Chief Change Officer - Work3 Institute Co-Founder Josh Drean: Employment is Dead. Now What? — Part Three

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Part Three 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).   We’re kicking off 2025 with a bang—by declaring employment dead. Yes, you read that right. Josh Drean is here to dismantle the traditional job market, toss outdated HR policies into the digital abyss, and redefine what it means to work in the modern world. In the Part 1 of a three-part series with Josh, where we dig into why the corporate world’s obsession with employee engagement surveys is as effective as asking your toaster for career advice. Spoiler alert: Most companies don’t actually want honest feedback from employees. Today's Part 3, where we take the conversation even deeper into the new rules of work. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Degrees vs. skills: The battle for relevance – If Josh and Vince, proud Ivy League grads, are questioning the value of degrees, maybe it’s time we all did. Web3, DAOs, and the digital workplace revolution – Why the next wave of companies won’t have middle managers breathing down your neck. What happens to companies that don’t adapt? – Hint: They’ll struggle to attract Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and anyone who doesn’t dream of a soul-sucking 9-to-5. _________________________ Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Josh Drean Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Welcome to the world of human intelligence for change gurus, growth progressives, and visionary underdogs globally. Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes Top 20 US Business Podcast on Apple Top 1 US Careers Podcast on Apple 5 Million+ All-Time Downloads Reaching 80+ Countries Daily

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. I 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. We're 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.

What's the objective of getting a degree? And as I understand it, the idea was to, one, obviously, gain the skills that you would need to be valuable in the workplace to be productive. And two, I guess that's really it. Right. And the reason why a company would ask for degree requirements in order for you to get hired was simply because they can trust that you learned lessons, that you learned how to work, that you pushed hard, that your GPA is somehow representative of your work ethic and your knowledge. And then entering the workforce, hitting the ground running, right? That was the idea of getting a degree for the younger generation.

The attractiveness of it was that if you go to school, you will get the skills you need to land a high paying job and be fine. You'll be just fine in life. And what we're learning is that's no longer the case. Degrees are no longer guaranteeing employment, no longer guaranteeing a job. And we're seeing a lot of organizations start to drop degree requirements. We'll take you if you have a degree or not. And how does that feel to someone who just spent tens of thousands of dollars going to school to earn a certain skill or earn a degree and then to hit the workforce and they're like, sorry, we're not going to hire you. The reason is because we are moving to a skills-based

hiring process rather than an experience-based process. Yes, you have a degree, but I've learned as an employer that, you know, even though you have a degree, it doesn't mean you have the skills, soft and hard, to do the job or that you're not ready to be able to undertake. And a lot of companies famously will push against hiring someone from Harvard or Yale because they're divas, because they feel like the world owes them something and they're just not Into that as as much anymore. So I will answer very directly I don't think that getting a college degree is the right model for

making sure that we are being valuable to Companies, especially when we are upskilling in AI, right? Is there a degree out there around AI? Yeah, there's very technical degrees that you can get. And yeah, we're starting to add some of that into the curriculum. But in my mind, there's no gen AI experts unless they've already been in the field building it directly. So a lot of these students have to learn it and have to come in to the workforce

ready to go. And I will say that one part about your thing of we are beneficiaries of 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. 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. Yeah, I definitely agree with you. At one point in my career, I helped a lot of students from China apply to business schools in the US. Most of them came from ordinary backgrounds, no special connections or privileges, and honestly I was in the same boat. I went to Yale on a scholarship. Now when people ask me, is an MBA still relevant? I get it. That's a lot of debate, just like with degrees in general.

It's about connections, networks, and the brand name of these two-year MBA or law school programs. And yes, these programs accelerate learning, especially the soft skills or life skills like communication, critical thinking, and relationship building. But beyond that, the real value is in the people you meet and the deep connections you build over those two years. That's something you can't just replicate by networking on Lincoln or signing up for an online course.

It's a different kind of experience. That said, if your goal is purely to learn some skills, there are so many ways to do that now. Many of them more affordable and accessible. I've personally taken online certificates and courses to upskill, building on a traditional education background. Now, going back to your book

and the discussion on degree requirements. Employers, some of them, are starting to look beyond just degrees. They are using other signals to assess skills and knowledge before making hiring decisions. But the degree requirement itself is still deeply ingrained, not just in the US, but in many countries. So how do we change that? How do we take real action to jailbreak the degree system? What needs to happen to shift the mindset? Yeah. And let's get into the technical weeds a little bit and really take a look at this. Right.

The foundational is do you have the skills to do the job? That's what it comes to. We're seeing a lot of these processes break down already. When you look at the hiring process, AI has broken it. It is completely shattered at this point because the idea is the HR manager is going to ask Chad GPT, write a job description for me based on this criteria. And then the person applying for that job is going to say, hey, Chad GPT, write my resume to perfectly match this job description.

