Sunday, June 15, 2003

Free Agency - A great resource Free Agents in an Age of Independence By Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D. President of Workforce Associates and author of NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet Available online and in print from 1st Books Library I’ve been meaning to write an update about the status of free agency but somehow other topics have crowded out an article on this topic for more than one year. What prompted me to return to one of my favorite topics was an informal survey of friends from childhood who are now at the top of their careers. All but one have bailed out of the insecurity of the wage/salary world for the even more uncertainty of free agency! Why, you may ask?! According to Daniel Pink, author of "Free Agent Nation", which presents a rosy view of free agency, "There’s no much instability in the market right now, that it might be better to work for yourself than a bigger economic ship that is capsizing." And my friends are not alone. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which started tracking independent consultants and the self-employed in the mid-nineties, estimates that close to 33 million Americans can be categorized as free-lancers, contract workers, temp workers, and self-employed soloists. Kelly Services also tracks these numbers and has noted a marked increase in the numbers of people that it places in short-term positions. More than 175,000 Kelly employees fit this category, up 25% since 1998. If you agree with Daniel Pink, Kelly, and my childhood chums about making a radical change, here are some do’s and don’ts that they gave me about how to prepare to enter the world of free agency: 9:10:50 PM    comment []

Big Guys Versus the Little Guys It has been interesting for me changing my focus from large business consulting to holistic health, because these types of business are all small. I guess there are some large vitamin companies and some of the big hospital chains are dabbling in holistic health practices, but mostly it is one person businesses doing massage therapy, acupuncture, yoga instruction or whatever. Some of the people I've talked to have expressed some fear about the ability of holistic health to make inroads given the huge presence of established Western medical institutions (hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, government regulations, etc.). Maybe I'm just a Pollyanna optimist, but to me it looks like no problem at all. Again, having come from the inside of large corporations and government departments, I can personally vouch that it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get anything done inside a big organization. Large companies (and government more so) are mostly about power struggles, turf battles, politics, office romances and smoke breaks. When we visualize big companies, we tend to think of those hard-driving, steely-eyed people at the top. And, indeed, those people are very intimidating. Only trouble is, they can't do much. Because directly below them in the hierarchy are people who are primarily concerned with a) how do I keep from losing this job, b) what does the boss want me to say and c) how can I get back at the person who dissed me last week. The ambitions of the corporation in the marketplace are not even on the list of concerns for 99% of the people in the organization. Contrast this to the one, two or five person operation. It is possible to get everyone in a room and discuss what we need to do right now. What we want to grow towards. What our philosophy is towards our customers. It is almost effortless to manage something this small. But does it get done? Often, it does not, but that fact that it is so much easier to do makes these legions of small, holistic health service organizations much more powerful than any behemoth corporations or government agency. It's not even a contest. [The Holistic Health Phreak] How true!!!!! 9:00:59 PM    comment []