Blog

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

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!

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.

As a team we get together early, just about every morning, to catch up, discuss direction moving forward and generally get on the same page.  I will certainly do my best to spare you from the unappealing details, but in an effort to shed additional light on our company direction and our perception of the SMB consulting market, I will be sharing a couple of relevant highlights from these meetings here in our blog.


Thought for the Day

It seems like the world of consulting proposals and contracts with their talk of scope, approach, tasks and deliverables have ventured away from the simple needs of independent consultants and their clients, "Here is what we agreed to go do".

Company Updates

Product: New Designs almost complete mapping out the new Proposal Process for consultants and their clients.  The team is focused on providing everything you could ever want in a proposal with the flexibility you need to pick and choose the pieces necessary for your project.  And if that wasn’t enough, we’ll make sure to keep it simple.

Marketing: Getting ready to launch our Innovation Group, a core group of users who have graciously volunteered to give us early feedback on upcoming product releases.  Upcoming fun for the Innovation Group includes a first look at the new comprehensive software platform designed for the independent consultant (including the aforementioned Proposal Process) and some video reviews.

After spending countless hours over the last week thinking about, researching, designing, paper prototyping, and generally becoming an online proposal, a thought occurred to me, "Is the Independent Consultant (i.e. my audience) ready to walk away from the Paper Proposal?"  It’s not an easy question.

On the one hand, there’s no shortage of griping about the current proposal process, and rightfully so.  It’s a time sink, no matter how you look at it.  No one I know looks forward to creating or adapting pages after pages of Cover Sheets, Self Promotional Marketing Pieces, Tables of Contents, Executive Summaries, Project Scope Statements, Approach Summaries, Deliverable Overviews, Pricing, Discounting, and the kicker, Terms and Conditions associated with the proposal.  You might not have to add each of these to every proposal, or you might be lucky enough to leverage boilerplate language for a bunch of the pieces, but any paper pushing is too much paper pushing for most.  Next in line you get to deal with the inevitable discomfort associated with putting yourself and your hard earned prospect at the mercy of a couple of bound pages.   It would be one thing if the waiting was short, but everyone knows yes’s never come fast enough.  How long do you have to wait before you burst through your Client’s door demanding a response?  Polite email and phone follow-ups can only sustain you for so long.

On the other hand, the upside of so much time sunk into the development of your paper proposal is that it might be quite good.  If nothing else, every word that jumps off the page reflects you, your business, and your blood, sweat and earnest brain strain.  Some of you might even say the paper proposal is a differentiator for your practice.  You’ve read Allan Weiss’s "How to Write a Proposal That’s Accepted Every Time" 15 times, and can’t wait for the Client to utter the magic words "Shoot me over a Proposal".  Even if you haven’t had the chance to get your own Ph.D. in proposal writing, others amongst you might rightly appreciate the opportunity a paper proposal presents to express yourself in another medium to your Client.  Some things are easier said in a logo, a page layout, or a well-crafted paragraph.

My new perspective is one of fascination.  I don’t know if we can put any more thought into ways to make the proposal process better by bringing it online.  Even Dr. Weiss would be proud of our efforts to focus on the collaboration and communication between the consultant and the client above all else, taking advantage of the online world to promote a highly interactive process.  Having said that, I’m sure once we release it you’ll give us plenty of good recommendations for improvements, and I look forward to the learning.  But what I’m really anxious to find out is how many amongst you will be able to once and for all leave the paper behind.  Mavenlink is going to let you choose whether or not you want to attach that paper beauty, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll decide.

We’ve just updated our blog to have a new style - we hope you like it! As we’ve mentioned to many of you in our community, we’ll be rolling out many new, exciting features over the next couple months. We thought it would be a good idea to update our blog to use better software and make it more attractive for our upcoming announcements.

In addition to rolling out the new blog, we have also updated our RSS feed to use FeedBurner. Please update your RSS reader accordingly by subscribing on the right. The old feed address will be pointed to the wrong place!

We’d love to hear your feedback on the new styling through comments or directly. Thanks!