Companies today are facing a big talent-management challenge. They simply do not have the capabilities they need in-house to transform their offerings, processes, and infrastructures-and they're increasingly unable to persuade highly skilled professionals to come on board full-time, despite making attractive offers. In many fields-particularly technology, data sciences, and machine learning-the people with the most sought-after skills are freelancers. Integrating and managing a new "blended workforce" will be one of the main managerial challenges in the years ahead. Force-fitting the model used for temporary staff onto highly skilled freelancers won't work, however. Firms must fully integrate these professionals into a highly cohesive internal team. This article looks at successful efforts to manage the blended workforce at companies such as Microsoft, M&C Saatchi, and Mars and lays out some of the most helpful lessons they have learned.

Many of us assumed that by now, years into the pandemic, we'd have settled on new structures, practices, and processes for hybrid work. But we haven't. Instead most companies are stuck in a transitional phase, where little is resolved. Why is it taking us so long to work this out? Because, the author writes, the new world of hybrid work isn't simply about determining whether everybody should come back full-time to the office. It's also forcing us to test long-held assumptions about how work should be done and what it even is. The changes to workplace practices and norms that we're contemplating could be more significant than anything that's happened in generations, Gratton writes, and we may need years to fully sort things out. So it's time for leaders to start thinking differently about the problem and approach it just as they would any other major change in how they do business-by asking tough questions and learning deeply. Gratton surveys recent research on the pros and cons of hybrid work and offers leaders some fundamental questions they can use to guide their organizations into this new phase of redesigning how we work.

As the pandemic recedes, we face a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a future where we are not only more productive in our work, but more fulfilled as human beings. That according to one of the world's foremost authorities on the future of work. In a wide-ranging interview, she describes how COVID-19 has changed the workplace forever, and now that working norms have been 'unfrozen,' it is time to reimagine traditional working models. She presents a four-stage framework for redesigning work, which begins with 'Understanding what matters' for each particular role and to each individual. In the end, she shows that increasing flexibility around time and place and having more time for ourselves, our families and our communities is really about one thing: getting back to being more human.

Fear of failure weighs heavily on many leaders tasked with managing new workplace expectations. Tackling uncertainties begins by seeing these challenges not simply as binary judgments (office or home; full time or part time) but as the impetus to give work a structural overhaul. Leaders are redesigning work by moving through four steps: understanding people, networks, and jobs; reimagining how work gets done; modeling and testing redesign ideas against core principles; and taking action widely.

In recent decades sweeping reengineering, digitization, and agile initiatives--and lately the move to remote work--have dramatically transformed the job of managers. Change has come along three dimensions: power, skills, and structure. Managers now have to think about making their teams successful, rather than being served by them; coach performance, not oversee tasks; and lead in rapidly changing, more-fluid environments. These shifts have piled more responsibilities onto managers and required them to demonstrate new capabilities. Research shows that most managers are struggling to keep up. A crisis is looming, say Gherson, a former corporate chief human resources officer, and Gratton, a London Business School professor. Some organizations, however, are heading it off by reimagining the role of managers. This article looks at three--Standard Chartered, IBM, and Telstra--that have helped managers develop new skills, rewired systems and processes to support their work better, and even radically redefined managerial responsibilities to meet the new priorities of the era.

Since the pandemic, companies have adopted the technologies of virtual work remarkably quickly--and employees are seeing the advantages of more flexibility in where and when they work. As leaders recognize what is possible, they are embracing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset work using a hybrid model. To make this transition successfully, they'll need to design hybrid work arrangements with individual human concerns in mind, not just institutional ones. That requires companies to approach the problem from four different perspectives: (1) jobs and tasks; (2) employee preferences; (3) projects and workflows; and (4) inclusion and fairness. Leaders also need to conceptualize new work arrangements along two axes: place and time. Millions of workers around the world this year have made a sudden shift from being place-constrained (working in the office) to being place-unconstrained (working anywhere). Employees have also experienced a shift along the time axis, from working synchronously with others 9 to 5 to working asynchronously whenever they choose. If leaders and managers can successfully make the transition to an anywhere, anytime model, the result will be work lives that are more purposeful and productive.

Leaders and the teams they manage are experimenting with new ways of working. They are pivoting the axes of work for both place and time, designing hybrid ways of collaborating that have few precedents. To build for the short and long terms, leaders must understand the upsides and downsides of these place and time options. They also must align them to enhance the essentials of productive work: energy, focus, coordination, and cooperation.

