The Next Rules of Work

Where is work really heading—and how can you stay ahead when everything is changing faster than ever? In The Next Rules of Work, Gary A. Bolles challenges the outdated assumptions that have shaped labor, leadership, and learning for centuries. The old rules—clocking in from 9 to 5, following hierarchical orders, treating workers as assets—no longer fit a world defined by automation, global disruption, and accelerating technological change. Bolles argues that our true task is not to fight these waves of transformation but to co-create the future of work—one that is inclusive, purposeful, and unmistakably human-centered.

The Central Premise: Mindset, Skillset, and Toolset

Bolles’ framework rests on three interlocking dimensions: mindset, skillset, and toolset. These represent how people think about work, what they can do, and the tools that enable them to perform. He emphasizes that cultivating an adaptable mindset—open to experimentation and learning—is more vital than ever. Without it, even the most advanced skills or technologies become obsolete. But mindset must be coupled with the right skillsets (problem-solving abilities, creativity, empathy) and a continually evolving toolset (from agile methods to digital collaboration tools). Together, these form the foundation for what Bolles calls the Next Rules of Work.

From Old Rules to Next Rules

To appreciate the Next Rules, Bolles first takes you through the Old Rules of Work. These were shaped by centuries of industrial thinking—from Adam Smith’s division of labor to Frederick Taylor’s scientific management. Under those rules, work was mechanized, hierarchical, and driven by efficiency. A job meant performing fixed tasks in set hours, a career followed rigid paths, and success was defined by long-term stability. But the 21st century shattered that architecture. Remote work, automation, and the pandemic have revealed how vulnerable our linear systems are. Now, adaptability, agency, and continuous learning are the new currencies of success.

The Four Core Next Rules

Bolles distills his framework into four core principles that define forward-thinking organizations and professionals:

• Empower Effectiveness: move beyond surveillance-based management and support people in doing their best, purpose-driven work.
• Enable Growth: foster lifelong learning and a growth mindset so individuals can keep evolving as work itself changes.
• Ensure Involvement: build inclusive systems that value diversity, equity, and empathy, aligning teams around shared humanity.
• Encourage Alignment: create coherence between individual purpose, team goals, and organizational mission—replacing outdated hierarchies with dynamic networks.

These are not abstract ideals. Bolles shows how they play out in real organizations—from Novartis’s “Unbossing” initiative to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s cultural transformation toward empathy and learning. He offers examples of how distributed teams like Automattic and GitLab thrive without traditional management structures, proving that leadership in the Next Rules era is about guidance, not control.

Human Energy and Purpose

Ultimately, work is not just an act of productivity—it is the channeling of human energy toward creating value. Bolles redefines organizations as platforms for channeling human energy. The future belongs to companies that align economic success with social good: creating meaningful, well-paid work where no human is left behind. The Next Rules call for transforming businesses from machines of extraction to ecosystems of collaboration and growth. This isn't just an operational shift; it’s an ethical one that asks us to build organizations fit for human thriving.

Why It Matters Now

Bolles wrote this book amidst the pandemic—a cataclysmic event that made the future of work undeniably present. He shows how the pace and scale of change can be overwhelming but also empowering if we adopt new mental, technical, and cultural frameworks. The book thus serves both as a roadmap and a rallying cry. It asks each of us—workers, leaders, educators, policymakers—to reject nostalgia for the past and instead design a meaningful, inclusive, purpose-driven future of work.

“The Next Rules of Work aren’t just about tomorrow,” Bolles writes. “They’re about creating the future we all want—starting today.”

To move forward, Bolles insists first on looking backward. The old rules of work were born from centuries of mechanistic thinking where humans were treated as cogs in economic machines. From Aristotle’s musings on slaves and tools to Calvin’s work ethic, Bolles paints a historical panorama showing that societies once considered work a curse—and later, a moral duty. By the Industrial Revolution, it became an identity. This mindset persists today in our obsession with hustle, hierarchy, and output metrics.

