For our client companies, this trend is great news as it means you can hire highly qualified talent for many of your needs on a short-term, project basis. You can have top quality talent that you can’t afford and don’t need on a regular, full-time basis as virtual members of your teams. This gives you more ability to focus on what you do best while outsourcing many important functions that are not really part of your core competence. If you do it well, you will soon discover the advantages and learn to base most, if not all, relationships around contracts for performance.

For you folks who are out in the market, it means opportunity, if you are willing to create the right attitude and practice a few key disciplines.  A Wall Street Journal article Monday, February 8, 2010, entitled How to Succeed In the Age of Going Solo, by Dr. Richard Greenwald is a useful guide.

Whether you are still employed or have recently been given your freedom, realize that your old world of stable employment with full-time jobs and defined career paths is dying. We originally addressed this isssue in our post  on May 18th, 2009 about Mike Cook’s book Thrive: Standing On Your Own Two Feet in a Borderless World, in which Mike urges you to recognize and shift your paradigm about employment from one of “entitlement” to one of “engagement.”   He offers the formula: Technical Competence + Collaborative Skill + Good Reputation = Potential Performance as a guide on your new path.

Dr. Greenwald provides specific actions to take along with a valuable discussion around each one of the following key steps:

1)    Think long-term – take on your new life as you would any profession

2)    Pick the right skills and keep them fresh – keep educating yourself

3)    Join a network – from social media to shared office space, find ways to connect with others with common interests

4)    Have your own space – most need space away from the activities and seductions at home

5)    Think like an entrepreneur –set yourself up as a business with a clear vision, mission, values, business plan, marketing program, & accurate financial statements

To the wise counsel of these two authors we add “enjoy your newfound freedom!” You have escaped and are in a new world where your creativity and passion need have no bounds. You can work to your highest value. In our firm, we challenge our associates to “be all you can be, fully self-expressed, and let the world choose how much of you it wants and the price it is willing to pay for your gifts.  You are the offering.  The world has waited for eons for your arrival, get busy.”

In the spirit of the Lead Your Business, Lead Your Life blog we are writing about this book because it is very empowering. And it’s an important read and guidebook, not just for those who dream of escaping and branching out on their own in business. It’s also an important read for business owners, both new and advanced. Here’s why:

If you recently started a business, or your business is in a young, growing, perhaps even awkward stage, this book has great, tactical information for you. You’ll want to review it to see if there are any areas of planning you may have missed or now find you need help with. You will likely find insights.

If you own a business that has been around for awhile and you have employees you also have a culture. Even if your business is not particularly large there are definitely cultural “norms.” Just the first chapter of this book is a powerful reminder about elements and dynamics that don’t work in organizational cultures. This chapter features a reprint of a powerful “Open Letter” to corporate leaders that vents the frustration that can be felt by employees about so many facets of business life. If you read the book using the lens of insight into, and a reminder of, what it can be like to be an employee – the challenges, and the daydreams –  it could be a very valuable read. Of course, not all employees are frustrated and many are happy to be working for others. But, if you are a business owner or top executive, this book can be a powerful reminder of the challenges of working for someone else, and the fierce desire employees can have for more creativity, autonomy and input. It may spark you to side-step or prevent traps that are just waiting to make your dream business into a living Dilbert cartoon.

Curious? Download the first chapter of the book for free here, or better yet, grab a copy. Pam’s writing is extremely readable and she has a lot to offer on her blog and in this book.