The Future of Work Blog
Our Mission and Values Defined By Southwest Airlines
When I first thought of writing this, it was meant to be an internal note to colleagues at Free Agent Source. That lasted about a minute before I decided to publish as a regular blog post. We believe in transparency, which means we should document publicly as much as possible. If it needs to be […]
Community-Based Reviews Are Coming To Work
As a society, we generally accept everyone reviews everything. We express our opinion and comment on just about everything we experience, read or see. This has changed how we curate the content of our lives. It means business owners and executives can no longer control information about their company’s products and services. That control is […]
Self-Managed Recognition and Rewards Energize the Game
Why do people spend $60 or more on a video game for the privilege of banging away at the controller for hours in front of a big screen? For the emotional rush. For the adventure of the game story and characters, for that feeling of satisfaction from developing skill and achieving a high score, for recognition […]
Self-Organization Starts With SELF-SELECTION
It may be difficult to imagine a self-organized team actually functioning without plunging into a cacophony of chaos, if you’re not familiar with team self-organization. It’s easier to understand when we add the context of a system of rules for interaction accepted and implemented by all participants. The starting point of self-organization is to create a team […]
Design Your Company for Self-Organizing Teams.
If we think of our company as a game, we realize working there may not be as fun, agile or productive as it could be. The key is to design for self-organizing teams. Multi-player video games show us the way as players collaborate, improvise, adapt and spontaneously respond to opportunities. In many games, there is […]
You’re Getting Taken By Staffing Agencies and Consulting Firms
Uncertainty about future market conditions puts most executives in a squeeze between retaining internal capacity to produce for customers (retain a capable workforce) and customer demand that fluctuates above and below the company’s relatively fixed capacity. We need flexibility in our workforce now more than ever. And yet we continue with the default solution: retain most of the workforce as employees in […]
The Third Way Is Open Now
Whether you are leading a start-up, your own company as an owner / operator, or a large enterprise, we all have what amounts to a binary decision for assembling teams. 1) Hire permanent full-time employees. This works for most positions in large companies. But it is inflexible, like owning and operating your own factory. 2) […]
Competitive Disadvantage of Fit
“My main question is about fit.” he said as we started our call. I was giving a reference for someone who had worked on my team. “I want to be sure he fits with the team we already have.” My emotions sank. I’m thinking, “Here we go.” Out of the starting gate, fit has trumped […]
Who is the Adventurer Executive?
In our companies and in our lives we have people around us whose main aspiration is economic survival. For various reasons (the situation or the person or both) economic survival and protecting one’s own job is the goal. I get that. It’s normal. Sometimes that goal is pursued with quiet “under the radar” tip-toe steps […]
The Executive’s Guide to Engaging Independent Consultants
That lingering doubt is real: “How am I going to get these projects done this year with the team that I have?” Listen to your inner voice. Increasingly, we find ourselves with a list of projects that require specific roles and a roster of permanent full-time employees who cannot fill them, either because we don’t […]
You’re The Boss
If the there’s no tax advantage in operating your own company compared to operating as your own business unit of Free Agent Source… and if we know it costs more and takes more time for each of us to maintain our own company separately… Then why do so many people want to create and maintain […]
No tax advantage in your own company
One of the most common justifications we get from independent consultants and solopreneurs for creating and maintaining their own company are the tax advantages of being able to deduct business expenses. As the boss of your own business unit in Free Agent Source, you get the tax advantage of deducting normal business expenses here too: […]