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As the Network Economy continues to evolve, people and organizations are adopting new approaches to getting work done:  tapping into networked knowledge, breaking down silos, and collaborating across boundaries of time and space, to name just a few.  As these strategies becomes increasingly viable and valuable, they raise some fundamental questions about the nature of employment itself.

Evolving the Talent Model

Currently, much of the conversation about how the Network Economy is transforming the culture of work focuses on anecdotes about individuals who are adaptating the traditional model and, of course, the continuing debates over the merits of corporate outsourcing and the emerging online freelance marketplace. 

But a larger, more substantial transformation of employment relationships is beginning to occur.  Organizations are beginning to realize that knowledge is advancing and accumulating more rapidly in the external network than in the internal, exclusive R&D / IP silos.  The ability to tap into talent and knowledge streams beyond organizational boundaries is becoming crucial for companies striving to remain relevant and competitive.  And as a consequence, they are re-thinking their traditional HR and IP strategies to align with this new reality.

For individuals, the implications are equally profound;  organizations, who provide the most common platform on which to build careers, are now re-defining their relationship with talent and knowledge, introducing uncertainty into what used to be a straightforward path to rewarding careers and long-term financial well-being.  In addition, the dynamic of the network economy places demands on the pace of skill- and experience-acquisition that individuals will find difficult to fulfill in a single employment relationship. 

Spiraling Virtuous Cycles

Uncertainties notwithstanding, these developments are creating real opportunities on both sides of the talent equation:  companies need to stay competitive, and will continue to seek out and pay a premium for knowledge and skills that add value and help differentiate their products and services;  individuals who want to contribute their energies where they will be most effective can bypass the increasingly uncertain corporate path and take direct control of their careers. 

The expansion of the network economy has the potential to develop powerful virtuous cycles (repeating sequences of favorable events that reinforce themselves through a feedback loop) to advance the interests of both individuals and organizations.  

The Mavenlink platform weaves together interrelated and mutually reinforcing professional, financial, and social cycles that benefit both clients and consultants.  Mavenlink projects have three virtuous cycles encoded in their DNA, if you will:

The Financial Cycle

The financial cycle provides opportunities for both clients and consultants to continually increase ROI through more efficient projects and expand revenue opportunities through clearly demonstrated value. 

For clients, project success is often measured initially by the degree to which the project deliverables meet expectations for time, cost, and quality; and in the larger analysis, by their associated ROI.  Mavenlink’s built-in project management tools help streamline the process from proposal to delivery.  Clients can propose, source, and run multiple projects efficiently from a single point of control.  As successes accumulate and add value, and ROI compounds, funding for additional projects is easier to justify and secure.  Project experience and artifacts also enable clients to gain additional value from re-use in planning and executing future projects. 

For consultants, multiple project successes with clients result in enhanced revenue opportunities through stronger business relationships, greater confidence and credibility, and opportunities to add value through additional proposals.  In addition, consultants can leverage success with one client when seeking additional business in the same vertical.  Over time, consultants are able to deliver value more efficiently through increased knowledge and re-use, generating better ROI for themselves and for clients. 

The Knowledge Cycle

The knowledge cycle describes the continual growth in clients’ and consultants’ abilities to tap into and contribute to knowledge streams.  Every project requires knowledge and skills in a particular domain or set of domains; to the extent that every project is different, each is an opportunity for new knowledge.  In addition, updating profiles and portfolios on Mavenlink ensures that connections are aware of project successes and new expertise. 

With each successive project, consultants gain new knowledge and skills, or apply existing ones in a new way.  New clients, partners, and collaborators all provide expanded opportunities to exchange knowledge.  Even highly specialized skills, which may apply only to a single client, contribute to general knowledge that helps consultants refine their "craft" and develop better tools and processes. 

Clients gain the explicit knowledge and expertise that they contract for, but also acquire experience and credibility that help them recognize and realize additional opportunities.  Clients and consultants who work together on successive projects benefit from increased understanding of specific business goals and client needs, operational tools, organizational structures and personalities, and countless nuances that translate into smooth-running, successful projects. 

The Reputation Cycle

The reputation cycle is the social-networking aspect of Mavenlink; the virtuous cycle associated with social networking is a major reason for its explosive growth.  With every Mavenlink project, clients and consultants have the opportunity to provide mutual feedback, which becomes part of their profile information.  Positive feedback from successful projects enhances your reputation and increases your visibility, which helps you expand your network and attract more collaborators. 

A positive reputation helps you connect with high-quality projects and providers, and inspires confidence in both parties, streamlining the formation of new relationships.  Additionally, your collaborators’ reputations reflect positively on your reputation, helping you to further expand your network, collaborate on more projects, and get more positive feedback.

A Platform for Realizing Potential

As we continue to build Mavenlink into the premier platform for successful projects and careers, we are motivated by the potential that is encoded in the Mavenlink DNA; the potential to help our community members succeed by continually advance their knowledge, financial security, and reputations.

