The Adaptation Advantage

A guide for individuals and organizations navigating the complex and ambiguous Future of Work. “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.” - Psychologist Dan Gilbert It’s in that space, between work and progress and finished, that workers find themselves today. We are incredibly well prepared for the past, and woefully unready for a Future of Work that has yet to be defined. This in-between space can be – and is – unnerving when the future is so difficult to see. That’s why we wrote The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work. In this book, we posit that profound and continuous shifts are disrupting work and society, and in the process stripping us our comfortable work-centric identities. As we move rapidly toward a fully-digitized economy, one that is reshaping both what and how work is done by humans, our models of employment and education developed in the early twentieth century to prepare a workforce for a relatively stable economy no longer work. Now, to thrive in a world of atomized, automated, and augmented work, we must become ever more human, focusing not on what we do, but why and how we do it. The Adaptation Advantage offers insight into what a fast-changing world means for work and workers and lights a path forward for anyone who works and leads others in their work. Packed with over 75 graphics that make tough concepts easily visible, this book was conceived as a guidebook in three parts to support individuals as they reimagine their future of work and become the leaders who transform their companies and teams. Part 1: Understanding the dynamics and impact of technology and social change Part 2: Understanding what this change means to individuals and their identity Part 3: Understanding how to lead in this learning-centric future of accelerated and continuous change and seize the Adaptation Advantage for your organization