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 knowing your business's CSFs must be a priority

Some of you might be asking, "what is a 'CSF'"? Second question might be "what are the CSFs for my business"?

CSF stands for 'critical success factor'. Put simply these are factors that are necessary to be in place, to be implemented, in order for your business to have any chance of achieving its goals. It can be difficult for a business to ensure that their CSFs are always in place but it does draw a line in the sand in respect to what they need to aim for, where their priorities should lie. Most of the time we only consider them as being attached to the business operations but what is often overlooked are the CSFs of the business owners themselves. These critical success factors that relate to the person are not characteristics or traits - rather I see them as behavioral tendencies that are relevant during a particular stage of the business.

I give you an example of a recent client of mine. His business had a dominant online presence however in order to continue being in a position to undertake the profitable jobs with corporates he needed to establish a high street presence. This also meant that he would have to give up running the day to day online operation and hire a number of employees which was going to be a challenge as he had grown his business from scratch.

The critical success factors, at the business and personal level, were:

1. Establishing a high street presence in a central location
2. Being able to delegate work and manage a number of employees who could multitask.

Put simply, without the two CSFs listed above my client's business would have no chance of operating in the way he envisioned.

There are long term and short term critical success factors - those that must always be in place and those that only need to be in place to achieve short term goals. A long-term CSF for the client above is that his company must be within the top 5 google searches, a short term CSF was that he had the initial funding for the shop (before it could begin to generate its own cashflow).

What wasn't critical was the size of the store, establishing an office for the employees or putting in place complicated operational processes. Expenses were kept to a minimum and all employees worked remotely. However without the store and the employees then the business would not have been able to develop - no matter how strong his company was online.

So have a think about the critical success factors for your company and whether you are undertaking those tasks that will let you achieve those factors.

Staying focused and motivated for your goals

How often would you experience the following:

'you have a great goal in mind, something you start off being extremely passionate about. You start with the research and make some good headway. You're still working to keep money coming in but this new idea should be ready to make money within 6 months and you could see it replacing your current full-time job within 12-18 months - that is also an important goal of yours. Some time goes by and you don't see to be making headway and your full-time job starts taking up more of your time. All of a sudden you wake up 6 months later and your great idea is no more. "Oh well", you say, "just wasn't the right time or right idea". Of course you might become disheartened and that's it - no more ideas'.

What I am framing is something that potentially affects many people who have ideas to start off a new project or business. Having an idea is the easy piece, implementing the actions that will progress you past the concept stage requires dedication. It also requires that you focus on the RIGHT PRIORITIES and make the RIGHT DECISIONS (or at least learn from the mistakes you made). It is easy for the brain to ignore pain and disappointment by focusing on something else. This is why if your idea/project is not progressing as expected it is far easier to focus on something else. However we often blame our environment for this 'failure' rather than ourselves. For many of us it is difficult to recognize your own personal biases when it comes to making decisions - whether that be the information you use for input, the experiences and assumptions you make when processing information and the fact that we rarely question our output.

Poor decision making combined with not knowing the tasks that should be prioritized because they offer most value to your project are two key reasons why many people lose focus and motivation. Not everyone is built to continually push past failure after failure and monetary wise many of us could not continue to do so. So what I am suggesting is that you become more efficient when it comes to making decisions and setting tasks. Doing this will result in more small wins and this progress will help you maintain your focus and motivation. So the simple steps to take are;

1. Ensure your idea is accompanied by a vision - supported by internal motivations/values

2. Don't keep your idea in your head. Write down what you need to do and if necessary speak to a business coach who can help you determine which tasks should be prioritized as they will lead to greater progress.

3. Be aware of your decision making biases - always look for independent feedback as well as analyzing why decisions made did not work out the way you expected.

4. Be conscious that you will fail only if you stop. Embrace the fact that setbacks are important but only if you learn from them.

The principles behind increasing your income

If there is one thing entrepreneurs and freelancers should be focusing on this is it - how to increase your income or of more use how to increase your productivity. It amazes me how many startups and self-employed focus on aspects of their business, that whilst important to some degree, fail to concentrate on the drivers of income creation (note I say 'income' not 'revenue').

When consulting to clients there used to be the question of how to charge for work performed. That is, charge per job or charge per hour. Of course you may still charge per hour is required but your preference should be always per job. Why? Because you could (1) complete the job in fewer hours than the budget and therefore increase your per/hour rate of income or (2) give the job to a qualified associate for 80% of what you are receiving. Five such jobs will see you earning 20% more than what you could have as an individual.

But what I really want to communicate is that the wealthy do not sell hours - they sell knowledge. A motivational speaker does not speak to a single person if they can speak to hundreds. A website will not provide information to just one person - rather the same 'valued' information is presented to hundreds, thousands and millions of customers. This is the leverage of knowledge.