From Machine Thinking to Human Thinking

Industrial thinkers like Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henri Fayol codified rules for factories, demanding obedience, control, and efficiency. These ideas seeped into offices and remain embedded in management practices. Bolles calls this management-by-surveillance—a model that measures presence over performance. Technologies like cubicles and time clocks further entrenched a physical and mental confinement. Even today, companies cling to these traditions, mistaking monitoring for motivation.

The Education Trap

Bolles critiques the education system’s assembly-line logic, inherited from industrial production itself. Schools focus on mass instruction—what he calls “factory learning”—where knowledge is front-loaded early in life. Students graduate, then ‘work,’ and later ‘retire.’ It’s a one-way pipeline that fails in a world where change is constant. Echoing Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and Carol Dweck’s Mindset, Bolles argues that we must teach “learning how to learn” as the ultimate life skill.

Why Old Rules Still Haunt Us

Even after the digital revolution, most work cultures remain anchored in nineteenth-century hierarchies. Tasks are still grouped by departments; change management involves rigid five-year plans. Pay gaps and positional power persist, rewarding those at the top disproportionately (he cites executive pay rising 940% since 1978 while average workers’ pay only 12%). This imbalance reflects an outdated economic model focused on shareholder value, not stakeholder value.

A Necessary Reckoning

Unlearning these old rules means recognizing how deeply entrenched they are—in our language, policies, and even self-image. Bolles offers historical moments to show this continuity: the Protestant work ethic valorized toil; Taylorism worshipped efficiency; and managerial capitalism rewarded conformity. If we don’t challenge these defaults, we risk perpetuating alienation and burnout. Moving to the Next Rules is thus both an organizational and personal act of liberation.

“The Old Rules treated people as assets. The Next Rules ask us to treat them as whole humans.” —Gary A. Bolles

Bolles distills the evolution of work into four interdependent principles. These Next Rules serve as a compass for individuals and organizations navigating disruption. They define how to thrive—not just survive—in a world of accelerating change.

Empower Effectiveness

Traditional management rewarded compliance. The Next Rule of Empowering Effectiveness replaces command-and-control with trust and clarity. Workers are problem-solvers, not drones. A company like Novartis exemplifies this through “Unbossing”—training 20,000 managers to become guides rather than gatekeepers. The goal isn’t micromanagement but enabling workers to perform at their best through autonomy and accountability.

Enable Growth

Growth is no longer optional—it’s existential. Bolles highlights learning organizations such as Ericsson, where every employee is required to craft personal learning plans, supported equally by managers, peers, and the company. Continuous learning, not front-loaded education, fuels future readiness. Like Chris Shipley and Heather McGowan in The Adaptation Advantage, Bolles urges cultivating “agile learners” who evolve faster than the rate of change around them.

Ensure Involvement

This rule centers on inclusion, empathy, and equity. Ultranauts—a tech firm where 75% of the staff are autistic—demonstrates how designing for difference leads to competitive advantage. Bolles emphasizes compassionate leadership (as practiced by LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner) where empathy drives innovation. Inclusion is not charity; it’s strategy.

Encourage Alignment

Alignment binds it all together. In highly distributed organizations like Asana, even remote teams stay synchronized through shared goals and agile methods. The aim is to move from hierarchy to harmonic collaboration—where individual purpose aligns with organizational mission. Alignment ensures that growth and effectiveness remain centered on meaningful outcomes for all stakeholders.

“Empower effectiveness, enable growth, ensure involvement, encourage alignment—these four cylinders power the engine of human work.”

No transformation begins without changing mindset. Bolles defines culture as the collective mindset of an organization—the beliefs, behaviors, and values guiding daily actions. Using case studies like Satya Nadella’s Microsoft revival, he demonstrates that cultural renovation is possible when leaders model vulnerability and learning. Nadella replaced competition with a growth mindset, leading to renewed innovation and empathy.

