Working on cross-functional projects enables employees to construct broader networks within the company to facilitate internal moves that align with their career aspirations. It also increases employees’ understanding of the business, not just what happens within their teams. Career progression in the Inside Gig model offers a mosaic of experiences that advances employees via exposure to different opportunities that build breadth and depth, making them increasingly valuable to the organization and more marketable to other companies. We’ll go into the specifics in more detail in Part Three: How to Make It Work.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
•Traditional talent operating models are designed so that organizations can hire individuals to fill prescribed roles that fit their knowledge, skills and experiences. Employees are expected to devote 100 percent of their time to deliver on the tasks and responsibilities of their jobs.
•Innovation-focused talent operating models provide employees with implicit permission to devote some of their time at work (generally 15 percent to 20 percent) to projects that suit their personal interests and passions. While these projects need to advance the business in some manner, they’re not related to any current ongoing venture the company is dedicated to pursuing. Because employees are still responsible for getting their day-to-day jobs done, this often equates to 120 percent time.
•The Inside Gig talent operating model differs from innovation-focused talent operating models in that the percentage of time individuals take away from their day-to-day responsibilities is used to positively contribute to ongoing business projects. Employees work with their managers to reallocate tasks and responsibilities to make room for different work, which lets them leverage skills and abilities they have but don’t use in their day-to-day jobs, work in areas they want to learn and grow in professionally, or simply explore work they’re deeply interested in doing. The use of technology to match skills and interests to opportunities gives employees equal-opportunity access to projects.
REFLECTION POINTS
What problems are you and your team trying to solve that are proving difficult and could benefit from alternative perspectives?
Do people outside your department come to mind that you would like to bring to the table?
Is there any flexibility built into your company’s talent operating model that can stretch people’s skills to facilitate learning and make new connections? If not, do you think there is an opportunity for a trial venture?
CHAPTER 2
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on Business
A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.
—Albert Einstein
THE FORCES SHAPING THE WORLD OF WORK
WHETHER YOU ARE A TEAM MEMBER or you lead a team, large or small, you will have noticed that the world of work is changing, a consequence of the way the world in general is changing. For one thing, countries like the United States and Canada are experiencing higher levels of racial and ethnic diversity through international immigration patterns. According to the Pew Research Center, by 2055, the United States won’t have a single racial or ethnic majority.1 This shift in demographics is naturally affecting the workforce, which is becoming more diverse by gender, culture, religion, sexual preferences and identification. The burning question facing organizations is how their talent operating model is set up to accommodate the diversity of thought, personal and professional experience, and work habits that people bring to the workplace every day.
Most notably, the workforce is simultaneously growing older (because baby boomers aren’t retiring) and younger, with the rise of the millennial generation. Millennials currently make up more than half of the workforce and bring with them high expectations for work experiences that provide them with purpose and meaning at work. They want continuous learning and development opportunities that will result in rapid career progression.
Gallup has studied millennials for several years. In its 2016 report, How Millennials Want to Work and Live, it challenged the notion that they’re a generation of job hoppers, a bad reputation that has been unfairly pinned on them. Research by Gallup indicates that 55 percent of millennials are simply not engaged at work. Many don’t want to job-hop, but their companies fail to give them compelling reasons to stay. This is a product of the traditional talent operating model that boxes people in with a culture that roadblocks learning, growth and taking on new challenges. In today’s tight talent markets, every organization needs to constantly provide employees with significant motivation to stay.2
Maynard Webb and Carlye Adler, the authors of Rebooting Work, provide a framework that illustrates how work is changing and what organizations have to do to engage their employees. They write about the millennials’ high levels of disengagement and their need to embrace their entrepreneurial spirit and take control of their careers by seeking fulfilling work. Webb and Adler contrast four philosophies of work (see Figure 2.1). They believe that whether you start your own company or work for another person, you can be the “CEO of Your Own Destiny” and embark on a path to a gratifying career.3
Webb and Adler further argue that the rise in freelance work might have been prompted by the economic downturn and people looking for employment, but it has nevertheless inspired a generation to take more control over their careers, reduce commuting time and leverage technology to work anywhere at any time. This concept fits well with their desire to integrate work and life and to be more in command of their work options.
Technology and Obsolescence
Early signs of the unprecedented velocity, scope and impact of what has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution are becoming apparent. Previous industrial revolutions made substantial improvements in the way we farmed; brought us into the Industrial Age, ushered in mass production; and eventually propelled us into the Information Age, whose eruption of technology and available information makes it easier to access facts and find talent through the Internet with job boards like Monster and social networks like LinkedIn.
Figure 2.1 Four Philosophies of Work
Maynard Webb and Carlye Adler, Rebooting Work: Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013).
Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum defines the Fourth Industrial Revolution as one characterized by a range of new technologies fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.4 According to the World Economic Forum, four specific technological advances are significantly disrupting the world of work: high-speed mobile Internet, widespread adoption of big-data analytics, artificial intelligence and cloud technology.5 These new technologies are economic game changers, and the rate of change for new technologies remains unabated. So does disruption in all sectors, from retail to health care. With respect to people, the capital investments an organization is making in new technologies have short- and long-term implications. People need to be trained, and often in a hurry. But can a talent operating model—perhaps even yours—that is designed for a different time keep up?
Here is a prime example of technological advances creating disruptions. In 2001, people who lived in Oakland, California, and worked in San Francisco had to drive an hour in traffic, pay a $3 toll to cross a bridge, and spend $40 a day to park their cars. Many of these people lived too far away from