Some leaders have failed to realize that the daily lives of those who work in their organizations will inevitably be transformed over the coming decades. But it's the responsibility of leaders to create clarity about the future of work. That means being engaged with creating a narrative about the future of jobs, actively championing the learning agenda, and role modeling work flexibility -for instance, by taking paternity leave or working from home.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Across the world, people today are living longer. Whether it is in the United States, China, or Rwanda, average human life expectancy has increased over the past few decades. There is growing awareness that increasing longevity will have major implications for how people manage their work lives and careers. Rising life expectancy means the level of savings required to provide a reasonable income for retirement at age 65 is becoming increasingly infeasible for many people. Given the average level of savings, the authors say, many workers in their mid-40s are likely to need to work into their early to mid-70s; many currently in their 20s may work into their late 70s, and even into their 80s. Although people are starting to recognize that they will have to restructure their lives and careers, corporations are unprepared. Few organizations have taken full account of the opportunities and challenges longevity brings to their own workforces. Most companies, especially those operating in the advanced economies, still view life in terms of three stages: full-time education, full-time work, and then a "hard stop"retirement around the age of 65. This is the life structure that emerged in the 20th century and continues to underpin much thinking about the workforce. But in the view of the authors, it cannot be stretched to support a healthy 100-year life and will need to be expanded to include more stages. Without change, the authors argue, employees will struggle to build a working life that has resilience over an extended period of time and that will support a healthy and prosperous longevity. For example, as working lives become longer, the need for lifelong learning will increase.

In the past, society has counted on government bodies and institutions like the World Bank to address global issues like climate change, youth unemployment and income inequality. But in recent years, the author argues, another kind of institution has become uniquely placed to address these challenges: global corporations. The catch, she explains, is that before a corporation can take a wider world view, it first has to reach inside of itself to build inner resilience. She describes three spheres of corporate influence and how to build resilience within each in order to proceed to the third and final sphere: contributing to global resilience.

In three major waves of change over the past 30 years, employers and workers have converged on new arrangements for getting knowledge work done. First, home computers and e-mail spawned an army of freelancers, offering both workers and employers new flexibility. Next, mobile technology and global teamwork gave the same kind of work-anywhere, work-anytime flexibility to full-time employees, without asking them to forsake career progress and development within their companies. Now, in a third wave, new ways of providing community and shared space are curing a side effect of virtualization--worker isolation--and driving increased collaboration. The authors write that to make the most of this third wave of change, employers should rethink the compact they forge with workers. Five fundamental aspects of knowledge work require fresh thinking: the value of the relationship with a larger enterprise; the settings in which work is done; the organization of workflows and how individual contributors add value; the technologies used to support higher achievement; and the degree to which employment arrangements are tailored to individuals. The three waves of transformation surge forward at differing velocities across sectors and geographies and mix together in societies. Understanding how your business participates in each wave will help you make wise decisions about technology, work models, talent sources, and people practices.

HBR asked top management thinkers to share what they were resolved to accomplish in 2011. Here are their answers: Joseph E. Stiglitz will be crafting a new postcrisis paradigm for macroeconomics whereby rational individuals interact with imperfect and asymmetric information. Herminia Ibarra will be looking for hard evidence of how "soft" leadership creates value. Eric Schmidt will be planning to scale mobile technology by developing fast networks and providing low-cost smartphones in the poorest parts of the world. Michael Porter will be using modern cost accounting to uncover-and lower-the real costs of health care. Vijay Govindarajan will be trying to prototype a $300 house to replace the world's poorest slums, provide healthy living, and foster education. Dan Ariely will be investigating consumers' distaste for genetically modified salmon, synthetic pharmaceuticals, and other products that aren't "natural." Laura D. Tyson will be promoting the establishment of a national infrastructure investment bank. Esther Duflo will be striving to increase full immunization in poor areas of India. Clay Shirky will be studying how to design internet platforms that foster civility. Klaus Schwab will be undertaking to create a Risk Response Network through which decision makers around the world can pool knowledge about the risks they face. Jack Ma will be working to instill a strong set of values in his 19,000 young employees and to help clean up China's environment. Thomas H. Davenport will be researching big judgment calls that turned out well and how organizations arrived at them. A.G. Lafley will be proselytizing to make company boards take leadership succession seriously. Eleven additional contributors to the Agenda, along with special audio and video features, can be found at hbr.org/2011-agenda.

Technology itself has become the great general manager. It can monitor performance closely, provide instant feedback, and even create reports and presentations. That leaves people with general management skills in a very vulnerable position. They must make two crucial investments: the first in acquiring and building knowledge or competencies that are valuable and rare; the second in developing new areas of proficiency throughout their working lives.

