Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead never sat well with me. Sure it was a massive best seller. And at the time, Sandberg was the most admired and most famous woman in tech, and one of the most powerful in American business. Back then, Facebook was well loved and Lean In became a bit of a manifesto for working women.
In Lean In, Sandberg suggests (among other things) that women are leaving the traditional workforce to have children too soon, that female leaders need to simply be more confident, and women should help each other succeed. Lean In circles became a thing. And it felt, to me, like a whole generation of new graduates were being brainwashed into thinking that the problem with inequality had nothing to do with men. Worse, the message of Lean In seemed to be that women needed to act more like men to get ahead.
I had just had my second child and speaking out against the Lean In phenomenon while working for myself didn’t feel right. Having long left the corporate world (was I ever really properly in it?!), I knew I wasn’t Sandberg’s intended audience. But my gut told me Lean In was flat out wrong.
Sandberg’s belief that most companies are benevolent and that the world was meritocratic didn’t align with the world as I knew it. And the message that that women and their self-doubt was the real problem? B*#%sh$@. I’ve always thought that the real problem was the bro-culture. Over-confident, shamelessly self-promoting bro-culture — which led to catastrophic problems at Enron and led to the financial crisis of 2008. And to the withdrawn IPO of WeWork.
And what about women’s strengths? Our ability to connect with people. Our preference (whether natural or nurtured) for consensus building. Our instinct for taking responsibility. Couldn’t our strengths be harnessed to help us all get ahead, without losing ourselves? What about discussing how insecure men are intimidated by smart women (and the side effects of that cultural problem)?
Or as Tina Brown wrote in the NYTimes, “Salvation doesn’t lie in pursuing traditional male paths of ejaculatory self-elevation. In drawing on women’s wisdom without apology and pushing that wisdom forward into positions of power, we can soothe our world and, maybe, even save it.”
Sure Lean In had some insights — I’m not arguing that it didn’t. Yes, women should advocate for themselves (at work and at home). Yes, women should champion their own projects and ideas. Yes, women should negotiate for better salaries and benefits — and do so unapologetically. And yes, for certain women in certain corporate cultures, I’m sure Lean In is inspiring and effective.
But on a whole, it’s a load of crap. It doesn’t work for single mothers, as the premise of Lean In requires supportive, high-earning husbands. It doesn’t work for women of color, who face additional hurdles / challenges. It doesn’t make space for women who have interests outside of work and kids. Even former fan girls have been abandoning the movement and some scientists have started to argue that Leaning In leads to dsyfunctional leadership.
In fact, one of the main findings of the 2018 Women in the Workplace study, produced by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org, was that Leaning In is not the problem. Women had already been leaning in! Women have made clear their desire to advance in the workplace and to achieve gender equality.
It is up to companies to step up.
In the meantime, I’m grateful that Melinda Gates is pouring her time and energy into women’s equality via Equality Can’t Wait(not to mention investing $1 Billion in solving this issue). And until we get to gender equality (both in and out of the workplace), project-based work is a viable alternative for women who want a meaningful, challenging career but also want more out of life. In the long-term, I believe project-based work will continue to be a path to career success and work-life fit, even after companies implement changes to advance more women.
Maybe I’m just being naive, but I’m feeling confident that I’ll see gender equality in my lifetime. After all, the Women in the Workplace report (and many other reports) have clearly presented the business case for diversity. Having women leaders is good for business, good for the economic bottom line.
So throw Lean In out the window. Find your strength. Carve your own path to a fulfilling and successful career.
And let me know what you think we can (and should) be doing today to solve the problem Lean In intended to solve — gender equality in the workplace.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
For most of my career, I’ve worked remotely with clients across the country. While my friends put on makeup, get dressed in business casual attire, and commute to the office, I sometimes work in pajamas (or sweaty athleisure after a morning workout).
As a co-founder of FlexTeam, I manage our team of 300+ executive-level consultants — all working remotely as independent consultants / 1099 workers. At FlexTeam (and at Liquid), we believe working in this way (building companies with a dynamic “liquid workforce” that can easily be scaled up or down) is the future of work.