This is not an option for everyone but many careers and businesses can utilize the concept. Not only consulting, motivational speaking and certain web-based advice business e.g career and investment advice. However those in a trade can certainly also leverage their knowledge so they are not handicapped to work for only a particular rate per hour.

However just as important is that you have to recognize that you cannot just know something and expect huge success if no one else values that knowledge as much as you. This is the fallacy that many professionals believe to be true - that once you have a professional qualification then you're set. Unfortunately this is not the case. Firstly you have knowledge but probably cannot utilize it effectively within a working environment. Secondly many other people also have the same knowledge. So it appears the secret to business and career success is just not having knowledge and leveraging that knowledge. It's about applying the knowledge in such a way that (1) not many others can copy (2) how the knowledge is applied is valuable and (3) you can leverage across many people.

What demand is your product or service fulfilling?

If the answer makes you think for too long, you have no answer or you come up with some reasoning including the words 'consulting, strategy, development...etc' then keep reading. What we need to understand is that the level of education and savy is such in the market today amongst the masses that the fancy titles and concepts that were difficult to understand and taught at only the top business schools in the past are no longer impressive. Every fourth rate school teaches the same concepts and with such a high percentage of the western world going to college the coverage of these concepts is extremely wide.

Am I recommending not going to school and to become an inventor, internet entrepreneur, celebrity cook, athlete etc instead? Absolutely not, but actually it doesn't matter what path you take as long as you do two things. One is to work hard and the second is to be very clear (this means have proof) on what you are offering and why. The work hard is the easy bit, even the bit on being clear on what you are offering...the hard bit is to confirm the 'why'. 'Why' are you producing a product, delivering a service, studying something at school etc.

Liking what you do it extremely important (and I will get to the fact that there are different levels of 'liking or loving' your job) but more important you have to recognize a demand for your skill or knowledge. If no one is in the market for what you have to offer then what you have will go to waste. I'm not talking about the challenge of being able to 'brand' or 'market' your offering so people are interested...I am talking about no interest no matter what you do because it doesn't hit the right demographic, is out of sync with social trends etc. Likewise if you're in a flooded market you still need to ensure supply is sufficient.

So what you need to do, to ensure a meaningful career either as an employee or business person is to clarify what you have to offer, how you're going to offer it and why it will be bought. If you cannot do this now take the actions you need to in order to do so. Last word regarding liking your job...it's not always about pure enjoyment, but can be satisfaction gained from making a difference, achieving what only few can...don't confuse liking or loving the job along the same lines as loving your family or liking a gift. Make the meaning of the word whatever you need it to be to suit you.

Change your focus from 'job searching' to 'job creating'

The hard, cold truth is here...some jobs will disappear and never to return. In some industries this reduction will be greater than in others but nevertheless where we are now is the start of a resource reallocation shift.

I've just read an article on CNBC that mentioned that many financial jobs will not be able to be supported simply because of the reduction in leverage in the market. The same is happening in London and every major financial centre around the world. In property the same is happening where the drying up of bank credit will not only reduce the volume of property transactions but the revenues available to real estate agents. Same for retail, if the focus is consumer discretionary due to credit drying up and the consumer cutting back.

But for all those thinking doom and gloom this is an event that had to occur. This is not only going to re-create a balance in our society but give many of us the opportunity to do things we want to do but never had the courage to start - for one reason/excuse or another.

If your job is gone create one instead

I speak with many recruiters and job seekers these days and am amazed at the fact that many hundreds of CVs are submitted for each job...Presidents going for VP roles and MDs going for Director roles. It's almost desperation to find something or anything. Is this the approach to take? Humans are creative and amazingly resilient in times of adversity and now is the time to see this come through. Rather than send your CV for the one role that is similar to what you used to do, but is competing against 500 others, look at your skills and consider about how to apply them to another area of the economy. This may be in role that already exists or better still, be entrepreneurial and apply your skills to something you think is missing in the market. You may never get this chance again.

The way to look at it is this. If we are going through a huge resource reallocation then jobs will not reappear. Hoping for your job to reappear is not going to help - get in control of your destiny and create demand for your skill instead.

What business can you startup in a world where startups are commonplace?

Our world is a lot different then it was 20 years ago. Well I say different but perhaps it was the same on a larger scale...in particular I want to focus on what it takes to startup a new business these days.

Of course business startups happen all the time but even 20 years ago it was more commonplace to look to an established organisation for work rather than consider starting up your own business. However over the past twenty years it has definitely evened out, with it becoming a cultural norm to start your own business - either from the start of a career or in the middle of an established one.

That being said, when you go to start a new business these days it's like trying to find a domain name that hasn't been taken. It is EXTREMELY difficult to come up with a business idea that hasn't already been thought of or already put in place. New ideas will mostly come from extreme creatives or from people who have been impacted by an extreme event that leads them to an idea - the originality of the event is the driver of this. So where does this lead us?

