"In today’s world, creativity is a collaborative endeavor. Innovation is a team effort." ~ Walter Isaacson

The gig economy, in theory, is giving people more flexible work hours and arrangements.

As many freelancers have found, though, that freedom is incomplete.

The self-employed among us must work in isolation. Some people may appreciate this challenge, but for others, it’s hard to maintain stability. A freelance graphic designer, for example, often ends up also being their own sales, legal, tax, and finance departments. All the while risking their own capital, acquiring their own tools, and chasing down payments for work they've already done.

So the solution is just to go back to a typical 9-to-5 job, right? Maybe for some. But many people in traditional jobs still face the same problems the gig economy was supposed to solve in the first place: rigid work schedules, mismanagement, and inflexible hierarchies. Even the pace at which your compensation is adjusted is mostly out of your hands--rarely keeping pace with inflation and your work experience. The stress and effort involved with writing cover letters, updating resumes, and the interviewing process leaves people underpaid and stuck in poor fitting jobs. If the gig economy and traditional employment aren't delivering on personalized work, are there better options?

We believe the answer lies in the Collaboration Economy — a concept that leverages the power of teams — to deliver an entirely new kind of work experience. One that is fully personalized.

Organizations’ true value lies in the teams that make them up. A new model of collaboration that facilitates teams working together in this way could provide the benefits and freedom the gig economy was supposed to deliver, but with many of the benefits provided by traditional employment.

Before we discuss our solution, why are teams important in the first place?

Complex Problems Require Collaboration

Often overlooked by contract workers is the limitation working alone has on the type of work you can accomplish.

Current employment models are often built — successfully — to address simple problems. Uber will get you from point A to point B efficiently. But when the complexity of the problem space increases, lone individuals are less and less capable of contributing meaningfully. Teams become necessary for significant progress. Communication and collaboration are necessary to effectively explore which direction to head and the kind of solutions that have traction.

General Stanley McChrystal cements this idea well in his book Team of Teams:

“I once asked Steve Jobs, often mistakenly considered a lone visionary and authoritarian leader, which of his creations made him most proud. I thought he might say the original Macintosh, or the iPhone. Instead he pointed out that these were all collaborative efforts. The creations he was most proud of, he said, were the teams he had produced.”

In a similar fashion, the value delivered on projects to companies — and in turn the value they deliver to their customers — is rarely determined based on individual efforts. Instead, the weakest link determines the max value delivered on a project. It is only through symbiotic teams that the sum can truly be greater than the parts. In other words, it is the quality of a team that will determine the value delivered, not the quality of any one individual within that team.

Social Environments Promote Career Development

Working alone means losing out on a major benefit of traditional work: mentors and coaches. These types of relationships are key in accelerating your growth and developing new skill sets.

In addition, the nature of freelance work can counterintuitively force your career into a pigeonhole. When you have to market yourself as a freelance WordPress developer, it is easy to get pigeonholed into only doing that.

When you work on a team, you are able to market yourselves at a different layer of abstraction. The team does one thing but your role within that team can change and adjust. Additionally, it’s hard to market yourself as both a freelance Wordpress developer and a business consultant. However, when you work on teams that market themselves, you can easily belong to separate teams that provide software development and consulting. Working in teams enables you to have a fluid or changing role behind the scenes while maintaining other marketable services for yourself.

Teams are a safe space for exploring and developing your skill sets. Teams allow us the space and understanding amongst those we are closest with to adjust and change the role we play and the work we do.

Teams Enable Freedom of Choice: Forget Your Weakness, Focus on Your Strengths

Working alone doesn’t mean you get to work on whatever you want. Instead, it usually means you have the responsibility of doing everything yourself.

When you work on a team, each person can focus on what they love doing and can specialize in the things they do best.

Studies show that trying to improve a weakness is far less effective than spending time building up your strengths, which differentiate you from others. Teams allow us to partner up with colleagues whose strengths complement our weaknesses.