To seamlessly communicate and work effectively with remote / distributed teams, whether traditional W-2 employees or part of the liquid workforce, you need the right technology and tools. I’ve tested out dozens of email, phone, video chat, and web-based collaboration tools so you don’t have to.
Here are the tools I’ve found most useful for working remotely / distributed teams.
Team Communication
When working with a remote team, communication is of the utmost importance. Slack gives remote teams the ability to communicate in a modern day work environment while allowing users to creatively express themselves through emojis, gifs, and status updates. One of my remote / distributed teams can’t get enough of the party parrots custom emojis.
You can communicate in private direct or group messages, or slack channels. Slack channels can be set to private or public and allow you to keep conversations organized, while reducing the number of emails your team sends and receives. Also, slack allows many apps and integrations within your slack team to increase your team productivity (and/or happiness, depending on the integration)! My favorite feature is the ability to mute channels and set “do not disturb” times — the ability to control notifications feels so satisfying.
I’ve tried other alternatives — Atlassian’s Stride and HipChat, which have been discontinued; Microsoft’s Yammer; and Ryver — but slack is still the gold standard. I use slack everyday with multiple different remote / distributed teams.
Collaborative Documents
I use Google Drive and G Suite (Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, etc) on a daily basis. In fact, most of the tabs open on my browser are from one of Google’s many products. Sure, Google Drive (and Docs, Sheets, and Slides) has its flaws. But I haven’t found a better tools for real-time online collaboration on files. I’ve tried Microsoft’s Office 365,Zoho, Quip (recently acquired by Salesforce), Dropbox, Box, and others. Admittedly, I need to spend some time testing out Dropbox Paper. Still, I’m mostly satisfied with how Google Drive behaves.
My favorite feature is setting expiration dates for view or comment access to files. This allows me to share files without having to remember to go back and remove access.
I couldn’t work with my distributed / remote teams without Google Drive and G Suite.
Document Storage
Google Drive is hands down what I prefer for collaborative documents. But there are many more file types that can’t be edited directly in Google Drive. For those files, and for long-term storage and retrieval of documents, I use Dropbox. (Confession: until three months ago, I used a combination of Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive for various purposes before finally committing to Dropbox.)
Whether it’s logos and design files, or contracts and other PDFs, I like the ease of shared Dropbox folders. Sure, it isn’t perfect, but I’ve yet to find any tech solution that is. Dropbox makes sharing files easy and syncs to every device (web, mobile, pc, mac). And best of all, the syncing is seamless and doesn’t use up all the RAM on my laptop.
Plus, it’s free to start with 2GB! And if you upgrade to a paid plan, you get tons of additional features — features that you’ll be happy to have for managing your remote team. One of the most important ones, in my humble opinion, is version history. As of October 2019, Dropbox Basic or Plus accounts can recover any file deleted or changed in the last 30 days, while Dropbox Business accounts bumps that up to 120 days, and Dropbox Professional accounts gives you 180 days!
That way, if any member of your remote team (or a client) accidentally deletes a file (or worse, infects the file with malware), you can rewind and recover what you’ve lost!
Quick Video Chat
Working remotely, it’s easy to fall back on email, IM, or even slack instead of meeting in person or talking on the phone. Regular video conferences can help you reconnect with your remote team — allowing you to build a more effective working relationship.
I recommend whereby.com (formerly Appear.in) — I’ve tried skype, Google Hangouts, join.me, and many other video conferencing tools. They’ve all failed me on more than one occasion, usually cutting out video and/or audio part way through a meeting; sometimes they have failed to connect altogether.
Whereby.com uses WebRTC (real time communication) and provides a beautiful, smooth, and polished alternative to everyone’s default video chat platform, Google Hangouts. It uses HTML5 only (no flash) and there are no sign-ups. No plugins needed, unless you want to screenshare.
Unfortunately, the free version limits you to 4 participants so you’ll need to pay up (or use another tool) if you need to talk to more than 3 other people at one time.
Side note: daily.co has a much better product than whereby.com but unfortunately their free version limits you to 2 participants (so it only works for one-on-one video calls).
