The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next Generation Enterprise
Ravin Jesuthasan and Tanuj Kapilshrami
The MIT Press (October 2024)

 Work frameworks that organizations now need…but most do not have

According to Ravin Jesuthasan and Tanuj Kapilshrami, “This book will give business leaders the tools to transform their outdated and traditional work frameworks and systems based on statisn’jobs’ and ’employees in jobs. It will show how they can remake those systems and frameworks to make skills the currency at work — with talent and work flowing to each other based on the seamless matching of skills and tasks. The transition to a skills-powered organization will transform every aspect of planning, acquiring, deploying, developing, and managing their workforces.”

These are among the strategic objectives that the material in this book will help senior-level executives to achieve. Each is preceded by HOW TO:

o Design, establish, and lead a skills-powered organization (SPO)
o Reinvent a legacy jobs-based organization as an SPO
o Ensure that the SPO has a workplace culture within which personal growth and professional development thrive
o Ensure that job design accommodates both current and imminent needs
o The basic formula for success ias to  Maximize appropriate utilization of AI’s capabilities both internally and externally
o Ensure that HR plays a major role during the design, implementation, and management of the SPO
o Manage the SPO as a B2C (nourish relationships both within and beyond the workplace culture)

Here are some of the key points that Jesuthasan and Kapilshrami make:

o An organization’s skills are only as effective as the skills of its workers are, at all levels throughout the given enterprise.
o Directly or indirectly, an organization’s internal needs tend to be determined by its external needs.
o Prioritizing skills should therefore be determined by external needs.
o Disruptive change is the only constant. Skills development must therefore be continuous but flexible and resilient.
o The principles of design/redesign remain essentially the same but HOW they are applied necessarily varies, depending on what is designed/redesigned, be it a product, service, job, process, policy, or structure.
o The formula for success: Have the person with the right skills complete the right task(s) in the right way.

In this context, I am again reminded of a prediction that Alvin Toffler made in 1970: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Jesuthasan and Kapilshrami devote much of their attention to the valuable lessons that can be learned from the Industrial Revolution. I pulled some information about the First (c.1760-1840) from my files (source unknown). Its main features were technological, socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following: the use of new basic materials, chiefly iron and steel; the use of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine; the invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy; a new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of labor and specialization of function; important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio; and the increasing application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods. Be sure to check out what Jesuthasan and Kapilshrami have to say about the Second (late 1800s-early 1900s ), Third (1960s-1990s), Fourth (2000s), and Current (2020s). See Figure 0.1 (Page xvii)

I commend Ravin Jesuthasan and Tanuj Kapilshrami on their provision of an abundance of valuable information, insights, and counsel. Senior-level executives must realize the truth in Marshall Goldsmith’s warning that “what got you here won’t get you there.” My own opinion is that what got you here won’t even allow you to remain here, however “here” and “there” may be defined.

How to survive and thrive during the current Industrial Revolution? Just about everything senior-level executives need to know is in this uniquely valuable book.

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Here are two suggestions while you are The Skills-Powered Organization: First, highlight key passages Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines).

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.