Leveraging Teams to Land Bigger Projects

Traditional employment provides meaningful value to workers. However, it is frequently inflexible and capitalizes greatly on one’s hard work.

Take engineering firms as an example. They can sell contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. They often have a team of ~20 different engineers — electrical, structural, civil, environmental, and so on — come together to complete the work at less than half the cost. Those same engineers, if they worked as freelancers, would most likely be hired by those same engineering firms and receive a similar cut of the pie. But if all of the engineers teamed up together, they could compete against those same firms for projects. If they win the bid, they can then keep a much larger share of the pie.

nKipo

For the first time, nKipo allows you to create teams capable of landing more lucrative and complex projects that previously only companies could compete for. However, with nKipo, you don’t have to start a full-fledged company and pay all the overhead costs of starting and running a business. You know what you do best and who you do it best with. nKipo allows you to advertise your powerful, effective teams like never before so you can work for yourself, not by yourself.

Now you can work in a team of your favorite friends and collaborators without the fear of having to hire and maintain their salaries. You can come together for projects and then regroup in new forms and shapes so that everyone in your team can truly personalize the way they work while maintaining healthy social interactions and fulfillment.

Across all different types of industries, you are already working in teams. By soliciting services at a team level, you can cut out the middleman, work with who you want, and get paid as if you were the company you currently work for.

We are social creatures by nature. That means personalizing the way we work to maximize our fulfillment is not only choosing what you do, but who you do it with.

We believe collaboration is key to unleashing your true potential. nKipo allows you to create custom teams and pick projects that align your growth with your interests without long-term employment agreements. In turn, you get full control and freedom over the way you work.

The age of personalization is here — and it’s taking over the workplace.

Do you — and get paid.

Join the movement!

Signing up is not a commitment to leverage nKipo full-time and as your sole source of income.

Signing up is instead a zero-risk step towards taking back control over your work life. That could mean keeping a network of professional relationships, taking on work with a liquid team, or working part-time with a dedicated team as your side gig. But don't be surprised if over time you find you love it enough to take that leap of faith to work full-time through nKipo.

This past decade alone, the way we work and hire workers has transformed in countless ways.

Still, for many, it’s safe to say there’s room for improvement.

For one, if you’re a freelance worker, you often must face the unpredictability and weight of doing everything yourself.

For people working at traditional office jobs, there is frequently an environment of rigidity and a general lack of freedom.

For employers, it can be difficult to find dependable talent that works well together.

It’s a complex web of problems that nKipo’s founders have experienced from many angles.

We believe the Collaboration Economy might present a solution.

In applying its principles to our current work landscape, we think how people work and hire workers can fundamentally change for the better.

The Collaboration Economy

Put simply, the collaboration economy is made up of individuals that have formed collaborative teams to offer services. These teams then collaborate with organizations that are looking to complete work outside of their core skill sets.

It’s an environment that facilitates individuals coming together to take on larger, more complicated projects than ever before.

The Age of Personalized Work

For many workers, the freedom the gig economy offers is incomplete.
Not all graphic designers are skilled business managers, HR consultants, or tax professionals. However, as freelancers working for themselves, they often must be all these things at once.

Some people work well by themselves. Not everyone does, though, leaving them forced to do tasks they aren’t equipped for. For workers, it means more difficult work out of their comfort zone. For people hiring the workers, it can mean higher costs, longer waits, less efficiency, and a less dynamic working environment.

Truly personalized work doesn’t mean working by yourself.

Going a bit further, traditional work contracts are often signed without knowing some of the most important terms of the agreement: who you will be working with. Consulting firms piece together a crew of total strangers — both to the client and to each other. Employees sign to work for a company without knowing who their teammates will be.

Real personalized work can occur through The Collaboration Economy: here, you decide not only what, how, and when you work but who you work with.

We as a society are moving away from one-size-fits-all: we get highly personalized search results, music playlists, workouts, meal plans/diets, and even custom blended hair products.  Now it's time to personalize our work. The benefits don’t just go one way.