Conference Calls
I used to love FreeConferenceCall.com for team or client conference calls. But I switched to UberConference(when T-mobile stopped supporting calls to FreeConferenceCall.com phone numbers) and I’ve never looked back. It has all the features you might want, from custom hold music to free call recording, local dial-in numbers to mobile apps — it has everything. I love that it makes it easy to call in to conferences from the app. And now it also supports video conferencing (with screen sharing) for $15/month.
I use UberConference for conference calls with my remote / distributed teams as well as with clients.
Phone Calls and Voicemail
Google Voice began as a startup called GrandCentral, which Google purchased in 2007. I’ve been using this product since 2006, when GrandCentral was founded.
It’s a simple way to get an extra phone number to share with clients or your remote team — especially when you don’t want to share your personal cell phone number (or want to share a number with a local area code). You can use this separate phone number to answer calls, receive voicemails, and even send and receive text messages!
Full-featured Phone System / Team Phone Number.
When it comes to business communications (especially with clients or customers), phone calls are still king. Whether you’re resolving a client issue, making a sale, or fleshing out details, sometimes phone is still best. If you need a full-featured VOIP (voice over internet protocol) phone system, I highly recommend Dialpad. It’s a big upgrade from your traditional PBX network, especially for remote / distributed teams.
Dialpad delivers crystal-clear phone calls to the devices you already use (computers and mobile devices). It’s easy to set-up new users and you can quickly see what calls have been made and when. Plus, it has great iOS and Android apps and integrates easily with UberConference(my preferred conference call tool)!
Project Management
If you’re like me, you’ve got a million projects going simultaneously. But whether you’re working on just a few projects or many, team communications need to be super clear when you work with remote / distributed teams. As the founders of Asana put it in a blog post “the bigger your team, and the bigger your mission, the bigger your coordination problem.”
In my humble opinion, Asana and Trello are the best tools for project management — whether you work in a remote / distributed team or a traditional work environment.
Asana enables teams to track and manage the progress of projects within a shared workspace. At a more granular level, tasks can be created to keep track of individual components of a larger project. Users can add tasks, assign them to team members, set due dates, comment, and share relevant documents. The result is a highly customizable platform for project management. I find that the free version is usually sufficient for most teams — it supports up to 15 team members, unlimited task projects and conversations, and access to limited dashboards and search functions.
Trello was originally a web-based list-making application, which has evolved into task management app based on the Kanban system (a system originally developed by Toyata for for lean manufacturing, but that has become widely adopted by tech startups and other companies). It allows you to have a visual overview of what your remote / distributed team is working on and who is working on it.
Think of it as a whiteboard that you can fill with post-it notes.
The free version of Trello gives you 10 team boards, but only allows you to use 1 power-up (additional features and integrations that make Trello much more useful).
Now, whether to use Trello or Asana? I recommend you try both to figure out which is best for your remote team’s needs. You might find you want to use both for different cases.
Webinars and Video Conferencing
If you’re putting on webinars, there’s nothing better than Zoom. Zoom has a great free version that allows you to host conference calls and video calls, and supports screen sharing, making recordings of video and screen shares, and more. The only problem is that it limits calls to 40 minutes (though you can easily just start up a new call immediately after your call ends).
But where Zoom shines is hosting webinars. Sure, Google Meet (or Hangouts) is okay, too. And I do like whereby.com when talking to 3 or fewer participants. But if you are hosting multiple panelists with many viewers, Zoom is the tool to use.
Internal Wiki / Shared Truth
Notion is a relatively new tool (founded in 2016). The company describes the app as an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, project management, and task management. I find that it’s great for note-taking and collaboration with markdown support that also integrates tasks, databases, and wikis.
Notion is incredibly versatile and I can think of dozens of different use cases. I highly recommend playing around with it to figure out how to integrate it with your distributed / remote team.
Manage, on-board, and pay 1099 workers / freelancers
Oftentimes (but not always), remote / distributed teams are made up of 1099 workers / freelancers engaged in project-based work. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Liquid, a new all-in-one solution powering the liquid workforce (full disclosure, my project-based consulting firm FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid).
Liquid streamlines the way you onboard, manage, and pay your liquid workforce. It’s currently in limited free beta, with new features added every day. Let me know if you’d like an invite to our free limited beta!
