Chief Change Officer - #381 Josh Drean: Employment Is Dead—Now Let’s Rebuild It — Part Two

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Part Two of a 3-part series on Josh Drean.Josh has worn many hats—Harvard MBA, psychology grad, co-founder of Work3 Institute and now, co-author of Employment is Dead (Harvard Business Review Press).In Part 1, we tore down the outdated rituals of traditional employment, including the performative disaster that is the annual engagement survey. Today in Part 2, we go behind the scenes: how did a random cold call spark a bestselling book that landed at HBR?Josh shares the publishing highs and headaches—crafting a 120-page proposal, keeping the book relevant in a fast-changing world, and building an audience in real time on social media while the manuscript sat in editing limbo. This one’s for every creator, innovator, and future-of-work disruptor trying to stay ahead of the curve.Key Highlights of Our Interview:A Book Born from a Cold Call“I know this sounds completely random, but do you want to write a book together?” That’s how co-author Deborah Perry Piscione kicked off Employment is Dead. One unexpected phone call, a big idea, and a sticky title later—they caught Harvard Business Review’s attention.Publishing in a Real-Time World“Imagine writing a chapter a year ago, only to have it go live twelve months later—it’s outdated by then.” With AI and Web3 changing everything weekly, Josh kept the conversation fresh through TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube while waiting for the book to hit shelves.The Proposal That Was ‘Way Too Long’“We ended up with 120 pages—which everyone said was way too much.” But that oversized pitch sparked a bidding war. Why? Because they weren’t just selling a book. They were calling out a broken system—and offering a blueprint to fix it._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Josh Drean  --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Oshul is a modernist community 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. 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 Debra, the co-founder of WorkStreet Institute, work 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 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. And so I submitted my proposal based on some of the research in 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? And I chuckled to myself and said absolutely. And the first thing she said to me is like that title that you wrote was good it's not sticky enough though like how can we make it more sticky and so we came up with employment instead not

thinking that it would stick honestly we thought HBR was going to change that, but the idea was strong enough that they loved it, and thus the book was born. How did you get HBR on board with this book? They publish a lot of business books, many from professors, industry leaders, and big name executives. Of course, Deborah is a leader in her space, and you have your HBS background,

but pitching a book idea is never easy. So how did you make the case? What convinced them that this was a book they had to publish? What did that process look like? Yeah, honestly, it was quite an organic experience. You put together a book proposal, which is essentially here's the theme of the book, here's how we want to write it. You fill a sample chapter, you have pretty much everything mapped out and ready to go. And Debra and I found it so easy to put that together. Before we knew it, we had 120 pages of this proposal, which was much too long. But it was just all of these emerging technologies.

We were excited about all of the research that we were seeing, all of the young startups who were coming to me out of the Harvard Innovation Labs and saying, hey, we want to leverage these technologies. We were excited about all of the research that we were seeing, all of the young startups who were coming to me out of the Harvard Innovation Labs and saying, hey, we want to leverage these technologies. We want to do something different. These are even minds, right? These very ambitious next level, the next Mark Zuckerbergs, if you will. And we were fascinated in the way that they were building their teams, engaging with talent. It was just so fluid and so their teams engaging with talent. It was just so fluid and so natural that it just felt like, wow, like this is definitely a better model than what we have, which is employment rules.

And I give you X amount of dollars. You give me X amount of time. No questions asked. That's how things work. This doesn't, it's not how it works in the age of information. The proposal came together nicely. We actually shopped it around quite a bit, right? You give it to all the publishers, see what they say. And if more than one publisher is interested in the book, then it goes to auction,

which was the case with us. We had several, surprisingly, we had quite a few publishers interested in it and HBR was interested as well. They threw their hat in the ring. We knew they were the clear winner when they decided that they wanted to jump on it. But I think the strength of the idea and really that feeling inside of everyone that something's not working here and something needs to change. And saying it in a different way of there's so many people come out and tackle it from a culture perspective. Oh, it's just the culture.

You need to change the culture of the organization. We very much say, yes, that's the case. But when you look underneath the culture, there's a structure in place that keeps employees put, that keeps them small, that doesn't measure the right things anymore. We're measuring time sitting at your desk rather than output. Never made sense to me. So it was just a natural fit to answer your question.

How long did the whole book process take? Now you are at the finish line with the launch. But of course, that's really just the beginning of a new chapter. From that initial call call to getting to this point, how long was the journey? What did that timeline look like? Too long.

It was too long. And here's the thing that most companies are going to experience and feel, right? Is that if we can't pivot fast enough, like we are going to be left behind. It's interesting how you see some of these major book publishing agencies, right? They have done things the same way for a really long time and it works and it still works to this day, right? There's no arguing with that. But when you think of the pace of change and the speed

of innovation, especially when we're talking about AI and the advances that we're making today with AI, can you imagine writing a chapter about AI a year ago and then having it published a year later? I feel like we're able to really hone in on the underlying principles of the book and it will be an evergreen book. However, if you are writing about technology and we're on a change management podcast where we value change, it's hard to see that the process... To answer your question, the process was about...

By the time the book publishes, it'll be two and a half years. A long process and that's just how things have been done, but in the meantime, I have been leveraging channels like TikTok and LinkedIn and YouTube to promote content and keep people up to know with what's happening now with technology. That's a much faster medium to get to your listeners and your viewers. And even though it might not be as prestigious or as large of a channel as HBR, we just need to find new ways of disseminating information. That makes sense. About 10 years ago, I actually published two books in Chinese, not in English.

That's why I never sent you my books. One was with a commercial publisher, and the other was through a university publisher in China. I finished both within two years, and one for Hong Kong, the other distributed at the national level in China. Long story short, I've always appreciated the depth a book brings. At some point, I love to write one in English. Because a book isn't just a quick e-book or a 10-page summary,

it holds real thought, deep reflection, and analytical depth. These days, sure a lot of people use AI tools to generate content. Actually, going through the full process like you did, building a platform, engaging with an audience, testing ideas, and then rolling out a fully developed book. That's something I truly admire. For that reason, I've spent over an hour diving into your book, and certain chapters really caught my attention, especially the ones on talent, skills, credentials, and degrees. You and I, you are from Harvard, I'm from Yale, are both beneficiaries of brand-name degrees.

In the traditional playbook, that gave us a clear advantage in securing opportunities. But with emerging technologies, are degrees becoming less and less relevant and useful? In your book, you talk about how employers still claim to degree requirements. It's a tough mindset to break. As someone who has benefited from a prestigious degree, just like I have, what's your take? Do degrees still matter?

Or is it time for a new way of thinking, working, and doing? Yeah, that is a really great question. And you need to, I think we need to just hone in on what is the purpose of a degree. And I will say that one part about your thing of we are beneficiaries of, you know, brands, degrees. The interesting thing about attending school at Harvard is that there's this idea of the subject matter is fine, but we're really there for the connections and for the resources.

That holds much more weight than the actual degree itself. It's who are you connected to? What opportunities do you have? And as you probably are aware, there's a portion of students who got in because they had very wealthy or well-connected parents. They don't take their education seriously. And somehow they're able to land a pretty decent job or they go and take over their parents' textile factory in India somewhere.

What a story, right? From a cold call to a book that's making waves. Josh has proved that big ideas can come from anywhere. But now, let's get tactical. In the next episode, we'll explore the Work-3 framework, how companies can actually implement change instead of just talking about it. If you want to know what's next for work, you won't want to miss this. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show,

leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.