Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work

Schwartz and Riss have created a combined roadmap and playbook for the future of work that we can all benefit from. It's a crucial read for managers and leaders. But really, it's for anyone who wants to thrive in tomorrow's world. More than most titles we cover here at Mind Tools, this one has profound relevance to us all.

So, keep listening to find out how to futureproof your career, why value trumps efficiency, and why we shouldn't fear the robots.

"Work Disrupted" divides its 200 pages into three parts. The first looks at the opportunities found in working with machines, in alternative models of work, and in where we do our work, even in the most turbulent times.

Part Two explores the reasons why resilience will be crucial for futureproofing our livelihoods. And the final part of the book is its most practical. It details the mindset shifts and action points we need to implement, to get ready for the years ahead.

So let's dive into the detail, starting with Part One.

Lots of people fear the future. Parents wonder how to prepare their kids for adulthood. Legislators try to figure out what laws we'll need in a decade. Teachers worry about losing their role as the "sage on the stage." And students have little idea what their future classes will look like, or what might lie beyond.

Some of us wonder how the rise of short-term contract work will affect our ability to pay our mortgages. We wonder how our mental health will be affected by more remote working. In our bleakest moments, we may see a dystopian future where the robots are in charge.

The first four chapters of "Work Disrupted" tackle these fears head-on and set the record straight. They argue that the future is something to embrace, and they make for fascinating reading.

One common fear is that we'll be outperformed, and ultimately made redundant, by artificial intelligence. It's a reasonable concern. AI has already had a resounding impact in some sectors. But it's refreshing and reassuring to read that times of accelerated change can also be times of promise and opportunity.

For the authors, AI is there to work to our advantage – it's something that can complement our human capabilities. That's a hard sell in some quarters, so Schwartz and Riss turn to history for support.

If we look back to the 19th century, they say, we'll see an era that mirrors our own with its rapid pace of change, and nervousness about what that might bring. The mechanization of agriculture did mean the end of working in the fields for many people, as they'd feared. But it didn't mean the end of work. It just meant doing different kinds of work.

There was a similar situation in the 20th century, as industrial production became more automated and machines displaced factory workers. Many of those workers eventually moved into service jobs.

The lesson here is that new technology can create more jobs. It displaces some, and it forces others to evolve. But it doesn't do away with the need for human labor or human capabilities.

Whether we like it or not, AI already plays a big role in our lives. Think of virtual assistants like Alexa, airplane autopilots, and even smart vacuum cleaners. Our challenge in the 21st century is to stop worrying about being replaced by AI, and start focusing on how to work with AI.

The authors wax lyrical about the promise of humans working with AI, and with cognitive technologies, automation, and other incredible advances. They discuss the concepts of "superminds" and "superjobs" – the idea that by working together, human and artificial intelligence can combine the best of both, reinforcing one another's strengths and counterbalancing their limitations.

It's an intriguing idea, particularly when you consider that humans still reign supreme in areas where tech struggles – like intuition, persuasion, and creativity. It opens up the possibility of future work being more, and not less, meaningful, and it offers reassurance to the fearful.

The authors highlight similar promise across the world of work. Alternative employment models, for instance, have enabled more people to do gig work, working independently without full-time contracts. This naturally makes those used to more traditional models feel uneasy. But if we can embrace these developments, we effectively give ourselves a passport to the future. It's all about framing disruptions as welcome opportunities, rather than as terrifying changes.

Part Two focuses on bulletproofing our careers, organizations, and leaders with the resilience we need to see us through the unexpected. As individuals, we're concerned about keeping our jobs through whatever lies ahead. Meanwhile, businesses and institutions are concerned about finding effective ways to lead and support workforces into the future. For all of this, resilience will be crucial.

One of the most striking chapters looks at the idea of planning for a lifetime of career twists and turns. We're all familiar with the concept of the "job for life" – the idea that you leave school, get a job, and retire from the same company with a gold watch to thank you for decades of service. It's an old-school idea that's all but dead and buried.

Instead of the "job for life," the reality of the 21st century is the "job for four years." We've been adjusting to this for some time already, and the authors advise us to prepare for longer, more varied careers than we're used to. They'll include more changes of job, direction, and role; more periods of reskilling and learning; more variety of workplace and employment type; and more integration of education, work, and personal pursuits.

This move from traditional three-stage models of education, work, and retirement toward multistage portfolio careers will be challenging and unsettling for a lot of people, and especially more mature workers. The authors liken it to stepping off a serene steamboat onto a white water raft. It's a good analogy. Calmness and predictability were once the order of the day. Now, the ability to weather storms and disruptions, to read context more deeply than before, and to prioritize learning and development are becoming increasingly vital.