Other tools worth exploring
Here are a few other tools that I don’t use, but have on my list to explore and evaluate.
Miro (formerly RealtimeBoard) is a self-described “visual collaboration platform for teams who want to collaborate faster, more easily and deliver better results!” From what I can tell, this is a collaborative white board tool that also incorporates video, chat, presentation, and sharing. And it integrates into slack and other tools! My preferred collaborative white board tools had been Limnu — but because they nixed their free plan, I’m open to exploring other alternatives.
Confluence by Atlassian is another shared workspace platform. Originally created as a wiki and documentation tool for developers, it has potential applications for non-technical teams collaborating on content. To me, what’s intriguing about Confluence is the $10 one-time fee for a self-hosted solution.
Okay, that’s it for me.
To make cross-functional teamwork effortless, you have to use the right tools for collaboration. Whether you work out of a coworking space, at home in your pajamas, at your local coffee shop, or in your roaming RV, I hope you found this list helpful!
Let me know in the comments what tools I’ve missed for remote / distributed teams (or what I got wrong)!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
My dad is a surgeon. Specializing in transplants, he was always on call and rarely home. As a teenager, I vowed to find work that would allow me to spend time with the family I hoped to one day have.
My journey to find work-life balance led me to MIT where I studied Chemical Engineering and Biology (I took a detour on the pre-med path). During college, I was almost always employed part-time. I worked at a retail shop on Newbury Street; I tutored students enrolled in Introductory Biology; and I supported Women’s Recruitment efforts for MIT Admissions. It was in my role at the Admissions Office, where I was on a team that created MIT’s first online resource for prospective female undergrads, that I saw the advantages of working independently and remotely on project-based work.
Then, graduation came and it was time to get a job. I stayed on campus to start my career at the MIT Technology Licensing Office. Working to commercialize MIT-developed technology through licensing agreements with startups and passionate entrepreneurs (along with the traditional big corporations) opened my eyes to entrepreneurship. And it gave me an intensive education in intellectual property, negotiation, business development, marketing, branding, product development, alternative dispute resolution, trademarks, accounting, communications and public relations, and much more.
So after a two-year stint at the TLO, I went off on my own path. I co-founded a real estate development, investment, and property management firm, where I focused on operations. That led to other business opportunities, which led me to what I’ve been doing for the last decade — helping people start new ventures and helping those small businesses grow.
I’m so thankful that I’ve been able to make a living by doing meaningful work, while also having time for what matters in life — family and friends.
But not everyone is so lucky.
I’ve seen too many friends make the difficult choice between a fulfilling career and time spent with their children. Some have chosen to return to their jobs on a part-time basis, only to find that their responsibilities are closer to full-time at part-time pay. Others have chosen to jump back in head first, relying on loving grandparents or nannies to help with family responsibilities. And some have chosen to stay at home for now and hope to return to a career when their youngest kids reach school-age. Of those in the last group, many are using volunteer roles to keep up their skills or work a few hours a week at hourly jobs that don’t utilize their education or experiences.
A study in 2005 by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce found that 37 percent of highly qualified women have voluntarily left work at some point in their careers, and among mothers, that statistic rises to 43 percent. Pew Research estimated that there were over 370,000 highly educated and affluent stay at home moms in 2014. And it’s been well documented that those who choose to take a break from their traditional career are financially penalized when they return to the workforce (the “motherhood penalty”). According to the Center for Talent Innovation, women lose 16 percent of their earning power when they return to work, and one in four returns to fewer management responsibilities.
But my unusual career has shown me there is another way.
Project-based consulting.
Short-term project-based work with clear milestones and deliverables could allow mothers (and fathers, as well as daughters and sons caring for elderly parents) to find work-life fit. These caregivers could continue to earn an income, keep their skills up-to-date, while retaining time to care for their families. Those who no longer need to worry about the long-term costs of leaving the traditional workforce are happier and more satisfied; and happier caregivers lead to happier families, and a better society.
