Ravin Jesuthasan

Future of Work, AI & Workforce Transformation Author | Executive Fellow, Kellogg School of Management

Future of Work Work Design Artificial Intelligence Skills Workforce Transformation Leadership

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WHY RAVIN

What Ravin brings to the room.

Ravin Jesuthasan brings a work-design lens to the discussion of AI and organisational transformation. His contribution begins with tasks, skills and the way value is created, rather than with a technology rollout or a fixed list of job titles. For executive teams, the useful question is how work could be redistributed among people and machines—and what that means for capability, opportunity and leadership. His research connects workforce strategy with a more adaptable operating model. That makes him particularly relevant when an organisation wants to move beyond broad automation claims and examine the decisions required to translate technological possibilities into a responsible redesign of actual work.

KEYNOTE TOPICS

Ideas built for the stage.

Work Without Jobs: A More Adaptable Operating System

A job title can conceal work that could be organised in several different ways. Drawing on Work Without Jobs, Jesuthasan examines how tasks, skills and different forms of contribution can be connected more flexibly. For leadership and HR audiences, the discussion asks where fixed structures limit an organisation’s ability to respond. It is a way to examine the operating model, not an instruction to abolish jobs without considering coordination, accountability or the human experience.

The Skills-Powered Organization

Knowing which skills people possess does not automatically change how an organisation deploys them. Jesuthasan examines the decisions, practices and operating-model changes needed to connect capability with work. Drawing on his book with Tanuj Kapilashrami, the discussion asks how a skills-based approach affects opportunity, workforce planning and leadership. For executive audiences, it distinguishes a genuine redesign from a new taxonomy layered onto unchanged roles and processes.

AI Transformation: Start with the Work

Beginning with a technology can obscure the problem it is intended to solve. Jesuthasan takes a work-backward approach, examining tasks and activities before deciding how AI or automation might contribute. For senior teams, the discussion considers which capabilities change, where human judgement remains important and what must happen beyond tool deployment. It connects technological ambition with actual work design rather than treating an adoption announcement as evidence of realised productivity.

Leadership in a Machine-Augmented Organisation

As tasks move between people and technology, managers face new questions about coordination, development and accountability. Jesuthasan connects those responsibilities with his research on workforce transformation. For leadership audiences, the discussion asks what should remain human-led, where people need new opportunities to learn and how performance can be understood when roles become more fluid. It brings the future of work into present organisational choices without assuming that every managerial task should be automated.

Ravin Jesuthasan is an author and researcher on the future of work, artificial intelligence and workforce transformation. He is an Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer of Executive Education at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His work examines how organisations can redesign tasks, deploy skills more flexibly and make decisions about the relationship between human capability and automation.

His professional background spans workforce advisory work and research into technological change. At Mercer, his work has included leading services focused on work, skills and transformation. He has also led research projects for the World Economic Forum on the effects of emerging technologies and the changing organisation of work, connecting business practice with wider questions about employment and capability.

Jesuthasan holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and commercial law and an MBA in finance. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. This background connects analytical and financial questions with the human and organisational implications of changing how work gets done.

His books develop a sequence of ideas about workforce strategy. Reinventing Jobs, written with John Boudreau, considers how work can be decomposed to make better decisions about automation. Their Work Without Jobs examines an operating system built around work and capabilities rather than rigid job structures. The Skills-Powered Organization, co-authored with Tanuj Kapilashrami, explores the organisational changes required to make skills a more useful basis for deploying talent.

For executive audiences, Jesuthasan is relevant where technology strategy and workforce strategy need to become one conversation. A useful brief might concern the tasks inside a managerial role, how people move towards new opportunities or the conditions needed to deploy AI effectively. His perspective asks leaders to start with the work and its purpose, then examine technology and skills—rather than assuming that a new tool or a skills inventory is itself a transformed organisation.

ON STAGE

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