The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization

Jacob Morgan



Throughout the history of business employees had to adapt to managers and managers had to adapt to organizations. In the future this is reversed with managers and organizations adapting to employees.  This means that in order to succeed and thrive organizations must rethink and challenge everything they know about work.

The demographics of employees are changing and so are employee expectations, values, attitudes, and styles of working.  Conventional management models must be replaced with leadership approaches adapted to the future employee. Organizations must also rethink their traditional structure, how they empower employees, and what they need to do to remain competitive in a rapidly changing world.  

This is a book about how employees of the future will work, how managers will lead, and what organizations of the future will look like.  

The Future of Work will help you:

• Stay ahead of the competition
• Create better leaders
• Tap into the freelancer economy
• Attract and retain top talent
• Rethink management
• Structure effective teams
• Embrace flexible work environments
• Adapt to the changing workforce
• Build the organization of the future
• And more

The book features uncommon examples and easy to understand concepts which will challenge and inspire you to work differently.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Rethinking Chess and Work xi

1 The Five Trends Shaping the World of Work 1

2 The Cog: Today’s Employee 21

3 Seven Principles of the Future Employee 31

4 The Freelancer Economy 69

5 The Zookeeper: Today’s Manager 77

6 Ten Principles of the Future Manager 91

7 The Managerless Company 119

8 The Organization of Today 137

9 Fourteen Principles of the Future Organization 145

10 Technology as the Central Nervous System 193

11 The Six-Step Process for Adapting to the Future of Work: How to Become the Future Organization (and Stay That Way!) 203

12 Rethinking Work 213

Notes 217

The FOW Community (dedicated to the future of work and collaboration) 223

Index 225