I’m not the first to espouse the mutually beneficial nature of project-based work. In a 2013 article for the Atlantic, Paulette Light wrote:
Project-based work provides many benefits to both businesses and those re-entering. Freelancers don’t hit the bottom line as hard as because they aren’t paid benefits. With clear project descriptions, deadlines, and compensation, more moms who may be overqualified for a position might decide that they are willing to help out with a project because it meets their needs in the short term. I am sure that many moms will even step up to do a project even at the cost of their family because the timing is only temporary. As the business and the mom work together more, maybe a full-time job will come of it when all parties understand the value.
I think it’s safe to say that the benefits of project-based work are clear, for mothers, families, and businesses.
In 2015, McKinsey Global Institute found that advancing women’s equality in North America and Oceania alone could add $3.1 trillion to $5.3 trillion to the GDP in those regions by 2025. By increasing the number of women in the workforce, reducing the motherhood penalty, and improving gender equality using 12 other outcome-based indicators, the potential increase to GDP in this region is equivalent to the current GDP of Japan or Germany.
A recent study by Danielle Lindemann, Carly Rush, and Steven Tepper found that artistic careers — that is, those in performing arts, design, art history, writing, film, the visual arts, and music — did not have the wage penalty associated with motherhood that is found in most other industries. They theorized that this lack of penalty was due to the flexibility in employment as well as the project-based nature of artistic work. So increasing the number of women engaged in project-based work would surely decrease the motherhood penalty, getting us one step closer to gender wage parity.
Now let’s go back to the statistics of highly qualified women — previously defined as those with a graduate degree, a professional degree, or a high-honors undergraduate degree — who have left the traditional workforce. In 1982 to 2013, 44.1 million college degrees were granted to women. Let’s assume that five percent attended the top 40 schools and that 37 percent of women voluntarily leave work; that leaves 815,850 highly educated women between the ages of 24 and 55 who have left the traditional workforce.
Let’s say that project-based consulting could allow these women to work as much as they want to. The average American with a full-time job works 47 hours per week. Let’s assume that the working moms in this country spend 28 hours per week on family responsibilities, as they do across the pond. So if we assume that moms want to work only as many hours as is the difference between normal full-time employment and is needed to fulfill family responsibilities, that means moms would be happy to spend 19 hours per week working. That seems low to me, given an informal survey of friends who are moms. My unscientific survey leads me to believe that mothers would like to generally work from the hours of 9am to 1pm, or approximately 5 hours a day, leaving them time to drop the kids off, pick them up and take them to after school activities, and take care of all other tasks to run a household. So we can guess that moms would like to work 19 to 25 hours per week.
Collectively, that’s$37.6 billion to $49.5 billion worth of paid work that project-based consulting could enable. And that’s just the 815,850 women with degrees from the top 40 colleges who have left the workforce.
Imagine how high that number would be if we did the same calculation for all women with college degrees who have left the workforce; all 16.3 million women. That increases those values to $751 billion to $989 billion.
If you are a caregiver who has left or wants to leave the traditional workforce, update your LinkedIn profile summary to state your interest in project-based work. If you are already doing project-based work, mentor would-be project-based consultants. Those who have a gap in their work history will need help understanding current business practices, coaching to regain their confidence, assistance with resume writing, and support to determine how their skills translate to clearly defined projects.
For business leaders who want to support work-life fit
If you work for a small or medium sized business and are in a position to retain project-based consultants, use your social capital within your company to do so. Then, convince your peers to do the same. Your employer will thank you.
If you own a business, start engaging highly educated and experienced moms (and dads, as well as daughters and sons) who have left the traditional workforce on project-based work. Like me, they could perform strategic analyses, craft a go-to-market strategy or customer acquisition strategy, assess your competition, determine where to cut costs, generate blog posts, manage your social media, guide you through a difficult negotiation, or help you decide whether to enter a new market or create a new product. Others could help you create financial models, craft a marketing or communications strategy, write PR pieces, assist with legal issues, plan events, and help with the hundreds of other things small businesses need help with. Small businesses like yours are the economic engine of our country, driving innovation and growth.
Still not sure how project-based consultants could help you manage and grow your business? Contact me and I’ll be happy to help you brainstorm.
Whatever the project, be clear with your goals and expectations to ensure you will be happy with the results.