And the transitions between new jobs and situations need attention too. We often overlook the moments when change happens, and this is a problem because a host of things can go wrong.

But transitions are also moments of opportunity, and the authors offer advice on how to plan for and navigate them. One key tip is to adopt innovations in learning. Some teaching institutions are combining previously separate fields of study – like business, design and technology – into completely new disciplines. This creates less siloed and more integrated models of learning, and they're gaining popularity as our need to understand complex problems from multiple angles becomes more acute.

The authors offer more immediate advice too, like pursuing creative careers or jobs based on relationships between people. In the medical professions and client-facing business roles like financial planning, for instance. Refocusing on our uniquely human capabilities – like curiosity, argument, and critical thinking – is an effective way to protect ourselves in this age of technological revolution.

We can also raise our expectations of legislators and leaders, the authors say. We need them to redesign and strengthen our social safety nets, with things like wage protections, mental health provision, social security benefits, and skills training programs.

Continuous change and reinvention through life can seem daunting. By preparing ourselves for these inevitable transitions, though, we can strengthen our resilience and improve our chances of coming out on top.

As you heard earlier, the final part of the book is its most practical. It serves up three "playbooks" that collate the insights we've gleaned and present to-do lists for individuals, organizations, and societies. Each playbook lists key mindset shifts and action points, along with tips and insights from CEOs, academics, and other subject matter experts. These make for really valuable reading.

The idea that the future is something we can design and create is one of several threads that run through the book. The changes in thinking, action points, and insights detailed within these playbooks give us the power to do that.

Take Chapter Nine, for example. Here, the authors give examples of companies that successfully navigated the recent global disruptions. One is the video conferencing company, Zoom. Zoom was not a company on many people's lips at the start of 2020. People tended to be more familiar with its competitors, Skype and WebEx.

But just a few months into 2020, we were all merrily Zooming. The company had been well prepared, even for a pandemic that no-one saw coming, and it was able to operate with an agility and creativity that few others could match. It hit the rocks occasionally, but reacted quickly, learned lessons, and responded creatively.

A key ingredient in Zoom's success was that it prioritized having a positive impact, and creating types of value that didn't just come from cost efficiencies. This is the authors' first mindset shift in Chapter Nine. Plenty of other companies have done the same. Airbnb revolutionized the hospitality industry, shaking up the status quo despite owning no buildings. And Zappos stunned the retail world by making a success of selling shoes online.

Giants like Amazon and Apple have also redefined the game, moving the goalposts away from scalable efficiencies toward the creation of value in new and previously unthought-of ways.

Value, meaning, and impact can translate into growth and profit, and into organizational resilience too. The companies that shift their focus in this way are the ones that fare best in times of global turbulence. It's not a new idea, but the authors flag it up because so many business leaders still operate with outdated 20th-century mindsets.

Overall, then, what's our verdict on "Work Disrupted?" We think it's a phenomenal book. It's a well signposted roadmap for navigating the future of work, and a practical playbook that frames the big questions we must ask if we want to make a success of it.

It's a positive book too. The conversation around the future of work is often noisy and confused. At its worst, it gets skewed by hype and hysteria. This book brings composure to the conversation. And though it doesn't skirt around the harder truths of job displacement and disruption, it's optimistic, inspirational, and practical from start to finish.

And it needs to be. The future of work matters. It's too important, too consequential to ignore or leave to chance. We need to be thoughtful and intentional about how we shape our futures, how we transition between careers, provide education and opportunities to develop skills, and many other things besides. It's a daunting list, for sure, but this book provides actions and thinking points to kick-start the process, no matter what line of work we're in.

"Work Disrupted" also arrives at the perfect time. The future of work swept in much sooner and faster than anyone could have predicted when the global pandemic took hold in 2020. The relentless march of technology was already well underway, of course, but the sudden accelerated pace of change made thinking about the future more crucial than ever.

In these strange times we need new strategies, mindsets, and roadmaps urgently, and that's why this book should land right at the top of your reading list.

If the book has a weakness, it's that it seems to be written for an exclusively American audience, even though the issues are relevant worldwide. The authors do pull in some examples and lessons from around the world, though, so this is really just a minor quibble.

Another point to flag up is that this is more of a roadmap than a technical manual. If you come to the book expecting step-by-step instructions, you'll be disappointed, and you'll need to look elsewhere for specific tools for reflection, brainstorming, and so on. Of course, the Mind Tools site has plenty of useful articles to help you there.

"Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work," by Jeff Schwartz and Suzanne Riss, is published by Wiley.

That's the end of this episode of Mind Tools Book Insights from Emerald Works. Thanks for listening. Click here to buy the book from Amazon.