Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work
Ravin Jesuthasan & John W. Boudreau
Harvard Business Review Press (October 2018)

Here’s a detailed roadmap for revinventing what workers do and how they do it

The healthiest organizations are those within which personal growth and professional development are most likely to thrive. However, what people do and how they do it are challenged by disruptive technologies. Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau wrote this book for business leaders in need of — especially those in urgent need of —  an approach for applying automation  to work. It consists of four step and they devote a separate to each. Here they are, rigorously examined in Part One:

Deconstruct the Job
Question to answer: “Which job tasks are best suited to automation?”
Comment: It is also important to determine which job tasks are best completed by a human/machine collaboration.

Assess the Relationship between job performance and strategic value
Question to answer: “What is the automation pay off?”
Comment: It will be difficult (if not impossible) to obtain institutional support without a credible ROI analysis.

Identify Options
Question to answer: “What automation is possible?”
Comment: More to the point, what automation is most appropriate to the given organization?

Optimize Work
Question to answer: “What does the right human-automation combination look like?”
Comment: Automation is best viewed as a beneficial enable rather than as a threat to job security.

Then in Part Two, Jesuthasan and Boudreau examine what they have identified as the automations and implications beyond the process of reinventing the given work to be done. Their insights remind me again of a prediction made by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock (1984): “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Most of the material in Reinventing Jobs is relevant to most organizations, whatever their size and nature may be. I also want to offer another point. I view “downsizing” as a misnomer. The correct term is “rightsizing” which could involve either increase or reduction. The same is true of robotic process automation (RPA). Its nature and extent will vary from one organization to the next, and should be appropriate an organization’s specific needs, objectives, resources, and competitive marketplace. The Chinese character for the word “crisis” has two meanings: peril and opportunity. The same is true of RPA. Business leaders must decide how they view it…and what they do with it.

I agree with Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau that business leaders who read their brilliant book will be well-prepared to help apply automation to the work to be done and to how it is done. They challenge their reader to be a role model, “supporting the conversations with opportunities, a framework, and the necessary information and safety net that empowers you and your workers to collaborate to optimize worker optimization. You can help your workers to follow these steps. You can create a safe culture in which workers can tell you when they see the possibilities for automation to replace their tasks and where augmenting tasks with automation will significant improve productivity.”

Long ago, Henry Ford nailed it: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”