The Talent & The Buyer

nKipo is made up of people who have spent decades combined working in freelancing and consulting. We have seen its benefits and its many downsides. We want to build something different — something that truly supports both workers and the people who hire them.

We want to give you the tools to do fulfilling work while eliminating the parts that are unnecessarily taxing.

nKipo aims to merge the positive aspects of working for a business with those of being a freelancer, all the while providing previously unattainable talent to businesses.  To do that there must be a balance of flexibility and predictability. We enable this through what we call Liquid and Dedicated Teams.

The Talent

Liquid Teams: A team composed of people within the nKipo network. These teams can be proposed by The Buyer, or nKipo can suggest a team to work on. The Liquid Team works together to deliver a service for The Buyer. These teams are expected to dissolve after delivery of services. However, if a team works well together, they can decide to become a Dedicated Team. Liquid teams provide the flexibility traditionally found through freelance work.

Dedicated Teams: A team composed of people within The Talent’s personal network. Each member has agreed to join the team and is interested in marketing their services together. These teams can help to increase the predictability of your work.

The Buyer

The Buyer wields the power of the Collaboration Economy. They have access to proven teams capable of providing a greater return on investment when compared to traditional hiring and contracting. They are capable of adapting and specializing their workforce to ever-changing market and project needs. This way, you’ve got the talent you need when you need it. No more playing what we call “Social Jenga” — managing various personalities — to try and build compatible teams.

Hire proven and packaged teams without the overhead costs. Agile Employers know an adaptive workforce is key to successful projects and sustainable growth amid the rising tide of personalized work.

We believe nKipo advances the future of personalized work and equips you with the tools to thrive in it.

Come help us build the future of personalized work!

The Great Resignation has sent a very clear message to employers: people are not afraid to quit. And they’re voting with their feet.

In 2021, 47.4 million U.S. workers left their jobs. Meanwhile, layoffs hit a record low of 1.2 million in December. They haven’t moved much since. And there is no shortage of work: Job openings are pushing a record high of 11 million.

Traditional employment agreements are breaking under the force of these new changes. To handle these rippling effects, companies must re-evaluate how to obtain and retain talent.

Organizations must adapt. The key, we believe, is becoming more flexible than ever to keep pace with a new era focused on the employee experience.

Workers Want More Personalized and Flexible Work

Even before the pandemic, a variety of forces have been pushing organizations toward more flexible work models. The pandemic accelerated that eventuality. It normalized alternative work agreements. The data lays it out plainly:

• 83% of workers would prefer a hybrid work model in the future. (1.1)
• 74% of U.S. companies are using or plan to implement a permanent hybrid work model. (1.1)
• 54% of employees say they’d leave their current job for one that provides more flexibility, especially in the area of remote work. (1.1)
• 69% of Gen Z is not satisfied with their work-life balance. Nor are 63% of Baby Boomers, 55% of Gen X, and 48% of Millennials. (2.1)
• A whopping 83% of all American workers would prefer a four-day workweek. (2.1)
• 22% of employees said that they left their job within a year because they didn’t find it meaningful. (3.1)
• Job satisfaction is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. More than 33% of millennials and younger generations indicate they aren’t satisfied with their jobs. (3.1)

It appears this trend is not a wave that can be waited out — the tide continues to rise. By 2025 millennials and younger are expected to make up almost two-thirds of the workforce and already make up a majority of it today: (Below 4.1)

In some ways, the pandemic gave younger generations the bargaining power they needed to see their preferred working styles adopted more broadly. Younger generations are flocking to alternative work methods that satisfy their desire for flexibility and purpose.

To top things off, markets are becoming more complex and moving faster than ever. In 1996 the average company lifespan was 31.7 years. In 2020 that is now 21.4 years and by 2028 it is projected to hit 15.7 years. (5.1)

So what’s an employer or recruiter to do?

