll, many companies changed direction, navigated red tape, and devised innovative approaches. The ability to pivot rather than panic allowed some people to apply their capabilities in new ways.12 Small mom-and-pop shops like Essations, started by Stephanie Luster's parents almost 40 years ago, could not stay in the business of shipping hair products to salons. When salons shut their doors, after city after city ordered businesses to close and social distancing rules to take effect, Luster had an idea. She would sell directly to customers who were sheltering but still wanted their hair to look styled for Zoom video calls for work. What if the stylists created home-hair-care videos that featured Essations hair products and then posted them on Facebook? At the end of the tutorial, the stylist could provide a code customers could use to get a discount on the Essations website. Essations would know from the code which stylist had sent the customer, and the stylist could get a cut of the sale. Many stylists liked the idea and made videos featuring Essations' products, allowing online product sales to increase by 20 percent.13

Some businesses soared during the pandemic. Instacart, the grocery pick-up and delivery service, hired more than 300,000 full-time employees in one month to meet the increased demand at the start of the pandemic, with plans to hire 250,000 more.14 However, a far greater number of businesses and individuals had to change direction to survive. Furloughed hotel call center operators found themselves subcontracted to operate state and city call centers. Uber launched a courier service so that drivers who could no longer transport passengers could continue to work by delivering packages, medicine, and pet supplies.15 Spiffy, the U.S. on-demand car cleaning company, rolled-out a service to sanitize and disinfect facilities and properties.16

Innovation and experimentation will continue to be lifelines as we transition to a very different world. Author William Gibson reminded us more than 15 years ago that, “The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.”17 An important corollary is that the future comes at us in accelerated bursts. The coronavirus is one such accelerator to the future. We have witnessed similar accelerators in recent years, with the great financial crisis of 2008–2009 and Y2K. The challenge is how we navigate and take advantage of these sudden shifts.

Racing with the Machines

“Are robots really coming for our jobs?” a longtime client asked me in hushed tones, his brow furrowed, his voice filled with anxiety.

His business partner leaned in, reframing his question with another. “Won't new technologies relieve us of all the boring, repetitive tasks so we can focus on more meaningful work?” she suggested in a hopeful tone that quickly grew impatient. “Well, which is it?”

In conversations over the past decade with friends, colleagues, and business leaders about how automation, advanced technologies, and new employment models are transforming the American workplace, the worry has been palpable: “How can we keep up with machines?” they wonder. “What skills do I need to prepare for jobs in 2030?” they ask. “We're going to have a dozen careers, not just one—how's that even possible?” they demand. “I still haven't paid off my student loans for one career.”

The pervasive feeling is that we're standing on the threshold of something powerful, unstoppable, and unknown, much like a giant tidal wave that is going to wash over everything and transform us—how we work, where we work, the work we do, if we work at all. These conversations, more often than not, are characterized by fear. The dizzying advances in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), digital technology, and new ways of working have created haunting images of a dystopic future world where machines and software can perform most jobs, and human workers are largely unnecessary. Even the acronym FANG, coined in 2013 for the four high-performing tech stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google), contributes to this conflation of technology and monsters.18

People are most concerned about whether AI will complement human capabilities or act as a substitute. While some predict nothing short of a job apocalypse, other forecasters focus on the vast potential of new technologies to create greater value for workers and to liberate us so we can leverage our uniquely human capabilities—those enduring human skills that smart machines have not yet mastered, such as problem-solving, creative thinking, complex decision-making, empathy, and managing teams. In this scenario, groups of remote and diverse teams work together, people and machines collaborate, and workers continue to be employed because they explore and master new skills and capabilities throughout their lives.

“In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing, and even scientific discovery, the key to winning the race is not to compete against the machines, but to compete with machines,” observed authors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in 2012.19 MIT's Thomas Malone calls the remarkable power of people and computers working together “superminds.”20 From finding new cures for diseases to designing new tools and systems that will create new products and new lines of business, the promise of AI and humans working together may be the future.

In the midst of these dramatically different depictions of the future of work—a robot apocalypse versus humanity unleashed—many seek to understand what is different from other periods of great technological advances, where do they fit in, and how can they navigate this landscape without signposts so they can continue to work. For all the hype and headlines about the future of work, guidance on how people can find their way is in short supply. My aim is to provide that guidance.

Innovation and experimentation will continue to be lifelines as we transition to a very different world.

We Have Choices

While portions of many jobs will change, and some jobs will likely be eliminated entirely, many more jobs will evolve. When agricultural processes were mechanized in the nineteenth century, some farmworkers lost their jobs, but they ultimately earned more money working in factories. The automation of industrial production displaced factory workers in the twentieth century but they moved into service jobs. What we tend to forget is that rising productivity creates new jobs. Indeed, technological innovation has historically delivered more jobs, not fewer. And the new jobs often required more skills and paid higher wages.

As an economist and business consultant who has spent the past decade immersed in the issues surrounding the future of work, I have explored the topic with innovative thinkers and business leaders wrestling with the opportunities and challenges presented by this changing landscape. I spent half of the past decade based in New York and half in Delhi and Mumbai, working across India and Asia. I have advised companies and government agencies grappling with the mysteries that lie ahead. And I continue to bear witness each day to the dramatic changes taking place at the forefront of some of the largest and most successful businesses in the United States and around the world.

This book offers guidance to individuals, business leaders, and institutions so they can make smart choices. Organizations are poised to shape what ultimately becomes the future of work, as individual workers face broad options regarding how and where they work, as well as the skills and capabilities they want to gain to secure their livelihood. While we appear to welcome consumer technologies in our personal lives—we have managed to master more than 10 versions of smartphones (Apple and Android) since they were introduced in 2007 and 2008, respectively—we are more uncomfortable with tech innovations that will ultimately transform in profound and meaningful ways our work, who does the work, and where work is done.21

Individuals are searching for ways to continue to contribute their skills, procure value, and have an impact in the marketplace. Employers are facing important choices about whether to use advances in technology to drive efficiency and reduce costs or to explore how to harness technology to reshape jobs in ways that yield more value and meaning. Citizens, educators, and policy makers face a call to reconsider how we prepare and train people for the changing workplace and what paths are available to individuals to gain new skills throughout longer lives with multiple chapters of career reinvention.

Perhaps the most important question concerning the future of work is not what might happen in the future, but what do we want to have happen—the future of work to what end? When asked what employment relations would look like in 2030, the answer provided by Louis Hyman, a professor of labor history at Cornell, struck a chord. “It's hard to talk about the future,” he said, “because we actually have choices.”22 The challenge in this century is to understand and take advantage of the opportunities that technology and new ways of working afford us. In research at the Center for the Edge, Deloitte found that most future-of-work efforts are focused on reducing cost, increasing efficiency, and replacing workers with technology.23 Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at MIT, refers to this as the “wrong kind of AI.”24