Collaborative teaming – the future of freelancing

I believe that the future of freelancing is not about working as an individual. In order to meet the demands of clients freelancers will be forced to move toward collaborative teaming, permitting the individual to focus on their strengths whilst benefiting through leveraging the strengths of others and diverting the focus from their weak areas.

Believe it or not freelancing is still in the infancy stage when you might consider that the future of the workplace will see a predicted 40% of the workforce become self-employed by the year 2015. Freelancing has traditionally focused on a number of key occupational demographics including copyrighting, IT, PR and writing, but will sure to expand greatly as large organizations streamline operations and delayer levels of management and personnel. My contacts tell me that some well-known, multinational organizations are planning over the next five years to sustain only a small core of permanent headcount and employ contractors and freelancers when and where required.

So there is little doubt in my mind that freelancing will continue to increase as a percentage of the total workforce. However the important distinction to make is that it just is not any kind of freelancer that will command success in the workplace of the future. Clients will become more demanding and already the trend of organizations is to focus on high performance teams. No longer does the individual reign supreme rather it is collaboration that organizations require. Why is this? It’s because teams provide a number of benefits that individuals cannot provide. These include; blending and leveraging of individual differences, diversity of skills and experience, preference to manage one team rather than a group of individuals and a team can be multi-focused much easier than an individual. Organisations, from an administrative perspective, are also not going to want to focus on hiring many individuals when they can contract out to a multi-talented high performance team.

When it comes to freelancing those of you already working as a freelancer would be aware of the limitations that come with working as an individual. Those range from the administrative tasks to the need to self-market and network, to the fact that it is difficult to develop your skills and experience when working the same kinds of contracts. Sure there is the freedom that comes with working as an individual but there is also the loneliness. Many freelancers find the transition from working within an organization to freelancing difficult simply because their personality is not suited to working in such an environment.

For me high performing collaborative teams are the future of freelancing, not because individual freelancers don’t have the skill sets or experience but because clients will demand the flexibility and efficiency that results from such an approach. The challenge will be to learn how to operate within a freelancing team and to welcome collaboration rather than fear it. Many of my coaching clients are currently moving through this transition and already at the early stages of working within a collaborative team the benefits of increased business opportunities, sharing of networking and marketing activities and ability to develop professionally is being experienced.

Why freelancers must be forward thinking and specific when setting goals

The perception of freelancing in the marketplace is changing and you must be aware of where it is heading before you commence your freelancing career. Starting your freelancing practice without being 100% clear on what your goals and values are, along with a concept of how you might evolve will simply guarantee disappointment and frustration in the future.

Don’t be limited by the old definitions of ‘freelancing’

Our career choices are wider than ever before and accompanying that are a number of work styles offering varying degrees of flexibility, financial compensation and work-life balance. Freelancing was traditionally chosen by those wanting greater work flexibility with an outlook to achieving a better work-life balance compared to that perhaps experienced by an employee in full-time employment. Freelancing was not intended to provide someone with greater wealth rather the benefit was to come from a better quality of life. However with trends in the workplace seeing organizations replacing full-time employees and requiring more project oriented labour freelancing has the potential to become quite lucrative for those willing to seek out the opportunities.

Creating goals for the present and the future

Today’s society is all about breaking down the barriers; there is nothing to say that you cannot work as a freelancer and have it all: greater work flexibility and the opportunity to increase your financial earnings. How you can achieve both is all about managing yourself effectively and ensuring your freelance practice is a well-run machine.

I now coach a number of freelancers who are simply not satisfied with working as freelancers because they want to increase their earnings capability and are unsure as to the best way to go about this. The challenge they face is (1) they haven’t created their business model to be capable of increasing earnings in any meaningful way and (2) their mindset and focus is still that of a small self-employed operator who never expected to be focusing on money and has never made it a priority for one reason or another. What I recommend to most freelancers is that they first must open their mind to the possibility that they can be someone whose career and professional aspirations are not limited to earning through the old time and materials approach. The second recommendation is to consider freelancing as a professional business venture with the same requirements as any small business.

Be specific when it comes to identifying your professional goals

Being specific in your professional goals means that your actions will be more specific – leading to the greater possibility that you will achieve what you set out to do. If you’re a freelancer that might like to run a business in the future don’t start off by thinking you can change the way you work at a later date to accommodate your business goals – it is better to establish a framework early on that you can leverage at a later date with minimal effort. Specific goal setting simply reduces unwelcome surprises and unnecessary effort at a later date.

What freelancers MUST focus on

I came across an article on freelancing the other day which I felt didn't tell the true story when it came to helping freelancers establish and grow their businesses. One of the major themes I'm working on at the moment is to help the freelancing movement become more business minded. That doesn't mean to turn freelancers into a business because many do not want that - rather I want freelancers to be able to establish a business framework around their practices so that the way they operate is more efficient and effective. The benefit of this hopefully is that they will be able to focus more time on their actual work with greater success!

I've listed below 3 key things that freelancers must consider when it comes to improving their practices;

1. Move past your motivations and onto your competencies

Everyone talks about motivations and that they must be positive rather than negative. That may be true to a point but the one thing many freelancers do not do, or have a lot of experience in doing, is considering their capability to become a successful freelancer. Many freelancers that I know are experts in their chosen professions and produce high quality work. However that quality makes them perfect to be an outstanding employee - not a successful freelancer.

You must think about positioning yourself, just as a business must, and that means you have to undertake a personal assessment of yourself, at both the personal and professional level, and how that stacks up against the requirements of a successful freelancing practice. If there are 10-12 key competencies required of a freelancer and you assess yourself as having 4 or 5 that gives you the knowledge to act to either improve yourself or delegate what is necessary before taking your business forward. Otherwise, just like poor business planning, lack of preparation will hurt your ability to succeed.

2. Risk management of your business

I read in an article that there is no scientific way to assess whether it is a good time to go freelance - you just need to feel it in your blood. Now, having come from a professional environment I disagree with this statement in a big way. Scientific, perhaps not, but there are ways to assess your ability to freelance and there are ways to mitigate the major risks to your freelancing success. There is a common business planning tool called a SWOT analysis that makes you (and if you want to consult others) on your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Risk management is also about research so you need to perform analysis on the state of your market eg. call recruiters, read blogs and forums, speak with local businesses - basically look at all the people who may hire you and take note of what they say.

Another thing you can do to minimize risk is in Point 1 above - know your areas of strength and weakness. Risk minimization is all about looking at the key things that might hurt your business from the perspective of, for example, your ability, market demand, competition, operational inefficiency, inadequate IT capability, location etc. This should be part of your initial planning.

3. Setting rates

This is definitely an area where freelancers need and I would predict really want to improve. Whilst you need to check what others are charging this is only one thing you need to be doing. You also need to be finding out what it is client's value when it comes to your area of expertise - you also need to make sure you are earning what you want to meet your needs. Agencies and clients are not going to pay you great rates unless you offer something special - they are not on your side and pretty much see you as a resource. Don't stop at find out what others charge - you need to go and find out why they charge a particular amount, you need to know the minimum of what you need to charge considering your life situation and you also need to look at ways to repackage and position yourself to produce additional income streams and value.

Freelancers have to stop thinking of themselves as earning only via time and materials and that cheaper is better or they need to charge just what the market is charging. It's time for freelancers to step up and really start to control their earnings capabilities.