#381 Josh Drean: Employment Is Dead—Now Let’s Rebuild It — Part Two
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What does 'Employment is Dead' mean?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, we are diving into the future of work with George Dream. George is a Harvard MBA, a startup founder, and the co-author of the book called Employment is Dead. Yes, you hear it right. That is a very bold statement. But he's got a story to back it up. Across this three-part series, We'll explore why traditional employment models are failing, how emerging technologies like Web3 and AI are reshaping work, and what companies must do to survive. We'll also go behind the scenes of George's book, how a cold call turned into a major publishing deal, and why the old ways of managing people just don't cut it anymore. Whether you are an employee, an employer, or just curious about where work is headed, this series will challenge the way you think
So, would it be fair to say that the metaverse, Web3, and all these emerging technologies are essentially bridges, tools that help us redefine the employee experience? Not just in one way, but in ways that actually make sense for our lives, our productivity, our outcome, and our well-being? Would you put it that way?
Yeah. So we actually write in the book, we call it the 10 operating principles of work three. These are the non-negotiables of the modern day workforce. I work with people, leaders all over the world, and I show them these principles. I say, can you offer any of your employees any of these today? And if the answer is no, why should they work for you? And they're really on a spectrum. There are some that are deeply technical, like interoperability. They want to jump from job to job. They want to Mix and match several streams of income. They don't want to be a full-time employee at your organization. They want to work on several different projects across several different DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations.
And then there are stuff that is readily apparent today, like flexibility. There's flexibility, autonomy, ownership. How do we allow employees to work flexibly so that they can work on their circadian rhythm, right? A lot of them are logging on at 9 p.m. at night so that they can get some deep work done or they work really well in the morning before the kids are awake or they like being able to run out and pick up their kids from school at 3 p.m. without skipping a beat. So it just is tragic to me to see that we are returning to the office so forcefully in this nine to five structure, instead of moving forward in a way that makes sense for the employee and their work-life balance. And again, that's on this end of the spectrum of flexibility, there's this end of the spectrum that's interoperability and all throughout there are all the elements that you need to design a better employee experience.
You mentioned that you and Deborah, the co-founder of WorkStreet Institute, worked on this book together with you. I know there's quite a story behind how this book came to be. Can you share that with us here?
Yeah, it's quite an interesting story. I feel if you're writing a book with Harvard Business Review Press, especially, it feels like a lot of times it would be, I've been a professor for many decades. My colleagues and I have written several books together. And so we're finally ready to write with HBR. That is the opposite of what happened with Debra.
How did a cold call lead to a bestselling book?
And I was actually, she was running her own conference, a Web3 conference out of Silicon Valley. She's based out of Silicon Valley. She's written several books. She's fairly renowned in the Silicon Valley space. And she was putting on this conference that I was fascinated in. So I submitted my proposal based on some of the research and these initial ideas. I essentially remember the title being... The future of work is not employment. It's the metaverse. And she pretty much saw that, saw the opportunity for a book and cold called me. I was leaving the office one day and got this call. I know this sounds completely random, but do you want to write a book together? Yeah. I chuckled to myself and said, absolutely. And the first thing she said to me is like, that title that you wrote was good.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What does 'Employment is Dead' mean?
0:13–4:45
2
How did a cold call lead to a bestselling book?
4:45–5:59
3
What are the non-negotiables of the modern workforce?
5:59–8:35
4
How do emerging technologies reshape work?
8:35–11:26
5
What challenges did Josh face while writing the book?
11:26–14:01
6
How did they pitch to Harvard Business Review?
14:01–15:25
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Chief Change Officer™: Ensemble
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