Crisis or Opportunity

Viewed from one lens, this time is certainly difficult for organizations. But where there is a crisis, there is also great opportunity. In the coming years, organizations with an agile work culture are positioned to thrive.

In his 2015 book “Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World,” General Stanley McChrystal says the goal for organizations should be to move from “efficiency to sustained organizational adaptability”:

“Efficiency is necessary but no longer sufficient to be a successful organization. It worked in the twentieth century, but it is now quickly overwhelmed by the speed and exaggerated impact of small players, such as . . . start-ups and viral trends. Management models based on planning and predicting instead of resilient adaptation to changing circumstances are no longer suited to today’s challenges. Organizations must be networked, not siloed, in order to succeed . . . This requires dramatic shifts in mental and organizational models, as well as sustained efforts on the part of leadership to create the environment for such a change.”

The environment has changed. The Collaboration Economy will facilitate both the abundant growth and extinction of species of organizations. To survive, some efficiency must be laid at the altar of adaptability.

What An “Agile Mindset” Means for Organizations

Agile organizations stay light on assets and employees. They take extreme care in determining their organizational structure and design by determining their core competencies that require their continued involvement and depth of experience. They understand traditional employment contracts outside of that core create an organizational weight that struggles to move with the speed that modern markets demand.

By hiring proven packaged teams they remove this burden and are better able to focus on their core competencies. This allows them to completely shift and adapt on a project-by-project basis while maintaining access to nearly unlimited resources when needed.  This agility might feel like chaos, but it isn’t.

Unlike the Gig Economy or traditional staffing, the Collaboration Economy provides you with highly functional teams specialized to fit your project needs. Perhaps counterintuitively, this more flexible structure can help you to find and retain the talent you will need to succeed.

There’s an old mantra for loving relationships that can apply to what we’re getting at here: “if you love them let them go.” The Agile Employer understands that a more fluid employment model can actually help to strengthen the relationships they have with the teams doing the work. And under this new model, when a project is completed and the team leaves, they are never truly gone.

To illustrate this idea a bit further, let’s offer up another big recent change for organizations: Cloud computing. The cloud provided a wealth of benefits to IT organizations and startups across the world, bringing flexibility and reducing costs. In a similar way, the Collaboration Economy functions as the cloud did, but for human workers. It can help reduce costs such as office space, equipment, and the incentive to use existing resources that are a poor fit for project needs. Instead, you can use lower-cost teams for lower-cost problems and higher-cost teams for higher-cost problems. Then, scale as necessary.

Teams Are the Fundamental Unit of Productivity

In most businesses, the real return on investment isn’t ever the result of a single individual contributor. Quality results on complex projects demand high-performing teams to deliver true value. A battle rages on: management fights to slow ongoing turnover and to maintain good team dynamics. A revolving door of team members often leads to mediocre results. Meanwhile, a fluid talent arrangement would actually allow for those all-star, outperforming teams to stay together. When the circumstances are right, they can continue to deliver value.

Leveraging talent at the team level — instead of trying to continually re-create it with individuals — enables businesses to execute their strategies in a way never before possible.

nKipo enables you to wield the collaboration economy to outperform your industry by giving you access to limitless quality talent for a reasonable cost — any time you need it. Compared to traditional hiring, proven teams are capable of providing higher quality, lower costs, and faster delivery. You’ll be capable of adapting and specializing your workforce to ever-changing market and project needs.

No more playing Social Jenga — our term for managing a complex mixture of personalities — to try and build compatible teams. No more acting as the go-between for a bunch of independent contractors. Hire proven and packaged teams without the overhead costs.

Let nKipo help you overcome the talent crisis. Become an Agile Employer poised for the future!

Signing up is risk-free for organizations.

Use nKipo however and whenever you want, with no commitments.

With nKipo, a flexible, on-call workforce is at your fingertips.

You can keep a network of professional relationships or contract teams for work outside your current core competencies.

References

1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1