I would say there are two good paths to contemplate when considering whether to startup your new business. One, can you do something more effectively then what is already being offered out in the market and two, can you operate a business that supports existing businesses? My thought is that if there are more and more businesses being started up, all of varying sizes, industries and substance (online or bricks and mortar) there is greater opportunity to start a business that supports these. One example is Crunch Accounting (www.crouchaccounting.co.uk) which was setup to service freelancers and contractors in the UK. Why was that? Because the market for independent freelancers is continuing to increase because organisations want to reduce their fixed overhead costs. These freelancers need accounting performed and Crunch provides an effective online platform. Now would this business have worked 20 years ago? No way...and probably not even 10 years ago. I'm a little surprised it has taken so long to kick-start but it is one great idea.

So when it comes to starting your new business, don't try to beat them or even join them. Perhaps it makes more sense to support the new businesses being created everyday.

When do you make your best or most 'life changing' decisions?

The focus of this question, is in part, due to the fact that many of us are facing some difficult decisions over the next few months because of the challenges presented by the current economic state. I got to thinking the other day what drove a lot of my decision making and came up with the fact that making decisions are meant to benefit yourself - the challenge being whether that benefit is in the short, medium or long term. Short term gain for long term gain is something I do believe in if a decision is made with only the short term being the main focus.

Decision making is a cognitive process that the brain manages and the final decision is based on a variety of underlying factors. Personal values, motivations, your sense of expected rewards (and your valuation of them), emotions, past experiences, consideration of what your friends and family would expect....the underlying components are many. Many of these decisions are not 'life changing' simply because the human being is a creature of habit. It can be difficult to make decisions when you don't 'have to', even if you know making a change would be the best medium to long term decision.

Take for example the situation that many professionals are facing today. You may have been made redundant or there is a good chance of redundancy - what do you do? If you've always wanted to change jobs or get out and start a business then perhaps there is no better time. Sure things are dire now but when is there a 'best time' to make this change. The decision to make this change is more easy for the person who is out of a job then for the person who still has a job. They might have the same goals to start a business but for the person with a job, they might most probably think they are one of the 'lucky ones' to still have employment. They will think it is better to keep their job and plan to leave in a few years when they are more financially secure. On the other hand those who have been made redundant either have the choice to follow their dreams or look for new work.

What I want to emphasize is that when 'forced' to make a decision, there is perhaps a better chance of making it a life changing one. In the example above being forced to choose between job and new business does not mean you have a choice to remain with the status quo - you need a new job or need to start a business. There is no going back. Either path is new. So consider your own situation now and consider what decisions you can make today that might most impact your life...in a positive way and whether your current situation is holding you back. Might be worthwhile to consider what decision you would take if you were forced to change what you were currently were doing - would you try and revert to what you were doing or start out new.

What are the key things entrepreneurs need assistance in?

Entrepreneurs are a strange bunch.....I say this tongue in cheek as I have a lot of respect for this group of people who often risk everything in the belief that their service or product will be a success. I am not talking about business owners here per se but those who start a venture from nothing, create the possibility to bring something new or improved to our society. The best entrepreneurs have loads of confidence and self belief, have a great vision, focused and lots of determination and perseverance. Ideas may be sensible, slightly crazy or completely off the wall but in all cases they often have a reason for pursuing their particular venture. The vast majority of us would not be successful as entrepreneurs - even though some of the competencies of an entrepreneur can be taught a lot has to do with personality traits. This is not something that can be taught.

However taking into account all of this I have seen many entrepreneurs fail and some of my clients are entrepreneurs - thus I have seen the same patterns over and over again. Entrepreneurs are great at kick-starting a project but they do run the risk of expending lots of energy with little return even though they may have a high degree of focus. Entrepreneurs are often not able to operate as a business, rather they often operate in the 'new product development' or R&D sphere, which is great to begin with but is not sustainable. What entrepreneurs need to be aware they need assistance in is business strategy, financial management and funding and most important, self health and well-being.

So why have I selected these particular areas? Entrepreneurs are all for pushing a product or service to market, but often they have no concept of how to move past the creation and innovation stage. Do they have experience in market entry, competitor analysis, market analysis? Maybe, maybe not but I am a believer that you cannot do everything well. Even if you think you can do everything your performance will suffer at some point due to your inherent limitations (due to genetics, your experiences and knowledge). Many entrepreneurs are not experts in finance or fund raising and this is one reason that many entrepreneurs go to venture capitalists for assistance and guidance. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, entrepreneurs are not experts in mental strength and well-being. No entrepreneur will experience success if they are continually stressed, distracted and mentally fatigued. Entrepreneurs, more then most, will face problems that need to be addressed and these cannot always be solved by one's self. There is a need for external guidance and support.

So my advice for entrepreneurs is two things. Firstly recognise what competencies it will take to be a success - not just in the creation of whatever you are involved in but getting it to market. Secondly, assess your own competency gaps and don't be too proud to ask for assistance. Know your strengths and recognize it is a strength to know when to do it yourself and when to delegate.