Reinventing Jobs
One book, placed in its field — what Ravin Jesuthasan & John Boudreau's book gets right, where it goes further than the rest, and what the rest of the field adds.
Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide · peopleleader.guide/guides/profile-reinventing_jobs_jesuthasan_boudreau
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Reinventing Jobs
One book, placed in its field — what Ravin Jesuthasan & John Boudreau's book gets right, where it goes further than the rest, and what the rest of the field adds.
Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide · peopleleader.guide/guides/profile-reinventing_jobs_jesuthasan_boudreau
The problem
Strategic Outcomes (Cost, Risk, Quality, Speed, Innovation) erodes when it is left to instinct instead of method.
You were taught the moves piecemeal, never the whole model.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The model
- 01Job Deconstruction
- 02Task Characteristics (Repetitive/Variable, Independent/Interactive, Physical/Mental)
- 03Return on Improved Performance (ROIP)
- 04Automation Type Selection
- 05Automation Role (Substitute, Augment, Create)
- 06Optimized Human-Automation Work Combination
- 07Organizational Alignment (Structure, Power, Rewards, Culture, Information)
- 08Leadership Practices for Perpetual Reinvention
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 1 of 5 · Job Deconstruction
Ask 'which tasks in this job can be automated?' — never 'can this job be automated?'
Misconception
Practitioners assume the natural unit of analysis is the job title, so they ask 'can this job be automated?' as a yes/no question.
Reality
Automation almost never replaces a whole job; it replaces specific tasks within it. A single role typically contains a mix of tasks with wildly different automation payoffs, so the job is the wrong altitude for the decision.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 2 of 5 · Task Characteristics (Repetitive/Variable, Independent/Interactive, Physical/Mental)
Profile each task on three independent axes; a low score on one does not predict the others.
Misconception
Practitioners treat these dimensions as a single 'complexity' scale, assuming a task is simply easy or hard to automate.
Reality
The three axes are independent and each maps to a different automation family: repetitive work suits RPA, physical work suits robotics, and cognitive-variable work suits AI. A task can be trivially automatable on one axis and impossible on another, so the profile is a vector, not a score.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 3 of 5 · Return on Improved Performance (ROIP)
On reduce-mistakes and reduce-variance tasks, the payoff comes from consistency and error prevention, so pay for reliability, not for star performance.
Misconception
Practitioners assume better performance is always more valuable, so improving any task is a defensible investment.
Reality
Value does not rise smoothly with performance; on a 'reduce mistakes' task, moving from good to excellent adds almost nothing because the only thing that matters is avoiding failure, while on an 'exponential value' task the top performers create disproportionate, non-linear returns that ordinary competence never touches.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 4 of 5 · Automation Type Selection
Classify the task on three axes first; the automation type follows from the classification, not from what's newest.
Misconception
Practitioners treat the three types as a maturity ladder — assuming cognitive automation and collaborative robotics are simply more advanced versions of RPA that you graduate to.
Reality
The three types map to different task structures, not different levels of sophistication; RPA fits repetitive digital rules, cognitive automation fits variable pattern-recognition, and collaborative robotics fits interactive physical work — and increasingly a single deployment blends all three.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 5 of 5 · Automation Role (Substitute, Augment, Create)
Let ROIP decide the role: flat performance curves justify substitution, steep ones demand augmentation or creation.
Misconception
Practitioners equate automation with substitution and measure success mainly by headcount removed and labor cost saved.
Reality
Substitution is only the right role when performance is bounded and consistent; where performance can scale, augmentation captures more value, and creation opens work — new services, new insights, new products — that generates revenue no cost-cutting frame will ever surface.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
A framework to use
The Four-Step Work-Automation Framework
This framework is part of the full guide. See the guide →
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The cheat sheet
- Job DeconstructionAsk 'which tasks in this job can be automated?' — never 'can this job be automated?'
- Task Characteristics (Repetitive/Variable, Independent/Interactive, Physical/Mental)Profile each task on three independent axes; a low score on one does not predict the others.
- Return on Improved Performance (ROIP)On reduce-mistakes and reduce-variance tasks, the payoff comes from consistency and error prevention, so pay for reliability, not for star performance.
- Automation Type SelectionClassify the task on three axes first; the automation type follows from the classification, not from what's newest.
- Automation Role (Substitute, Augment, Create)Let ROIP decide the role: flat performance curves justify substitution, steep ones demand augmentation or creation.
- Optimized Human-Automation Work CombinationOptimize at the task level: a single job can contain substituted, augmented, and newly created work simultaneously.
- Organizational Alignment (Structure, Power, Rewards, Culture, Information)Alignment is a moderator: strong work design plus misaligned rewards and decision rights yields weak outcomes.
- Leadership Practices for Perpetual ReinventionLeaders moderate whether reinvention produces results: the same work design succeeds or fails on leadership credibility.
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Sources
- Reinventing Jobs — Ravin Jesuthasan & John Boudreau
Reinventing Jobs · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide