This an incredibly insightful book that I'd recommend to anyone thinking about the future of work. The authors rightly start out the book by emphasizing the importance of knowing what you have. As Goldberg and Steven-Waiss rightly point out in the book, most companies would be aghast if their COO were unable to provide an accurate inventory of capital assets. For some reason our expectations are different for human assets. After all, people have resumes, which got them into the company with a certain title and fairly rigid set of responsibilities. What's the problem, right? Well, jobs and the skills required for them are changing rapidly to the point where it's not really about jobs but rather about project work that requires skills that may be new and at the same time have a short shelf life. People within organizations can move from one project to the next, thereby developing certain talents, and flexing otherwise hidden, untapped talents. More importantly, a lot of this project work will require the adoption of agile methods and the rapid learning and deployment of new skills as they become essential to the work. This "inside gig" mentality is as much descriptive about the way things are headed as it is prescriptive about where things should head. And, to make this happen, you need far better access to skills across the organization than most companies currently have available. Also, you need analytical capabilities to identify opportunities for retraining or "upskilling." Luckily, developments in the fields of AI/ML and data science are facilitating strides in the capture and contextualization of skills in large companies, especially in companies where much of the work is project- and skills-based.
The authors provides great real-world examples of companies that have developed talent/gig marketplaces. These marketplaces have numerous benefits including the democratizing of work and the removal of structural barriers to certain types of project work. From an ROI standpoint, they can reduce your reliance on recruiting people externally; instead, you can more rapidly deploy talent existing at your own company and get the work done faster, cheaper, and probably better as well.
The authors also provide some tangible next steps for companies to take regarding the new talent operating model that they propose. They suggest approaches based on the readiness of the organization to take on this change. They also provide some insights about building or buying technology to support new processes. They also help to establish new "rules of the road," because change doesn't ever come without some resistance. Upending the traditional manager mindset of "these are my employees" isn't easy, and you shouldn't disrupt the status quo without setting some clear and mindful expectations in advance.
Again, a great read. Thank you!
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