Ditch the Job. Focus on the Work.

“Jobs are the relic of an industrial past. The future belongs to skills, projects, and people in motion.” — ​Ravin Jesuthasan​, co-author ​Work Without Jobs​ and the ​Skills-Powered Organization​.

“Jobs” Are Breaking Down

Job titles and job descriptions used to define work. Now, they often lag reality. Driven by tech advances and increased automation, work today is dynamic, multi-modal, and context dependent. Legacy “jobs" are static, rigid, and linear. The disconnect between work and jobs leads to:

• Talent underutilization - employees have evolving skills which employers are not using if still assigning work based on formal job descriptions.
• Project bottlenecks - progress stalls when teams doing project work cannot access internal talent quickly—or even at all if ‘borrowing talent’ isn’t possible—for short-term needs.
• Roles don’t match work - people adapt their jobs based on needs, scope, and skills. Many aren’t doing what their job says, creating confusion, inequity, and management challenges.

Automation and AI are absorbing repeatable, predictable work. Workers must handle the non-routine, human-centric work requiring judgment, empathy, creativity, and adaptive thinking:

• Insight-driven tasks – interpreting relevance, identifying meaning, drawing connections.
• Innovation and problem-solving – original thinking to navigate challenges and ambiguity.
• Cross-functional collaboration – teamwork across disciplines, departments, and ecosystem.
• Constant learning and upskilling – learning agility to keep adapting to work as it evolves.

“We’re beginning to think about each role at Unilever as a collection of skills, rather than simply a job title,” -- ​Anish Singh​, when CHRO, Unilever in Australia and New Zealand.

Leaders recognize the urgency and benefits of making the shift:

• 55% of companies globally are transitioning to skills-based models. 23% more plan to start in next year.
• 81% believe a skills-based approach increases a company’s growth potential.
• 51%, 50%, and 45% expect improved employee performance productivity, profitability and growth potential, and organizational agility and internal mobility respectively [​Global State of Skills 2025, Workday​].

Skills and tasks are now the units of work.

‍Modular Work

• Work is unbundled from jobs and reassembled into flexible projects and task clusters
• Teams form and reform based on project needs

Dynamic Skills

• People are matched to work based on capabilities, not titles
• Growth happens through experience and contribution, not hierarchy

This shift also requires internal talent mobility—my focus next week.

Unilever - Departmental work at Unilever is increasingly being divided into projects, tasks, and deliverables. Over time, siloed departments are expected to break down to view employees’ contributions focused on outputs and skills rather than on years with a job title - ​read more​.

Mastercard – Transforming talent management and workforce agility with a skills-first approach, expanding talent opportunities, and preparing employees for emerging roles. ​Listen to Lucrecia Borgonovo​, Chief Talent & Organizational Effectiveness Officer (note combined title), explain.

Google - Skills-based management has long been existed enabling employees to work on projects of interest with its​ 20% time policy​ the source of some most innovative products.

Revolut – Skills-based approach for language skills hiring allowed them to evaluate more candidates, improve talent quality and improved time-to-hire by 40% - ​read more​.

🤔 Are you managing work or managing jobs?

When jobs no longer match reality, holding onto them slows your company down. The key question for your leadership team today: “Are you optimizing around the work that needs to be done—or the org chart we are used to or inherited?”

‍PHASE 1: UNDERSTAND THE WORK BEING DONE (weeks 1–4)

Goal: Understand the gap between job descriptions and actual work.

Conduct a ‘Job’ Reality audit - Interview 3–5 business unit leaders and ask them “What percentage of your team’s time is spent on work not in the job description?”

Launch a Shadow Role pilot - Assign 1–2 team members per unit to log their weekly tasks, not making any tie to job descriptions. Outcome: Use the insights to build a “task heat map.”

Create a Project Pulse board - Inventory all major projects underway. What capabilities do they require? Who is doing the work? Where are there overlaps and or mismatches?

Assign a Work Transformation lead - Identify a leader (HR/Ops?) for this shift. Outcome: An empowered champion owns cross-functional coordination, capability mapping, and comms.

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PHASE 2: DECONSTRUCT ROLES & BUILD NEW MODELS (weeks 5–8)

Goal: Create skills-based work allocation pilots.

Break down key roles into tasks + skills - Pick five business-critical roles (e.g., product manager, account executive) and analyze:

• Core vs. emergent (high-impact) responsibilities.
• Automatable (eliminate/delegate) vs. human-only tasks.
• Missing vs. underused skills.

Define a Non-Routine Work Index - Using this internal benchmark - the percentage of a role filled by non-repetitive, strategic, or cross-functional project work:

• Pilot a dynamic work allocation system - For one business unit, run a modular work experiment. Assign 3–5 projects using internal talent matched by skills, not job title.
• Introduce transparent work boards - Track assignments internally using tools such as Notion, Trello, or Asana. Let employees opt-in to contribute to stretch projects.

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PHASE 3: BUILD CAPABILITIES FOR MOBILITY & AGILITY (weeks 9–12)

Goal: Build infrastructure for continuous skills-based allocation.

Launch a Skills Declaration Sprint - Encourage every employee to identify and update their current and desired skills. Use surveys, LinkedIn syncing, or brief manager check-ins.

Build a prototype talent pool by skill cluster - Group employees around data analytics, storytelling, project leadership, etc. as your beta internal talent marketplace.

Train leaders in work matching - Run workshops on how to scope tasks, post projects, and assess contributions—moving away from title-based team design.

Establish metrics and feedback loops - Track:

• Task-to-role mismatches
• Time-to-fill for internal projects
• Skill application rate (the percentage of top 5 skills used weekly)

NEXT WEEK: How to establish the internal mobility system and talent marketplace that are integral for a skills-first organization and model.

📘 ​Work Without Jobs​ – How to reboot your work operating systems.

‍🛠️ ​Gloat’s Skills Foundation​ – Useful for benchmarking your transition.

🎧 ​The Skills-based Organization​ – Deloitte talks to Cargill’s transformation.

🎶 “​Movement​” by Hozier – Our working lives are dynamic.

Insights into evolving business and work needs with a skill-based framework will speed up your transition and growth. I offer executive coaching for executives making the shift from jobs to skills-focused work. ​Click here​ to reserve one of the limited slots for your first 30-minute thought-provoking session. Let’s discuss the reconfiguration of work together.

See you next week when we explore internal talent mobility.

Sophie