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.

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.

Why small businesses and entrepreneurs fail

What is failure and why do so many business startups fail? Failure could be classified as not achieving goals such as working more hours than planned, lack of enjoyment and satisfaction, too much travel - however in vast majority of cases failure of a business is due to financial reasons. That is not making enough money to cover costs.

Why does this occur and so freqently? I have met a lot of entrepreneurs, both who have succeeded and failed in business (some many times over), and the one thing they have in common is intelligence and drive. So if this is what you think you need to have to succeed then think again. The difference between success and failure is decision making. The basis of decision making is information and insight and I believe the two go hand-in-hand in ensuring the most appropriate decision is made.

Thus failure in business is due to poor decision making because there was incorrect, lack of or inappropriate information used and that the insight of the entrepreneur was wrong. Insight itself is a cognitive process and basically a interpretation of external stimuli - so in fact decision making, both directly and indirectly, is correlated to the quality of information received.

Failure is due to making a wrong decision many times over because no effort is made to assess the decision making process. Working with a performance coach or psychologist is useful in understanding the basis for decisions made and making changes in your decision making process. If you fail once and don't assess the process for making decisions then the chances of making the goals or targets you have set are very low. You cannot assume you know how to make a right decision and the warning signs should not be ignored. Thinking you know how to make a right decision is one of those as you will not be open for change.

Small business also fails because the entrepreneur in charge of the business is not made out to work in such as environment. Making a decision to start a business is the first important decision you have to make and one of the most critical. If you get this wrong then your business may already be on the path to failure.

Starting a new business

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.crunchaccounting.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.