In our next post…

We’ll look at how requirements for a new ‘career platform’ based on the requirements of the network economy could span the widening gap between new employment dynamics and traditional employment structures.

We’d like to hear from you…

How do you envision Mavenlink helping your long-term career strategy? Have Mavenlink projects increased your skills or knowledge, and has that translated to better compensation?  What are the most important factors you consider when engaging a client or service provider?  Is positive feedback a valuable indicator when it is mutual between two parties, or do the matching recommendations cancel each other out?  What do you think is currently missing from career-oriented online reputations?

 Most of you on Mavenlink are not software developers - you come from many different industries with many different specialties. For those of you who aren’t familiar with building software, there’s a relatively new methodology called "agile" that many of us use to develop our products, including the team at Mavenlink. Our agile methods are what we use to prioritize our work and meet your requests, requirements, and feedback in a timely manner.

If a picture tells a thousand words, I’d love to find out how many words a video gets across, especially an animatics video in the deft hands of The Incite Group.  It is an incredible medium for story telling.

In thinking about our anchor video, there was no question that it needed to speak to the independent consultants and freelancers.  After talking extensively with these independent professionals about their world, we wanted to try and capture the intersection of their story with the story of Mavenlink.

We hope you enjoy our take on how Mavenlink supports the ever changing workforce.

This morning Nicole Black released a screencast (audio & video) review of Mavenlink’s comprehensive online collaboration platform built for the consultant/lawyer and their interactions with clients.

In the screencast, Nicole asks Roger Neel and myself questions about Mavenlink in general, walks through a demonstration of the product with us, and speaks to the specific applicability for the legal profession.  It is a short 15-20 minute screencast, and provides a great opportunity to hear firsthand our impressions of the technology.  In the screencast, you will hear about:

• How to invite colleagues/clients into a workspace
• Collaboration options within the workspace
• Upcoming Mavenlink features (Private Networks, Task Management)
• Pricing

Business Week recently presented a somewhat gloomy outlook for the US worker entitled “The Disposable Worker”.  Citing numerous statistics, the article lays out in excruciating detail the challenges facing the “permanent temporary workforce”.

• Bonuses tied to managing costs and maximizing short term profits creates incentives for managers to minimize full time staff.
• The increased accessibility of talented onshore and offshore resources allows corporations to find “just in time” resources lowers the risk of delays, lower quality work or increased costs historically associated with contract labor.
• The use of temporary or contract resources spans across the entire workforce, from “sneaker footed admins” to executives.
• “A lack of job security and health-care benefits, as well as social ties to the rest of the workforce, increase stress levels for temps and contractors.”
• The decades long pattern of the American worker accepting lower pay is likely to continue.
• Pulling few punches, the authors even go so far as to point out that “temporary or contract workers face a higher risk of developing mental health problems like depression”. 

From my perspective, there is no question the US worker faces unique challenges in the face of these driving corporate changes, and I think the attention brought to the issue by Business Week is critical.  However, it seems hard to fathom that the changes afoot are being driven exclusively by corporate America.  Job satisfaction has seen a steady decline since 1987, dropping steadily from 61.1% to the 2009 response of 45.3%.   Playing into these job satisfaction numbers is the impact corporate America is having on the quality of life of its employees.  Looking at the same time period, from 1987 to 2009, non-farm workers have been squeezed for a combined 57.2% increase in output/hour, with a 26.6% rise in total hours worked.  That makes a huge difference in the amount of time spent working for your employer and the stress levels during those working hours.  It’s no wonder you hear people talking about the “rat race”, working around the clock, and never being able to leave the job behind even on vacation.  In this environment, the US worker is understandably going to be considering all alternatives exclusive of corporate initiatives.

No matter what your area of expertise is, who you consult for, or what your role is on a project, there is almost always a need for a private conversation between a few of the participants.  People working on a project generally have a role:

• The guy who’s the main collaborator with his feet on the ground
• The lady who signs the checks, but isn’t really involved in the day-to-day
• The boss who’s fragmented and should only be involved in the final review phase
• The peanut gallery that asks if "that should be blue…?"
• Etc…

In our old workspace, unless you kept the project participants fairly tight, it was difficult to keep things private without reverting back to email and losing the power of capturing all conversation/documents in one place.  With the new Mavenlink workspace and private messaging, this is an issue of the past.  You can now have all interested parties participating in the project, but be confident that you can include only the right audience on any message/attachment.

We were pretty sure this would be a big request and we were correct. We didn’t want to build it until enough people asked. Try it out and get on our GetSatisfaction page to let us know what you think and what we should build next!

I’m excited to be introducing our newest feature: the ability for you to reply to workspace activity directly from your email!

Many of you have asked for it and we agree - this is definitely one of the most useful features we’ve developed to date. While managing our own projects in Mavenlink, we have found that sometimes it’s more convenient to just respond via email versus logging in. This is particularly true while on the road.