Seeing with New Eyes

Bolles describes donning “augmented reality goggles” to reimagine your organization. Instead of viewing it as a box (scarcity of jobs within, abundance outside), you see it as a network—a worknet—linking employees, contractors, gig workers, and communities. This lens shifts purpose from profit maximization to human energy optimization.

Catalyzing Mindset Change

Bolles offers practical pathways: start with inventory (map current culture), define impetus (why change now), and envision (co-create future values). He notes three strategic options: edge strategy (pilot transformation in small units), incremental core (embed shifts in select teams), and large-scale core (like Microsoft’s comprehensive overhaul). Each requires authentic commitment, transparency, and storytelling.

The Spiral Up Approach

Mindset change is not linear—it spirals upward through continuous learning loops of plan, build, maintain. The key is accountability. At Novartis, leaders track engagement metrics and reward managers who embody new behaviors. Bolles emphasizes empathy and authenticity: workers will only believe in change when leaders live it.

Anyone Can Lead from Anywhere

Bolles encourages “Assert and Respond,” a practice borrowed from Capital One’s culture, where any employee can assert a proposal and proceed unless leadership responds with correction. It democratizes initiative and proves change doesn’t flow only from the top. Mindset shift is everyone’s job.

“Culture change succeeds when organizations stop managing people and start empowering humans.”

Bolles argues that every worker is, at heart, a problem-solver. Whether sweeping a floor or designing software, the universal currency of work is solving problems for stakeholders. Understanding this helps replace old models of task-based labor with human-centered cognition.

How the Brain Solves Problems

Drawing on cognitive science, Bolles explores how our brains collect, process, abstract, and apply information. He credits psychologist Reuven Feuerstein and innovator Chaim Guggenheim for shaping the Cognitas Cognition Model: a cycle of curiosity, analysis, synthesis, pattern recognition, and testing. Recognizing this internal workflow helps people hack their own cognition for creativity and resilience.

Pleasure, Pain, and Motivation

Referencing behavioral economist Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), Bolles notes that all motivation boils down to two forces: attraction to pleasure and avoidance of pain. This understanding allows us to redesign work environments that trigger intrinsic motivation—less fear, more flow. Stanford researcher BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” model shows how small successes reinforce positive routines and long-term learning.

The Team as a Band of Problem-Solvers

Teams work best when psychological safety is high. Google’s Project Aristotle identified this as the top factor for effective collaboration. Bolles pairs it with “psychological diversity”—bringing together different perspectives to spark innovation, much like the heterogeneous leadership team at Russian marketplace Avito. Diversity plus safety equals innovation.

Purpose as the Ultimate Problem

Young workers increasingly start with purpose—not paycheck. Bolles references Japan’s concept of Ikigai: the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs. Purpose-driven problem-solving flips the career trajectory—doing meaningful work first and wealth later. It’s a lesson for organizations too: solve not just customer problems but societal ones.

“Solving problems is not just your job—it’s your superpower.”

Bolles identifies four flex skills essential in a hyper-changing economy: Problem-solving, Adaptability, Creativity, and Empathy—collectively known as PACE. He calls this the rhythm of future-ready workers and teams, shaping how individuals thrive amid uncertainty.

Problem-Solving

The anchor skill and the First Next Rule of Effectiveness. Bolles shows it’s about curiosity and agility in facing new challenges. Case studies at Catalyte—a tech company training programmers in six months—prove that PACE can be learned through practice, not pedigree. Success stems from mental flexibility, not preexisting qualifications.

Adaptability

Adaptability means thriving on change, not fearing it. In a nod to Chris Shipley and Heather McGowan’s The Adaptation Advantage, Bolles emphasizes growth through disruption. Distributed teams—such as Procter & Gamble’s flexible scheduling model—illustrate adaptive collaboration where workers decide when and where to work.

Creativity

Creativity, Bolles argues, is humanity’s unfair advantage over machines. Robots may automate tasks, but they can’t imagine new possibilities. He connects this to “moonshot thinking”—designing 10× solutions beyond conventional limits, as practiced at Google X by innovator Tom Chi. Rapid prototyping is the creative act of learning by testing.

