Dave Pollard has a great phrase - Grow better not Bigger - this post is all about this perspective
One of the reasons many of us become Freelancers is that we don't like to be "Managed" or to "Manage".
The irony is that many then go off and decide to "Grow" their business and end up spending most of their time managing. It's like many who leave a marriage and end up with the same kind of partner doing all the same things that caused the failure of the first marriage.
How can you grow and not end up as a manager with all the headaches of being in effect a parent with teen age kids?
I got my first hint from Peter Rukavina. He once told me that he would never hire someone who needed him to manage them. My aha was that what Peter was talking about was of course the "Relationship" that is embedded in the whole idea of "Managing".
What craftsman needs to be managed? What adult needs to be managed? Worse who needs to be managed by a sociopath on the make who knows little about what we do? What leader needs people working for them who act like spoiled kids all worrying about who got what and who is mummy's favorite now? Who needs a colleague who has to be motivated or who has not the skills to do the work? Who needs a colleague who cannot look after themselves or know how to use their tools and to keep their tools in good order. Who needs to own a business where making payroll or feeding the bank loan becomes the sole priority? Who needs a business where you have to out up with infantile clients simply to generate enough cash flow?
Do you see where I am going? The traditional workplace is based on an infantile set of parental relationships where the kids play off the parent. It's based on dependency. Dependency of power and dependency of weakness. No wonder it is so toxic and people are so stressed. It becomes "feed the machine" very quickly.
What Peter was talking about was that he wanted adult relationships at work. He did not want someone depending on him.
So how do you have colleagues that don't have dependency as the core of the relationship?
I will get to that in a minute. First we have to look at the whole idea of Growth anyway.
I used to and I am sure you may now likely define Growth as an expansion of the revenues and the scale of the operation. You in effect "Build" not grow an organization. You add employees. You add space and equipment. You add clients and suppliers. You add costs that are fixed. You add complexity that you have to control. The more you add inside, the more the natural friction builds.
But what if you see growth differently? What if as a freelancer you see growth as:
- The growth of your reputation and skill
- The growth of your value in the area/community that you serve
- The growth of the size and the depth of your network of peers and customers
- The growth in the value of the work that you do and the impact of what you do on your community and on the world
If all of these things grow, do you think that your revenues will grow too? Do you think that your security will grow as well?
This is "growth". This is how all natural things grow. Our traditional view of "Growth" is not growth at all - it is mechanical expansion. It is construction not growth.
But if I never hire anyone, how do I do big jobs? If you have a reputation, you can rely on your peeps to work with you on a project. Think Hollywood! The studios don't have everyone on the payroll. A great camera operator has his peeps. They come together on a project basis. When they are not working with each other - the camera operator does not pay them nor does he look after them as a parent might.
When I did the New Realities work for NPR - 1,000 people, 8 meetings across America - it was my peeps who came in and took big chunks of the work. We also invited in many of the NPR folks - they were not separate from the consultant, they were an integral part of the project. Many Board members worked harder than most others. The result? The project became theirs as it should be.
If we had used a traditional approach, it would have cost NPR many times what we charged and they would have got much less. If I had a large group working all the time for me, I would have to take work simply to pay the bills.
You can scale by using the network effect - both sides win.
You can stay on track to get better at what you do as well. In the end the only way to get closer to finding the answers to the questions about the future of new media was to work just for one person in one place. We had to go to Mount Doom with the ring. For the answers to any great question are not found in the centre but on the edge.
There is no money for work on the edge. But only there can you find the real new. A conventional consulting firm cannot do this work. Their costs are too high. The real new is always heretical. So it cannot be found or grow in the centre.
So if you really want to be a discoverer of the new. You have to use the network effect to survive and to bring the best resources to bear on work that cannot support a big firm costs. You have to big big talent to a small place with low costs. Only a network can do this.
So why work on big questions anyway? Why not work on the mundane? Why not work for the big organizations who can afford big fees?
For me the answer is this. Our big organizations and our big systems no longer work. Worse, they have become the problem.
The world based on cheap credit and cheap oil is dying right in front of us. Working on keeping this all going is like still trying to land Apollo 13 on the Moon. The only work worth doing right now is to get the crew home. For I have kids and grand kids and I want them to have a future. Don't you?
If we are going to find the new media, it cannot be found at the New York Times. If we are to find a way of living in peak oil, Mobil or Monsanto will not be where the answers are found. If we are to find a new approach to health or education, it will not be found at Pfizer or the School Board.
But they can pay the bills of big firms. So to be big now is to be at best irrelevant at worst to support the old system.
The new solutions will be based on networks. Freelancers are the very essence of networks. Their power comes from their network strength. Their energy comes from the hearts and the minds of each one of them.
So who are the freelancers?
They:
- Have deep skills
- Have their own tools and know how to use them and to look after them
- Have a reputation based on authentic achievement - they keep their promises
- Are grown up - they have egos but they do not need lots of strokes - they look after themselves
- Have a rich network that they tend to of others like them
- Embed with their clients who become part of their network
More tomorrow
