Live Your Life Be Free!

I met the roving Admin Assistant while recruiting entrepreneurial writers for my main contract. She worked for years for various major corporations and NGOs and was laid off or restructured out of every job she had. My Mum, who is an amazing administrator, was one of the first ones laid off years ago when the technology company she worked for for 8 years went bust… so I understand from personal experience that someone very competent can be let go.

Instead of taking the passive approach, the entrepreneur started up shop as an outsourced admin assistant for small companies. She leverages technology to take care of the administrative needs on an ad-hoc basis for her clients, allowing them to free up their time for their business. She has a network of different administrators who take on specialized jobs such as Legal and Shorthand (yes, people still record meetings in this way).

The idea of a nomadic network of Admin Assistants is appealing to me. Everyone in her network was laid off, downsized or fed-up with their bosses. Instead of getting disheartened, they got to use their skills while working for themselves.

Another one of my writers is a Roving VP of Marketing, where people engage her to guide junior staff through marketing projects or they outsource the whole function to her. She is a veteran of the ad industry who never wants employees again – instead she has a network of creative professionals who she engages on an ad-hoc basis.

It is like people in the film industry who come together for contracts, then they break apart until the next project begins. This is a different approach from the idea of steady employment with one company. As a Marketing Manager, I find that most of my jobs involve a number of different vendors who we engage for the project to work together for a few months, then they break apart. My friend does telephone sales this way for a company that sells the services of a virtual network of consultants.

So – perhaps we are witnessing the end of a the traditional company as we know it. Instead of representing one company, professionals will all be part of various networks using our skills – allowing us the flexibility to take time off or to work more during time that we want to make more money.

During my MBA, we had an older professor who was pretty much cruising to the end of his tenure. Many of his cases were hopelessly out of date. One of them was about finding more efficiencies in a factory… I could see the eyes rolling. Now everything is just outsourced abroad to find the cheapest factors of production. Only one person in my class that I can think of was involved in production of any kind – which is a major shift from 10-years ago when my professor first started teaching this dusty case. We all discussed it, but with much less gusto than our normal debates. I wonder if some day in the future, the thought of a centralized organization will seem just as dated.