Por: Felipe Germini (Managing Partner)
The main factors behind the rise of the expert economy.
Both small, medium or large corporations frequently complain that they lack the right internal workforce to get projects done. Those businesses face a difficult decision: whether to hire more staff with the skills needed to complete this project. Bringing on full-time talent may diminish a firm’s ability to shift priorities quickly and take on diverse projects.
Professional consulting firms, and even some major corporations are forming Talent-on-Demand divisions. The rush of top talent to technology companies has left many industrial companies with gaps.
On-demand talent has the ability to allow businesses to increase their capacity to take on new projects, while remaining flexible to adapt to the ever-changing future of work as new opportunities arise.
No one has the ability to hire all the expert resources they need or want, or the time they need. We are all resource- and time-constrained and have to make tradeoffs. If you start to remove those constraints and have experts, it changes what you can accomplish.
We asked our clients on what they hoped to gain from independent subject-matter experts. These are some of the leading answers: Fresh thinking, flexibility, faster innovation, objectivity without the influence of institutional politics, the ability to respond to changing priorities…
Some businesses and investors need someone who can quickly bring them up to speed on a subject they know nothing about. Some are just looking for a second opinion. Others want to keep as current as they can and not fall behind. Keeping pace with the march of technology is a constant challenge. If you’re not constantly learning, you can literally be out of business. Still others are looking for ultra-specialized expertise.
Business leaders turn to professional consulting firms to make up for gaps in their own ranks. Some want to bring in external points of view to improve the quality of internal decision-making. Others welcome personalized coaching on the decisions they face. Still others seek help researching their markets and finding out more about their customers. A growing number of companies are looking to fill holes in their lineups with outside talent willing to come inside.
In many ways, the most promising use of professional learning is to help companies make better decisions by increasing the diversity of information and opinion they’re exposed to. Private phone consultations with an outside expert make it easier to ask those questions in a confidential way. Senior professionals like to learn one on one. That’s the most efficient way for professionals to learn.