New ways of working offer reasons for optimism
Future Work/Life is a weekly newsletter that casts a positive eye to the future. I bring you interesting stories and articles, analyse industry trends and offer tips on designing a better work/life. If you enjoy reading it, please SUBSCRIBE HERE, and share it!
As we retreat once more to our homes, you can't move for people offering their view on what the absence of people means to the future of offices and to work in general.
While I share the concerns of many about the short-term economic effects of a return to lockdown, I can also see opportunities in amongst the doom and gloom. In particular, the growth of business models that support micro-entrepreneurship.
With some imagination and innovation, we have the chance to reconfigure our understanding of what work is and, in the process, unbundle it from the traditional view of employment to create something more positive for our personal and work lives.
We've traditionally viewed organisations one-dimensionally, as hierarchical and representing a fixed social contract between employers and employees. In the future – which is, metaphorically at least, approaching much more quickly as a result of COVID - organisational structures will change, becoming far more fluid, both in the ways employees work – through flexible time and location – but also in the make-up of the workforce.
Previously, the consensus was that the 'knowledge economy' is not suited to a decentralised model for a few key reasons, often related to assimilation into the company culture and performance assessment (some organisations struggle to adapt internal metrics to an outsourced resource).
However, we're now accustomed to seeing roles like developers and project managers working for more than one business simultaneously and what will emerge over the coming years is a general acceptance of 'knowledge workers' bringing their unique skills and expertise to multiple companies at the same time.
As I wrote in FWL5, I also expect it to become far more commonplace for senior executives to bring strategic and operational expertise to more than one organisation: what I call C-Lancing. Indeed, I am now C-Lancing myself since recently taking on a CEO role with a data and technology consultancy.
In this scenario, job titles – Chief Executive Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Culture Officer – become less important than the value exchange of specific abilities. To this end, we may see more than one person notionally working in these roles, since their skills complement one another (for example, leading company culture may require distinct specialisms in both strategic leadership and skills training).
As I've observed first-hand over the past few months, there are frequently business cases for C-Level expertise on a part-time basis. With the C-Lancer model, the organisation can tap into an individual's superpowers, which while carrying an appropriate premium remain economical for the business who don't have to shell out for a full-time-employee.
[As an aside, while it may seem an unusual idea now, I can also envisage separate but non-competitive businesses pooling their resources together to share skills. A financial services firm needs a Chief Data Officer experienced at integrating Business Intelligence tools, for example, and seconds someone with the relevant experience from a media company for a couple of days a week.]
The perfect balance of value for an organisation offers a combination of the competitive fees available from solo consultants with the low transaction costs associated with working with a larger firm. Hence the growth of digital platforms offering the aggregation of high-skilled work, making it easier for businesses to source validated experts.
Aside from the demand-side benefits, these platforms can also offer help to freelancers (or C-Lancers) by replacing some of the bundled support services and infrastructure that a traditional employer typically provides.
Of particular interest to me is the growth of vertical-specific platforms, which create products for specific industries. Li Jin has written extensively and insightfully about this topic, highlighting their ability to:
…expand the market of workers who can participate in a particular industry, by honing in on and removing the obstacles for prospective workers. Many vertical-specific platforms support productizing knowledge or skills in new ways, thereby normalizing and broadening new paths to work. In other words, a vertical focus can unlock productivity and economic value, turning non-producers into producers."
Take marketing and advertising, for example. Even in the best of times, agencies experience fluctuations in demand for the time of team members across different departments and job functions. A backdrop of uncertainty in ad spend over the past six months exacerbates the problem.
Earlier in the week, I spoke to Adadot founder, Alex Harris. She has identified this pain point and is creating a platform that allows agencies to update and reallocate their human capital in real-time to other client teams, offices, or partner agencies. As a result, there's less downtime and significant improvements in client services and campaign delivery.
She told me that:
"…in the past team leaders have had to just 'put up' with pressures on internal capacity. Agencies have always planned for the average resource requirement when that's not how things work in practice. Instead, there are some times that teams are stretched to breaking point and others when there's not enough work to go around. If agencies can cross-optimise, they can achieve substantial efficiency gains and deliver better campaigns for their clients."
I also caught up with Stefan Bardega, Co-Founder of Traktion, this week to discuss the changing economics of the client/agency relationship. He explained that he sees:
"…this sh*tfest leading to breakthrough innovation in work as businesses and talent are forced to behave more dynamically."
Traktion works with advertisers directly to diagnose their requirements for growth marketing resources, verify the requisite skills of freelancers and then match the two together. As well as providing a virtual network of individuals and teams for brands, the platform smooths the process of communication and tracks performance using an analytics dashboard.
Like Adadot, Traktion's model supports the ability of individuals with in-demand digital marketing skills to monetise their time effectively. Importantly for Stefan, it also reflects the reality that:
“Clients don't buy agencies, they buy the talent that works there.”
Exciting models now exist across numerous industries, features of which often include aggregation and discovery tools. And the aim of many is to keep as much money in the pockets of the talent as possible.
Braintrust is a non-profit owned by its users – the freelancers – via a cryptocurrency token. Rather than involve any third parties skimming a margin off the top of recruitment costs, Braintrust directly connects candidates and employers by creating a structure based on the Braintrust Token.
According to co-founder and CEO, Adam Jackson:
"The token allows users to set governance parameters for the platform and is paid out based on actions, such as a successful referral.
It's not a financial token – it's not meant to be monetized. You can use it to decide what the rules are, like, 'Should we let people in with this qualification or should we go to this category?' or, 'What fees should we charge clients and talent?'"
And, in what you might call an example of rebundling work, Smart, is taking the concept in yet another direction. The non-profit describes itself as a co-op platform, that 'enables workers, entrepreneurs and organisations to invoice, to work together with other professionals and to manage a budget on an occasional or a long-term basis.' In short, providing the tools for individuals with a similar ethos and approach to team up and deliver quality work, without the worry of administrative headaches common to freelancer life.
Amid all the uncertainty in the world, there's plenty of innovation taking place that will, ultimately, contribute towards a positively Empowered Economy in the future. I, for one, consider this as a definite reason for optimism.
Have a great weekend.
Ollie
Any Other Business:
As the newsletter is a little longer than usual today, I’ll just give you a quick update about the Future Work/Life project, which I’m pleased to say now already has half a dozen companies signed up. Over the next few weeks, I’ll begin collating data and insights from every member of the community to share with you here and on the Future Work/Life website.
As a reminder, and to quote last week’s newsletter:
The Future Work/Life Project will collate the views and ideas of business leaders who are inspired to design a future of work that isn't just reactive to short-term regulations and restrictions.
Instead, we aim to create organisations that are (as far as possible) future-proofed, that take advantage of advances in technology and data, but that, ultimately, put their people at the heart of their strategy.
The Project will be a knowledge-sharing platform and information resource for leaders, managers and entrepreneurs who want to learn from the respective successes (and failures) of other organisations experimenting with new ways of working. These could be initiatives for establishing social interactions, onboarding team members, developing new ways of creative collaboration, or eventually, returning to the office once more.
I’d love it if you could take part, so please give me a shout if you’d like to hear more.