The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next Generation Enterprise

How to design and activate the skills-based enterprise that is pivotal for navigating the ＂next＂ of work.

As the world navigates the rapid and disruptive effects of AI, climate change, and geopolitical conflicts, the world of work, too, needs to change. Jobs are giving way to skills as the currency of work to ensure a more agile, resilient, and flexible enterprise that cannot just respond but must thrive in the face of these challenges. This pivot from jobs to skills will require us to rethink everything we know about work. Building on his bestselling book Work without Jobs, Ravin Jesuthasan returns, this time with coauthor Tanuj Kapilashrami, an international human resources leader, to provide the framework organizations need to thrive in a world demanding perpetual reinvention.

Many business and management books focus on individual skills and competencies, the power of AI to make companies more agile through enabling ＂internal gigs,＂ and the societal and policy implications of the external gig economy. The cases in The Skills-Powered Organization, however, discuss how leading companies are reinventing themselves to be skills-based organizations and transforming value for customers, communities, and stakeholders. Jesuthasan and Kapilashrami describe the need for new organizational capabilities like work design and AI-driven resourcing, as well as the need to reinvent current work systems, to realize the agility, productivity, and value-creating potential of an organization where skills are at the center of its operating model.

Providing a step-by step guide for both new and seasoned leaders, this practical and informative book shows just how to future-proof organizations for the post-fourth industrial revolution world.

Ravin Jesuthasan, a recognized futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and automation, is Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s steering committee on work and employment. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Work without Jobs (MIT Press), as well as Transformative HR, Lead the Work, and Reinventing Jobs.
Tanuj Kapilashrami is an international banker, currently Chief Human Resources Officer at Standard Chartered Bank. She is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Sainsbury’s PLC, a Board member of the UK Financial Services Skills Commission, a member of the Asia House Board of Trustees, and a Board member of Autumn, an integrated digital wealth, health, and lifestyle solutions start-up.