Are You Ready to Lead Work Without Jobs? | MIT Sloan Management Review

As firms increasingly plan and allocate work at the task level versus job level, this article describes how workers will be viewed less by their jobs and more by the skills they possess. This skills-based approach enables firms to deploy talent when and where needed more effectively. This shift in how work gets coordinated and allocated will also require a change in leaders’ mindset, behaviors, and capabilities. Said differently, as firms unlock the potential of their internal talent marketplace — where workers get to show interest and be considered for projects and assignments of interest — the relationship between managers and workers will increasingly become less hierarchical. Managers will face questions such as: When another leader has a task that matches the capabilities of someone who reports to me, how will we coordinate the assignment? How do I decide when to allow one of “my” direct reports to work on a task for someone else? How do I justify keeping direct reports without appearing to hoard them? The authors provide suggestions for how firms and leaders can answer these questions and successfully transition to this new working operating system.