Reinventing Jobs
Ravin Jesuthasan & John Boudreau
A practical four-step framework for leaders to deconstruct jobs into tasks and optimally combine human and automated work rather than asking which jobs robots will replace.
Reinventing Jobs cuts through the hype and fear about AI and robotics to give leaders a disciplined, actionable method for applying automation. Instead of the dead-end question 'which jobs will automation replace?', Jesuthasan and Boudreau show that the real payoff comes from deconstructing jobs into their component tasks, understanding the value of improved performance on each task (return on improved performance, or ROIP), matching each task to the right type of automation (robotic process automation, cognitive automation, or social robotics), and then optimally recombining human and automated work into reinvented jobs. Drawing on decades of consulting and research across banking, oil and gas, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, and retail, the book extends this logic to the organization, to leadership, and to individuals' own careers, offering a language and framework for the constant, nuanced work of perpetual reinvention.
The model it argues
A causal/framework model in which deconstructing jobs into tasks and characterizing task attributes and return on improved performance drives selection of automation type and role, which combine to produce optimized human-automation work, ultimately affecting strategic outcomes; organizational alignment and leadership practices moderate whether work-level optimization yields organizational value.
Key ideas
- Job Deconstruction
- The analytical practice of separating a job into its discrete component work tasks so that automation compatibility and value can be evaluated at the task level.
- Task Characteristics (Repetitive/Variable, Independent/Interactive, Physical/Mental)
- The three-dimensional attribute profile of a task that determines its compatibility with automation types.
- Return on Improved Performance (ROIP)
- The functional relationship between how well a task is performed and the strategic value that performance creates.
- Automation Type Selection
- The determination of which automation category best fits a task given its characteristics and required payoff.
- Automation Role (Substitute, Augment, Create)
- The functional relationship automation takes toward human work: replacing it, enhancing it, or generating new work.
- Optimized Human-Automation Work Combination
- The reinvented job or process that results from combining task characteristics, ROIP, automation type, and automation role into the best balance of human and automated work.
- Organizational Alignment (Structure, Power, Rewards, Culture, Information)
- The degree to which organizational design elements are reconfigured to support reinvented human-automation work.
- Leadership Practices for Perpetual Reinvention
- The set of leader behaviors that orchestrate continuously reinvented work through mindset, ability, reward, deployment, and development shifts.
- Worker Trust and Transparency
- The extent to which workers trust leaders enough to openly and early share how their work is evolving and where it could be automated.
- Strategic Outcomes (Cost, Risk, Quality, Speed, Innovation)
- The organizational results that automation optimization is intended to produce, spanning efficiency, risk reduction, quality, speed, agility, and innovation.