Lead the Work

Ravin Jesuthasan, John Boudreau & David Creelman

To gain a competitive edge in a world where talent and work are no longer confined to traditional jobs, leaders must shift from managing employees to leading work by strategically designing assignments, organizations, and rewards.

The traditional concept of a stable, full-time job is dissolving. Work is increasingly done by a global ecosystem of free agents, alliance partners, and on-demand talent sourced through powerful online platforms. In 'Lead the Work,' Boudreau, Jesuthasan, and Creelman provide a crucial guide for navigating this new reality. They argue that leaders must move beyond simply 'managing employees' and learn to 'lead the work' itself. The book introduces a powerful and practical decision framework centered on three key 'dials' leaders can turn: the Assignment (how work is deconstructed, dispersed, and detached from employment), the Organization (how permeable, interlinked, and flexible its boundaries are), and the Reward (how motivation is crafted to be short-term, individualized, and imaginative). Through compelling examples from innovative companies like IBM, Topcoder, and Tongal, this book provides the essential mental model for orchestrating talent, driving innovation, and achieving strategic agility in the boundaryless workplace of the future.

The model it argues

This model illustrates how strategic choices in designing work assignments, organizational structures, and reward systems enable organizations to optimize talent sourcing and workforce agility, ultimately leading to enhanced organizational performance and strategic advantage in a world beyond traditional employment.

Key ideas

Work Assignment Design: The strategic configuration of work, reflecting leadership choices about the extent to which it is broken down into smaller components (deconstruction), can be performed independent of a specific time or place (dispersion), and is disconnected from a traditional, long-term employment relationship (detachment).
Organizational Design (PICF): The structure and boundaries of the organization, reflecting choices about how easily work and talent flow across its formal boundaries (Permeable), the extent and pattern of its connections to external entities (Interlinked), the nature of those relationships based on trust and shared norms (Collaborative), and its ability to dynamically reshape itself (Flexible).
Reward System Design: The composition and delivery of incentives for work, reflecting choices about the degree to which rewards are tied to short-term deliverables, are customized for individuals or groups, and incorporate imaginative, non-monetary elements like reputation, purpose, autonomy, and enjoyment.
Talent Sourcing Optimization: The organization's ability to efficiently and effectively access the best-suited talent for a given piece of work, considering quality, cost, speed, and availability from a global and diverse ecosystem of internal and external sources, rather than being limited to its own employees.
Workforce Agility: The capacity to rapidly scale the workforce up or down, reconfigure skills, and redeploy talent to different tasks or projects in response to changing strategic priorities and market demands, with minimal friction and cost.
Organizational Performance: The effectiveness and efficiency of the organization in achieving its objectives, encompassing dimensions such as innovation, speed to market, quality of output, and overall cost-effectiveness. This is the direct result of having the right talent doing the right work in an agile manner.
Strategic Advantage: The organization's sustained ability to outperform competitors by leveraging a superior and more adaptable model for getting work done. This advantage is derived from being consistently more innovative, responsive, and efficient in its market due to its mastery of the new world of work.