Freeforming And Matching - Signs Of The New Economy

In my previous blog, I talked briefly about the trend for companies to do more with less employees - and how this will lead to the growth of a self-employed class of professionals Richard Duvall of Zopa referred to as ‘freeformers’.

This view of our present - and our future - is supported by research by ethnographic researcher Bruce Davis “who studies people - families, couples and individuals - from all walks of life and from different parts of the country” notes a research document from Zopa.

“Rather than use interviews to discover people’s attitudes, Bruce’s work is based on long periods of observation of people as they go about their everyday lives.” From his recent research, Bruce notes that our ways of earning money have changed and that we have become “more fluid and complex” in our needs of and uses for money.

Our values are changing too. Chantal Benjamin , Manager of Communications for BBC Audience and Consumer Research noted recently that 54% of social groups A and B now want fulfilment above wealth and property.

How will our working lives change as a result?

We will work for more employers and for shorter periods. The model will be most reminiscent of the movie business where teams of independent workers and small firms come together - often in a company specific to a single film - and work together towards a set of well-defined outcomes.

At the end of the process, they go their separate ways to other projects, and to look for the next opportunity.

It has been said that search is the ‘killer app’ on the Internet but search without finding is of little use to most of us.

The main successes of the Internet era, Google , Yahoo , eBay and Amazon are all matching engines. Google and Yahoo match you to information you need, eBay matches buyers and sellers, and Amazon matches you to books and - increasingly - to a wide range of consumer goods. Zopa has been launched to match lenders (that is individuals with money to lend) to borrowers without the need for a banker in the process.

In the freeform world, freelance workers will need to be matched to suitable work.

Unlike traditional recruitment, the need for a quick and accurate match will be paramount. Project owners will need to find whole teams or specific skilled individuals, whilst individuals will be looking for a continuity of work that fits their lifestyle AND their need for fulfilment in equal measure.

Social business networks will need to become the matching engines of the freeform generation. They should provide project owners with the ability to define opportunities and freelance workers with the ability to specify their needs and skill sets. Then the network can match their requirements and send offers to the freelancers that they may choose to take up. It’s a Buyers and Sellers market and it is often as hard to buy (that is to find a scarce resource) as it is to sell.

The day will come, I believe, when you can log onto LinkedIn or openBC or Ecademy and there, in your inbox, will be the offers of work that you need for the next three to six months.

I see that my job is not just to have a pretty website and offline events with Chardonnay, but to put work on every members table internationally.

Global Labour Matching in real-time is the future of work and the future of Ecademy. These are the challenges facing us all in networking today and new challenges will bring forward new solutions.

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This article can be found at http://afriendineverycity.com/. The author has chosen to accept comments from fawning lickspittles only. This blog provides some balance.

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Networking — why quality emerges from quantity

Whenever business people get together and talk about networking and how it might improve their business, one of the more emotive topics will always be quality versus quantity. The quality brigade will insist that it is important to know who it is you’re talking before making a connection. They are looking for the right match to their requirements.

To those who know me, it will come as no surprise that I prefer making random connections and that I have no limits on the number of connections I’m prepared to make. In my working lifetime, I have met with 23,000 people and connected online with thousands more. Not all of those people have become close friends or even regular acquaintances but enough have for me to believe that quality can emerge from quantity.

“Technology can help you maintain a high touch relationships with a large number of people. But just how large should that number be?” ask Scott Allen and David Teten in a Fast Company article in January this year. Their conclusion is that “the number of your relationships and the average strength of your relationships end up being inversely proportional. The more people you know, the less well you know them. If you want to build stronger relationships, you’re going to have to do so with a smaller number of people. You can spend all of your time with your close friends and family (strong ties, low number), or spread yourself across a wide number of people (weak ties, high number). However maintaining both high strength and high number is physically impossible”.

Christian Mayaud, a expert networker and Venture Capitalist in the US, categorises your network into PANs, CANs and FANs. In his blog “Sacred Cow Dung“, Mayaud explains that PAN = potentially active network; CAN = currently active network and FAN = formerly active network. He argues that the CAN for most people will be around 200 to 300 people whilst ” my FAN rose in normal course of working with different people and companies at different times in my career (currently about 50K), it’s my PAN that I don’t mind growing online (I never presume to know a priori whether or not I can be helpful to someone someday about something that comes up ie I don’t feel I have any basis to judge the “quality” of a potential relationship a priori).

Often the difference between meeting someone and connecting with them can be a matter of the state of mind of one or both of the parties. Being open to connection is about being interested in the other person and finding out as much as you can about them. There are questions you can ask that will help identify how you can help them. For example “what is your expertise?”, “what projects are you working on a present?” and “what contacts are you looking for to help you develop your business?” In an initial meeting, concentrate on the needs of the person in front of you and ask for nothing for yourself.

Maybe you believe that you have the network you need and have no need of further connections. You may be right but it is important to remember that stagnant networks occur when there is no new blood flowing through them.

Despite those who would seek to convince you that it is all about the apparent quality of the person you are connecting with, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that it is really all a numbers game. Reed’s Law suggests that each new addition to the network (node) increases the potential connections within that network exponentially. So, arguably, everybody gains from having a larger network. The money, as I have often said before, is in the links and not the nodes.

The person in front of you also brings with them a variety of friends and contacts who by definition are unknown to you on first meeting. So when someone talks about a quality contact, you have to ask yourself if they mean the person themselves or that person’s contacts because neither judgment is one that you can make that quickly. “Like a tree”, notes Roger Hamilton of XL Results Foundation, “fruit only grows on the outermost twigs” which may be 2 or 3 degrees removed from the person in front of you.

Thomas Friedman notes in his 2005 book “The World is Flat” that technology has made it possible for companies to do more with less employees by outsourcing and offshoring their businesses. It is unlikely that this trend will reverse and more people will find themselves as what the new Internet lending and borrowing exchange Zopa refer to as “freeformers”. These are people who have chosen, or have had to choose, a portfolio career working often from home. As more professional workers find themselves working alone, the importance of a place where they can meet, talk, support each other and develop teams to bid for business together increases.

Ecademy is a place where you can develop your skills in networking both at local events where you can meet people face-to-face and also online where a different set of skills will be needed. It is perfectly possible to make friends with people online and to share important and intimate information with them, without “seeing the whites of their eyes”. In fact, this ability will be crucial as the world continues to flatten with the development and availability of technology. With tools like Skype and Avecomm, it is possible to telephone, videoconference, share applications and whiteboards for low or no cost worldwide. When these tools are combined with your profile on one of the Social Business Networks like Ecademy, a very productive conversation and relationship can follow.

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This article can be found at http://afriendineverycity.com/. The author has chosen to accept comments from fawning lickspittles only. This blog provides some balance.

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