From a transcriber in the Philippines to a web designer in Boise, this blog post has had quite a journey. In fact, one of my copywriters wrote this sentence from 35,000 feet in the air on a flight from Denver to Boston, and I am editing it in my office in Tualatin, Oregon. Because you are reading this, you too are a part of the journey. What you may not know
is that the journey is actually a revolution.
Welcome to what acclaimed author and business advisor Brynne Kennedy calls the Talent Mobility Revolution.
I recently spoke with Kennedy to record an episode of my podcast and discuss her new book, Flat, Fluid and Fast: Harness the Talent Mobility Revolution to Drive Employee Engagement, Accelerate Innovation and Unleash Growth. The successful investment banker and Northern California congress candidate wrote her book in response to the rapidly-changing workforce and economy. Set up like a playbook, Flat, Fluid, and Fast helps readers understand today’s globalized workforce and the policies that shape it, and it challenges them to join the revolution to improve it.
More people are working in episodes, and their career paths are not traditional linear arcs. They take on many roles
throughout their careers, and they take breaks to travel, volunteer, or stay at home with their families. From offices to living rooms to corner cafés, they are working in different spaces, and they often move to work in different cities, states, and countries.
Kennedy urges employers to think of today’s workforce not as a trend on a vertical rise but as an evolution on a horizontal path. “People are working in all different ways today. Today’s economy demands similar agility, and it demands us to think of them as one workforce.”
According to a report by Accenture, 46 percent of executives say, “Traditional job descriptions are obsolete as machines take on
routine tasks and people move to project-based work,” and 29% of the executives surveyed have already redesigned roles. As a full-time marketing director, I know that finding someone who can do it all is difficult and not often lucrative. I find some of my best talent when I tap into the gig economy on sites like Upwork and 99Designs. By hiring freelancers, I can better support and utilize my in-house employees.
“We have generations in the workforce that lived through recessions and kind of recognize more so than our parents did that businesses are not stable, that they do get acquired, they do get disrupted,” said Kennedy. “I think a lot of people think more today about building their own resiliency, building their own toolkit in the face of those things rather than a patriarchal relationship with an employer where you think that employer will take care of you forever.”
Kennedy urges companies and policymakers to put education in the front seat, and I couldn’t agree more. “I am a believer that workers and humans have unending potential and that anyone can learn anything,” she said. “We need to modernize our education system to ensure that we’re both supporting apprenticeship and trades tracks and also supporting our future workforce with more skills development and more recognition of how work is changing.”
Employers need to offer more training so that employees can shift into different roles as projects change or parts of their jobs become automated. Kennedy suggests that businesses build partnerships with community colleges and trade schools, and that more government funding is allocated to training programs, particularly in areas where jobs are more likely to be disrupted. “In the face of a changing economy,” said Kennedy, “dynamic learning will become a critical, critical part of what we support.”
This isn’t all on the employer. Employees should seek opportunities to develop their skills, and they should learn how to
market themselves so that they are highlighting their skills rather than their job titles.
Just as the workforce is changing, so is the workplace. Fading are the days of cubicles and desktop computers, of arriving
before the boss and staying until the boss leaves. Good work is no longer about where someone is and when; it’s about doing good work, regardless of an employee’s location.
Organizations that want to keep up need to be aware of when meeting in person is necessary and when it isn’t. Rather than
using the office as a place to plug in and get work done, “people will come into the office to communicate, to ideate, to build relationships, to brainstorm, to set objectives,” said Kennedy. “Then they will disperse, and they will work from home and connect virtually and often have sort of an in and out way of working.”
The Talent Mobility Revolution has its pros and cons, and Kennedy’s book sheds light on both. With mobility, there is much
more flexibility and autonomy, which is what many of today’s workers crave. There are more opportunities to grow, to be comfortable, and to be challenged. 
Embracing a mobile workforce can greatly benefit a company and a community. With more people working from home, there are fewer commuters on the road, and companies can save on real estate because they don’t need as much space. A
mobile workforce promotes a healthy work and home life balance because people can opt to take care of appointments and their families during the workday and finish their work at other times. More people whose companies are based in big
cities are choosing to live outside of the city and support rural economies because they don’t need to make the trek to work every day.
On the other hand, with more flexibility and fewer full-time employees, Kennedy warns that companies can abuse these privileges by not offering equal benefits or traditional employment protections. They can set themselves up for audits, negative tax exposure, and other operational and legal challenges. Kennedy urges companies and policymakers to be proactive by extending employment protections, benefits, and bargaining rights to all types of workers. “If you’re a business leader, you should be thinking about your workforce and architecting benefits and culture not just for your traditional nine-to-five, in the office employee,” she said. “You should be thinking of it in a much broader sense as including your traditional in-office employee but also your virtual workers.”
Kennedy concluded our podcast by urging listeners to challenge old ways of thinking in companies and in government: “We need to break down the silos in business that no longer reflect today’s reality. We need to recognize that work has moved from a nine-to-five, in the office, linear career progression where we stay at the same company for life and offer the autonomy and flexibility and fulfillment for stability.”
I encourage anyone reading this to go get the book and to dive in deep. There is so much more that the book covers in an
accessible and actionable way. Learn more and buy the book at FlatFluidFast.com. You can follow Brynne Kennedy on Twitter and Instagram.
Listen to the full interview