Ton Zijlstra has been reflecting on muliple conversations among bloggers on how to collaborate to do work. He discusses a model where groups of freelance consultants join together to work on specific client problems in groups that dissolve and reform differently for the next client. He writes
Personally I think this has potential as it combines the best of the independent single consultant (geared to the problem, not to off the shelf copies of previous solutions, flexible, versatile, agile) and the bigger consultancy organisations (authority by wider reputation, explicit bodies of knowledge e.g. toolkits), and might even turn out to be the basic enterprise model of the future: ad hoc virtual organisations of people from within a wider network, emerging around a specific question or issue, melting back into that wider network after the need has been fulfilled. These types of organisations are intrinsically geared to delivering value, not to merely furthering their own continuity.
This makes sense to me in many ways. Perhaps what this amounts is that organisations will continue but their lifecycles will accelerate. In some ways that’s quite a scary thought, since many of us attach some value to elements of stability in our lives. It’s the old paradox of structure and freedom.