Of these, only FlexTeam focuses on moms who have left the traditional workforce. Regardless of the method you use to find workers, helping to make project-based consulting commonplace will help more people find work-life balance, which will surely benefit us all. This is the future of work.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
We’ve been working on FlexTeam for nearly four years now, and sometimes it still feels like friends don’t understand what FlexTeam is.
Hopefully this will clear things up.
Here’s what FlexTeam is not.
FlexTeam is not a job board.
We are not like a women’s job board like PowerToFly, The Mom Project, Inkwell Talent, or Après. Nor are we like WeWorkRemotely.com (a job board for remote jobs) or like FlexJobs.com (an aggregator of legitimate jobs with some form of flexibility such as telecommuting, part-time or flextime schedules, or freelance contracts). We do have independent consultants, working as 1099 contractors, available for work. However the work is almost always project-based, remote, and flexible. And more importantly, the workers don’t work directly for the companies; our members work as contractors to FlexTeam, on highly specific projects for our clients.
FlexTeam is not a staffing or recruiting agency.
We are not Corps Team (formerly Mom Corps), HireMyMom.com, Prokanga, or The Second Shift (Though like Second Shift, FlexTeam membership approval depends on completing a rigorous onboarding and vetting process.) These are mostly staffing or recruiting agencies for full-time jobs. Some of these sites have some project-based work opportunities but most are still focused on traditional employment. Moreover, FlexTeam members aren’t charged fees to gain access to projects. And again, the difference is also that FlexTeam manages the projects for both the clients and the consultants.
FlexTeam is not a marketplace.
We love marketplaces. We are frequent users of Lyft and Uber. But we are not like Catalant or Graphite (formerly SpareHire). Our consultants don’t bid on projects or write proposals, and our clients rarely scope out their own projects. Clients tell us their needs via email, phone calls, or our mobile app and FlexTeam sends back a clearly defined scope of work with pricing (and when approriate, also, hours estimates). While clients are reviewing the scope, we reach out to FlexTeam members who are a match for the scope so that we can start the project upon client approval. FlexTeam’s matching algorithm select consultants for projects that align with their particular skills and past experiences.
FlexTeam is not a provider of or a connector for returnships.
Returnships are an important path for women returning to full-time work. And we are fans of iRelaunch and Path Forward. And there are more and more companies focusing on matching women to returnships (OnRamp Fellowship, for example).
And oftentimes our consultants work for us for a short period before finding a full-time job in the traditional workforce. We love to see that happen! But we don’t have partnerships with companies to provide a clear path back to the traditional workforce. We are leading the way to create an alternative to working in traditional jobs.
FlexTeam’s focus isn’t covering maternity leaves.
Again, we aren’t a recruiting agency and we certainly aren’t focused on the niche of parental leave coverages. That said, I was disappointed to hear that Emissaries shut down in January. It was a unique business model and I hope someone else can make it financially viable.
FlexTeam’s focus isn’t retraining or reskilling.
It’s true we’ve done some training sessions for our existing consultants. And our consultants gain and refine their skills through our projects. And some consultants specifically choose to work with FlexTeam to gain experience on projects or industries outside of their skillset.
But that isn’t our business model. There are plenty of other options for highly educated women who want retraining / reskilling (reacHIRE and Reboot Accel, for example). And, by the way, there are tons of options for people in general who want to gain new skills (Coursera, EdX, Udemy, Skillcrush, and many others). As an aside, I love taking classes and gaining new skills (and I’ve found that women who are lifelong learners are better suited for working with FlexTeam).
FlexTeam does not teach companies how to provide flexibility for their existing employees.
While this is certainly an example of work that FlexTeam might do (helping a company assess their current policies and making recommendations), this is not the core of work FlexTeam does. Werk “provides flexibility insights and data into the hands of companies to help them work smarter.” That is not our core business.
So we’ve covered what FlexTeam is not.
So what is FlexTeam and how does FlexTeam work?
FlexTeam is a trusted network of executive-level women working in teams on project-based work to enable business leaders to accomplish more. (Some other phrases we’ve used to describe ourselves include: Brainpower without boundaries; Brainpower beyond your time, knowledge, and resource constraints; and Your time is valuable.)