Empathy

Empathy completes the quartet. It’s not soft—it’s strategic. Teams with empathy understand the lived experiences of stakeholders, leading to richer designs and better decisions. Bolles cites Ultranauts again, showing how inclusive design cultures outperform competitors precisely because they start from understanding others.

PACE in Action

PACE forms the foundation for agency, resilience, and innovation. It’s visible in entrepreneurs, educators, and leaders who learn fast and act with empathy. Bolles makes it clear: every team must operate at this rhythm, syncing their collective creativity and humanity to stay in tune with exponential change.

“PACE is how humans outlearn, outthink, and outgrow automation.”

Tools shape how work happens. Bolles argues that every tool—technical or strategic—should meet the Starling Principle: simplicity, synchrony, speed, and scale. Like starlings in murmuration, tools must help people move swiftly and coherently toward shared goals.

From Techniques to Technologies

Bolles highlights both method-based tools (like design thinking or OKRs) and tech-based tools (like collaborative software, AI mentors, or digital learning platforms). The ones that matter most enable empowerment—helping humans do their best work rather than replacing them. He champions “human-centric automation,” where AI augments creativity and teamwork rather than killing jobs.

Digital Transformation with Purpose

Digital transformation is not about installing new software—it’s about changing culture. Bolles warns against confusing digitization with human progress. He reframes technology as a toolset for human thriving, pointing to companies that use data to connect workers to learning opportunities, build inclusive hiring systems, and track holistic wellbeing. Efficiency must serve empathy.

Rapid Prototyping and Collective Alignment

Bolles describes agile practices, hackathons, and ExO sprints that allow teams to imagine, test, and refine solutions. He includes stories like Tom Chi’s overnight Google Glass prototype—a living metaphor for learning in minutes, not months. OKRs and Agile processes help organizations maintain alignment while adapting constantly, a crucial skill in distributed teams.

Empowering the Worker

The ultimate goal of any toolset is empowerment. Do workers feel more effective, more included, more aligned? Bolles lays out simple questions to measure success: Are you growing faster than before? Are you solving problems that matter? Are you thriving? If not, fix that. The Next Organization’s measure of success is human flourishing.

“Technology matters—but only when it amplifies human energy.”

Bolles closes by zooming out. An inclusive future of work depends on four interconnected domains: individuals, organizations, communities, and countries. Each acts as a node in one global network, shaping whether work is fair and meaningful for all.

Balancing the Table

Within the individual–organization relationship, Bolles draws a vivid image of an economic table tilted toward employers. To balance it, societies must restore power to workers through collective agreements, fair pay, and algorithmic transparency. QuikTrip’s success—paying workers well while outperforming competitors—proves profitability and fairness are not opposites.

Organizations with Purpose in Their DNA

Bolles urges companies to fuse purpose into their business models, not just marketing slogans. Benefit corporations like Patagonia or Ben & Jerry’s exemplify missions that align profit with social good. He cites Larry Fink of BlackRock and Rebecca Henderson’s Reimagining Capitalism as examples of even global finance embracing stakeholder capitalism.

Community Ecosystems

Communities, Bolles says, are innovation hubs. He celebrates Mauricio Lim Miller’s Family Independence Initiative, where low-income families define and fund their own goals—a radical act of trust. Organizations thrive when they treat community engagement as mutual learning, not charity.

Countries and Global Collaboration

On a systemic level, Bolles explores economic models like Germany’s Hartz employment reforms, which cushion workers against shocks like the pandemic. He calls this “same storm, different boats”—an analogy for why policy design matters. Inclusive capitalism, he says, is within reach if leaders collaborate globally to balance opportunity with sustainability.

No Human Left Behind

Bolles ends with hope: humans have solved daunting challenges before—disease, poverty, and disconnection. With shared purpose and cooperation, we can design a thriving world of work that lifts everyone. His rallying cry: No human left behind.

“The moments of greatest disruption are when collective solutions are born. We can all help design that world.”