COVID-19 forced organizations around the world to enact radically new ways of working and operating amid the pandemic’s human and economic impacts. Organizations had to respond to a sudden, unforeseen crisis whose rapidly changing nature confounded efforts to predict and plan for events. The pandemic brought into sharp relief the pitfalls of strategies that envision moving from point A to point B on a static path, and that assume that one has years, not months or weeks, in which to rethink outdated views and establish a new set of truths. As we all learned the hard way, in an environment that can shift from moment to moment, the paths and time frames to achieving one’s goals must shift as well.

Introduction: The social enterprise in a world disrupted 2

Diving deeper: Five workforce trends to watch in 2021 

Designing work for well-being: The end of work/life balance 

Beyond reskilling: Unleashing worker potential 

Superteams: Where work happens 

Governing workforce strategies: Setting new directions for work and the workforce 

A memo to HR: Accelerating the shift to re-architecting work 

Leading forward: Leading the shift from survive to thrive 

Endnotes