And now you're getting a flood of perfectly tailored job applications that are now being vetted by AI solely. Like 95% of these aren't even going to be seen by a human being. So you've got AI writing the job description, AI applying to the role, and AI vetting the process. How do you verify if someone has the skills that they say they have? A self-reported resume is such a terrible way to ask people what skills they have. Blockchain, however, will allow us to verify our skills.

So that piece of paper, that degree that you're holding, you could be standing right next to someone who has a degree and they parted the entire time, but they were able to push through and they were able to get the degree. Whereas you worked very hard to develop the skills and you're walking away with a very different experience. So how can that piece of paper symbolize the exact same thing to two different people when the experience or the skills? We can't verify the experience or the skills. We can't verify that you have the skills.

We can only verify that you have the degree itself. So again, blockchain allows us to build experiences, to upskill, to verify the projects that we've worked on and the work that we've completed. To now when you apply for a job, you have this pedigree, right? You have this crypto wallet, if you will, a digital resume imprinted on the blockchain.

So we don't have to verify your transcripts and we don't have to like look at your paper. We can now know immediately that you have the skills to do the job because it's already recorded. And so we talk about blockchain in this, it's called trustless trust. I do this concept of trust but verify. Like I trust that your resume is right,

but we're gonna verify that you didn't lie to us. With blockchain, it's now you just have to trust. Like it's already there. So imagine a platform like Upwork, which is a freelancing site, and the way that they verify that you have done the job is typically it's reviews. You landed a project, you did really good,

so a client gives you a great review. The more five-star reviews that you have, the more you get bumped up in the algorithm, and that's how you verify. That's a great method, but it takes a long time. What if you already, the more you get bumped up in the algorithm. And that's how you verify. That's a great method, but it takes a long time. What if you already have the skills and you already know what you're doing and you don't want to start at ground zero,

where do you start, where do you do that? If your skills are already like verified, then that means that AI can just scrub the entirety of all these projects and all of these work opportunities and drop into your lap the perfect fit based on your skills, based on your preferences for how often you wanna work, whether you just wanna be a part-time worker,

full-time or double full-time. Working in the future is gonna be just as easy as opening an app and getting started. And it's because we have these technologies that will verify whether we can do the job or not. So far, I've asked you a lot about credentials and education. That's one of my key interests.

But in your book, you also introduce this massive Work3 transformation map, a full framework for how organizations can innovate and leverage emerging technologies. Now, we won't go into all the details today. Maybe we'll save that for future episodes. But I want to ask you this. Maybe we'll save that for future episode, but I want to ask you this. Let's say I am a CEO. You and Deborah present me with this book.

You come in as consultants, advising my organization on transformation. Where would you recommend starting? Obviously executing the full roadmap, strategy, concepts, implementation, could take more than a year or even longer. But what's the first step? The first major pain point to tackle. I know it depends on the company, but if you had to pick a key entry point from your roadmap,

what would be a strong starting place? Any organization looking to make a meaningful shift? Yeah, it's such a great question. It's what we spend most of our time doing at the Work3 Institute. We love working with human-centric, digital-first leaders who are ready to push the boundaries on what's possible. And the roadmap is a long process, right? There's 14 steps there.

But a lot of times we break down, the starting point for us is breaking down the assumptions that you might hold about employment because it is pitched to you within the walls of employment. For example, you might think that you need to engage full-time or part-time employees or contractors. And within a DAO or a decentralized autonomous organization, there are several more layers. There are bounty hunters, there are project completers. So how do you change your mindset there?

Another mindset that we help fix is, are you running that employee experience because all you care about is higher productivity and you're willing to forego any of the personal things that we need to be doing to make employees comfortable just so we can get to productivity? Essentially, are you one of those people who like, I want AI to reduce headcount because it's expensive, or I want to use AI to augment the potential of my people so that they can do more and tenix their productivity? There's two different camps there, right?

We help companies say like, it's not just about productivity, it's about fulfillment. How do we bring fulfillment and satisfaction back into the workplace? That's a very strong starting point, but I wanna hone in on maybe step five. It's my favorite, is once a company is aligned to the idea and the process, then we start to unpack what it actually looks like to pilot a DAO.

I keep saying this word, a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. Essentially, it is the answer for these imbalanced power dynamics that we experience within an organization. Traditionally, a large organization is centralized. There's a large hierarchy. There's a few people at the top who are making decisions that disseminate throughout the organization. And as a frontline employee, all I'm supposed to be doing is exactly what I'm told. But we've trained these individuals to be free thinkers.