Now, clients and consultants working within the Mavenlink project workspace can use their iPhones, Blackberries, and desktop email clients to not only keep tabs on their projects, but also keep in touch with the other project participants.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Over the last 6 months, we learned a lot about the consultant/client relationship and what’s needed to manage this relationship in the networked economy.  This new release of Mavenlink is a testament to the generosity of our charter community and their willingness to share ideas and recommendations.

Four Key learnings that have strongly influenced our business and technology direction:

1. Mavens (Consultants) and Clients found our underlying software very valuable to collaborate to get work done by having all documents and conversations in one place.
   • There is a tremendous need for a complete application that helps consultants and clients manage their business relationships from proposal to payment to feedback.
2. The “Post a Project” marketplace presents some important challenges for professional, collaborative service engagements, including:
   • Clients often need expert assistance to clarify requirements and define projects prior to posting
   • Talented consultants are often reluctant to invest the time required to pursue projects in an open marketplace
   • Consultants are uncomfortable inviting their existing clients into Mavenlink because the public listing of potentially competing mavens being made visible to clients.
3. Businesses are seeking new and better ways to work with and manage external talent.
   • Businesses need help finding the right expertise at the right time on an as-needed basis.
   • Consultants are seeking new ways to showcase their talent and speed the engagement process.
4. Businesses and Consultants alike are seeking purposeful business networking opportunities that help get valuable work done.

 
What’s Next

Comprehensive Technology Platform:  Our core technology, released this week, supports our mission of enabling an entirely new way for businesses and consultants to work together, making it simpler, more efficient, and more economical to get work done.  Enabling both businesses and consultants to leverage the platform within a trusted relationship, rather than an open marketplace, was a frequent request that we are now making possible.  Immediately following this release, we will be making continuous improvements…daily and weekly.

A good friend of mine recently (by choice) turned a full time position into a contract position so that he could take on more clients.  In less than 2 months he had 5+ new clients, each of which on its own could turn into a full time gig.  As I listened to my friend describe his good fortune, what became apparent to me was that more than the flexibility of being his own boss or the new found financial opportunity, the thing that gratified him most of all in his new independent role was the security.  “I’ve always worked essentially for one client, my employer.  When I started, I never thought about that client not being there as long as I did a good job.  Lately, I couldn’t get the fear of that one client disappearing out of my mind.  I don’t ever plan on being at the mercy of one client again.”

80’s
In the past, choosing the independent route was considered the way of the gambler, the entrepreneur, with tons of upside but plenty of risk.  That risk profile continues to change as full time employment becomes more and more tenous.  Beginning with the first real widespread use of the “layoff” during the early 1980’s recession, the loyalty between employees and their employers has been on a steady downward slide as corporations are unable to provide or even communicate a strong sense of security.  Once the gigantic monkey wrench was thrown into the notion that your corporate employer would provide a safe, reliable career, corporations and the positions they offer became a “stepping stone”  along a migratory career path as opposed to the career path.

90’s
The downturn of the 90’s brought along another wrinkle, the onset of the full time employee turned contract worker.  Rather than severing ties completely with employees as the need for their full time help diminished, corporations began turning to them, sans employment benefits, on a part time contractual basis. 

Today
The current recession brings along its own unique impacts on the employee/employer relationship.  In the midst of the downturn, corporations are striving more than ever to become lean, agile, profit making machines, forcing renewed consideration of all resource options available to them, including full time employees, outsourcing, a contingent workforce, or a combination thereof.  Unemployment climbing over 10% is remarkable.  The fact that economists are predicting that the unemployment rate is headed for 12%-13% is unprecedented.  For the first time there is general agreement amongst the experts that the full time employment positions are not coming back.  More so than any previous recession, the core fabric, the loyalty, of the corporate workforce is being shaken, and as a result stirred into action. 
 

We’ve seen the rise of the Independent Party, Independent Film, Independent Music, and Independent Media, but there seems to be a new movement afoot that just might be more important than all combined, the rise of the Independent Professional.  While the other “Independent” movements impact, or have the potential to impact, our two party system, our entertainment, and our ways of consuming information, none have the potential to affect our economy or our livelihood as much as the Independent Professional movement.  While the magnitude of the movement is still developing, there are many reasons to believe that this “Free Agent Nation” (as Daniel Pink dubs it) is here to stay:

• Loyalty between employees and companies continues to deteriorate
• Increased Labor Specialization is driving companies to seek niche service providers from outside their four walls
• The Networked World is providing ever more opportunities for career development and learning outside of the corporation
• Technologies are arising that enable independents and businesses to engage around projects on an as needed basis, rather than extended contractual based relationships
• Costs for businesses to hire and retain employees continue to rise
• Unique providers are stepping up to fill the benefits and insurance void for independent professionals historically filled by the corporate world

Over the next few weeks I’ll explore each of these in more detail.  If there are other factors that I have left out, either supporting or undermining the rise of the Independent Professional, let me know, and I’ll do my best to incorporate.