Executing complex initiatives like acquisitions or an IT overhaul requires a breadth of knowledge that can be provided only by teams that are large, diverse, virtual, and composed of highly educated specialists. The irony is, those same characteristics have an alarming tendency to decrease collaboration on a team. What's a company to do? Gratton, a London Business School professor, and Erickson, president of the Concours Institute, studied 55 large teams and identified those with strong collaboration despite their complexity. Examining the team dynamics and environment at firms ranging from Royal Bank of Scotland to Nokia to Marriott, the authors isolated eight success factors: (1) "signature" relationship practices that build bonds among the staff, in memorable ways that are particularly suited to a company's business; (2) role models of collaboration among executives, which help cooperation trickle down to the staff; (3) the establishment of a "gift culture," in which managers support employees by mentoring them daily, instead of a transactional "tit-for-tat culture;" (4) training in relationship skills, such as communication and conflict resolution; (5) a sense of community, which corporate HR can foster by sponsoring group activities; (6) ambidextrous leadership, or leaders who are both task-oriented and relationship-oriented; (7) good use of heritage relationships, by populating teams with members who know and trust one another; (8) role clarity and task ambiguity, achieved by defining individual roles sharply but giving teams latitude on approach. As teams have grown from a standard of 20 members to comprise 100 or more, team practices that once worked well no longer apply. The new complexity of teams requires companies to increase their capacity for collaboration by making long-term investments that build relationships and trust, and smart near-term decisions about how teams are formed and run.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In studying teams at large companies in Europe and the United States, finds that diversity and complexity are becoming the rule. Diverse teams bring to bear a range of experiences and attitudes to tackle companies' hardest challenges. Paradoxically, however, the very nature of team diversity often creates conditions that reduce teams' innovative capacity. Illustrates many failures in collaboration and knowledge-sharing that resulted from faultlines--subgroups or coalitions that emerge naturally within teams, typically along demographic lines such as age, gender, and functional background, yet finds that some teams were able to collaborate and share knowledge despite the presence of faultlines. A defining factor was the behavior of the team leader and, in particular, the extent to which the leader was task-oriented or relationship-oriented. Where it is likely strong faultlines will emerge, many leaders tend to encourage team members to come together. However, simple socializing can make people's differences more apparent and cause faultlines to solidify. Recommends that leaders vary their leadership style according to how long a team has been together and outlines four steps for successful functioning of diverse teams: leaders should diagnose the likely extent of faultlines in a new team; focus on task orientation when a team is newly formed; consider when a switch in leadership style would be most appropriate; and finally, build a relationship-oriented style. Switching from task orientation to relationship orientation will be successful only when a team has developed a clear protocol for communication and coordination and an established operational structure.

What distinguishes a company that has deeply engaged and committed employees from another one that doesn't? It's not a certain compensation scheme or talent-management practice. Instead, it's the ability to express to current and potential employees what makes the organization unique. Companies with highly engaged employees articulate their values and attributes through "signature experiences"--visible, distinctive elements of the work environment that send powerful messages about the organization's aspirations and about the skills, stamina, and commitment employees will need in order to succeed there. Whole Foods Market, for example, uses a team-based hiring and orientation process to convey to new employees the company's emphasis on collaboration and decentralization. At JetBlue, the reservation system is run by agents from their homes, a signature experience that boosts employees' satisfaction and productivity. Companies that successfully create and communicate signature experiences understand that not all workers want the same things. Indeed, employee preferences are an important but often overlooked factor in the war for talent. Firms that have engendered productive and engaged workforces address those preferences by following some general principles: They target potential employees as methodically as they target potential customers; they shape their signature experiences to address business needs; they identify and preserve their histories; they share stories--not just slogans--about life in the firm; they create processes consistent with their signature experiences; and they understand that they shouldn't try to be all things to all people. The best strategy for coming out ahead in the war for talent is not to scoop up everyone in sight but to attract the right people--those who are intrigued and excited by the environment the company offers and who will reward it with their loyalty.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Vertical command and control sabotages organizations that need bottom-up innovation to be competitive. Yet, organizational integration is increasingly essential. New research shows how technology is helping cutting-edge companies meet the challenge by integrating horizontally. A fundamental management challenge, particularly in large, diversified global enterprises, is the tension between subunit autonomy and companywide cohesion. New research uncovers several ways top companies balance that tension. In the last decade, performance criteria often ignored how managers of subunits contributed to companywide performance. Empowerment efforts improved unit competitiveness but left knowledge sharing behind. Today (because customer needs span internal boundaries and technology has changed the way innovation gets managed) managers are recognizing the need to address the integration side of the tension. At one company, BP, CEO John Browne created a peer-assist process to help his business unit leaders integrate horizontally. Managers who ran similar businesses were assigned to help one another improve both individual and collective performance. As the culture evolved and managers successfully handled ever tougher endeavors, both entrepreneurship and mutual trust were strengthened. Executives who want to build horizontal integration without disrupting entrepreneurship must allow time for persistent action and reinforcement to take hold.