They go to college, they learn how to be technical and creative and innovative, and we don't allow them the opportunity to do so. How do we change the power dynamic and maybe empower some of these workers to be able to make decisions on the front line, to give them the flexibility and the autonomy that they need to do their best work and to remove these layers of oversight that no longer serve us? Why do we have six levels of management when technology can absolutely flatten an organization where you have maybe 200 direct reports instead of the Steve Jobs two pizzas kind of analogy or the Jeff Bezos analogy? How does that work? It breaks down

silos, communication flows freely on the blockchain, and you're able to work without the oversight of a manager. So again, this step five is piloting the DAO at the organization. Let's get a team together. Let's distribute tokens to that team. Let's get on snapshot, which is a tool that allows them to pitch ideas and pitch directions, and then everyone on that team gets to vote on which directions they should go and when a majority vote happens they

move in that direction so it's a bit of a democratization of work while also moving faster right the idea is to be as agile as possible and it's fun to watch companies really gravitate towards that it's fun to watch micromanagers get really nervous because they want to control things. But yeah, I would say there's a lot there for sure. One thing I want to add to that, when you talk about why there are 600 people reporting to you, and why organizations have six layers of hierarchy, at the end of the day, layers of hierarchy, at the end of the day, all comes down to politics and power. And of course, money. More layers mean more justification for higher salaries at the top.

That's just how economic incentives, power, and corporate structures work. But that's a whole other discussion, one that goes beyond technology, yet still shapes the way employment functions today. Even as the world changes, traditional employment structures are still deeply entrenched, especially for my generation, deeply entrenched, especially for my generation. And even for yours, despite being younger, business schools and corporate environments still reinforce many of these same structures. Now, employment isn't disappearing,

but its function, nature, and diversity are evolving. The depth and breadth of work are shifting, and that's where technology plays a huge role. So as a closing thought, Josh, you've been a strong advocate for integrating and merging technologies into the workplace. What do you see as the consequences for employers who don't adapt? For those who aren't paying attention, who aren't taking steps to evolve how they manage, recruit, and lead, what risks do they face?

I'd love to hear your take as the final message to the world on this show. The consequences are very consequential. They are dire. I like to look at it through the lens of the emerging generation, right? Gen Z is hitting the workforce. Gen Alpha is right behind them. And they don't want your mom's nine-to-five. They don't want traditional jobs.

They have grown up in a world where it just doesn't make sense to them anymore. And it is so fascinating to see that a lot of these organizations just have question marks over their head like, how do we engage the younger generation? We have all of these boomers retiring in the next five to 10 years, and we don't have enough employees coming in, and it's easy to just label the younger generation as lazy, as entitled, they don't have the people skills

that they need to be successful in the workplace. And I call bullshit on that. I know that they're not fitting into the mold that you want to be successful in the workplace. And I call bullshit on that. I know that they're not fitting into the mold that you want them to fit in, but they are the most social generation that we've ever seen based on the technologies that they leverage. They question, why should I do this task? I'm not going to just complete something if I don't understand what's behind it. They expect some level of ownership over the work that they're completing. And we're seeing an entire, across the spectrum, across the globe, we're seeing companies fail

to engage the younger generation. And they don't know why. And they blame the younger generation and I very squarely blame the organization for not being able to change according to their needs. Now there are organizations who are knocking it out of the park. Spotify is a great example of a company that is letting companies like employees still work from anywhere to work according to their own rhythm to have that work-life balance. And there are Gen Z workers clamoring to get into that organization.

They're out there, they're educated, they want a job, they want to provide meaning, but it's not happening within the traditional confines of employment. And so I say to all employers out there, if you want to survive the next generation and engage them in their top talent, you need to speak their language, you need to adopt the technologies that they're using, you need to allow them to work in virtual offices, you need to allow them to use their digital avatar to complete work. And when we start to change that mentality, and believe me there will be a point where they are not jumping from job to

job because they're unhappy. They'll be jumping from traditional employment to additional, more attractive models of work. And we need to prepare today. One thing I want to add, I am Gen X. That's the generation between baby boomers and millennials. Older than Gen Z, but still young and energetic. We are the first who transitioned from an analog world to a digital world.

I remember learning how to use a calculator, then moving on to Lotus before Microsoft Excel even existed. When I was at Yale for business school, Google was just becoming a thing. I'm 51 now, turning 52 in a week. So I've experienced firsthand how technology has evolved, and so have many in my generation. And that brings me to your point about organizations, not just surviving, but thriving. We are in a time where the workforce is more intergenerational than ever.

Different age groups, different levels of exposure to technology. Some grew up with it, others had to adapt along the way. The question is, how do we make the most of this? How do we create a more inclusive environment that maximizes talent, skills, and purpose. Because in the end, that's what drives business results. That's what fuels performance. And for organizations that don't embrace this shift, if they stay rigid, resistant, or unwilling to evolve, they are setting themselves up

for negative consequences. So that's my advice. Stay open, stay flexible, and recognize that the workforce is changing. Because those who don't will be left behind. As well said Vince. Thank you. Invest a web on this series. We've torn down outdated employment models,

explored the rise of Web3 and AI, and tackled how businesses must evolve to keep up. The question now is, will companies adapt or get left behind? The future of work isn't coming. It's already here. If you're ready to stay ahead, now is the time to act. 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.