We are a mission-based micro consulting firm whose most requested projects are competitor / market research; financial models / analysis; and business strategy. We also do investor decks. Our clients are mostly US based companies of all sizes and across all industries and sectors.
Our independent consultants are highly accomplished and highly educated women who have left the traditional workforce for a variety of reasons (often to spend more time with their young children, or to care for their elderly parents, or simply to live life more fully).
We were founded in 2015 by three MIT alumnae (that’s three female MIT alums) on a mission to create a #NewPlayingField for our colleagues and women everywhere. We believe everyone deserves #WorkLifeFit and we are also the team behind Liquid.
How does FlexTeam work?
Good question. FlexTeam provides clients with a scope with clear deliverables and pricing, after understanding clients’ needs. As I mentioned above, clients convey their needs to FlexTeam via email, phone calls, or our mobile app. The scope usually also includes estimates for time and an agreement on when the work product will be delivered to the client.
In parallel with defining the project with the client, our matching algorithm identifies the best FlexTeam member(s) to do the work and we reconfirm their availability (so that we are able to quickly start on the project once the client agrees to the scope). On occasion (when clients have very specific needs), we go out and recruit consultants for projects.
Unlike a marketplace, the client does not select particular consultants, nor are FlexTeam members bidding on projects. (In fact, as a general rule, we don’t share the names or background of our consultants with our clients prior to scope approval.) This allows FlexTeam members to focus on challenging, interesting, and paid work instead of spending time doing business development or writing proposals or bids.
Clients find that working with FlexTeam allows them to focus on higher level tasks that demand their attention, freeing them up to do work that is both personally interesting & socially meaningful. Working with us allows clients to focus on the bigger picture, accelerating growth and impact.
What’s so special about FlexTeam’s consultants?
First of all, our consultants (mostly MIT alums) complete a rigorous onboarding and vetting process before becoming eligible to work on projects. We’ve found that soft skills are highly correlated to success with FlexTeam and our onboarding process reflects that. The onboarding process makes note of each consultant’s core competencies and skills, experience in different industries and company sizes, and experience working in startups. But it also looks for evidence of computational thinking and excellent writing skills. And it looks for evidence of “soft skills” like grit, resilience, persistence, being a good listener, empathy, a desire to learn, a cooperative attitude, resourcefulness, kindness, a “always do your best” attitude, optimism, ability to deal with difficult personalities, and more.
Oftentimes, project-based workers have the ability to see innovation as a part of their working method rather than just a buzzword. This, too, is true of FlexTeam’s consultants. We have honed the ability to make sense of uncertainty and complex ideas, developed flexibility, and are experts in how to communicate new ideas and roll them out quickly. And we find satisfaction in working on challenging projects for companies with compelling stories or business problems.
In short, the insights FlexTeam provides are often worth far more than the hourly, daily, monthly, or project-based rates charged.
Our consultants aren’t just highly educated women with deep expertise in their fields across many industries. We are world travelers. We are mamas. We are philanthropists. We are investors. We are lifelong learners. We are doers. We care about making the world a better place and we’re here to help you make your impact on the world.
What’s the deal with the proprietary software?
As we’ve grown FlexTeam, we built software to manage clients, projects, and consultants (including onboarding, invoicing, receivables, and payments). We also built an iOS app for client productivity that integrates our software and allows clients to turn to do list items into projects to be completed by FlexTeam (by the way, look out for a new website soon!).
We have spun out the software into a separate company Liquid, which (from our own experience) solves a lot of pain points for working with freelancers and agencies. In addition, the original FlexTeam software may be available in a white labeled version soon.
Hope that leaves you with a clear sense of what FlexTeam is. Got questions? Let me know!
Co-founders of FlexTeam celebrating our alma mater — MIT
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
Balance implies equality. It implies a 50–50 split, and an unsteady teetering in the search for balance. It’s why work/life balance is so elusive and unachieveable, inducing guilt and anxiety, particularly for working moms. And it’s why I prefer the term work-life fit (or as others write it, “work+life fit”). The difference between fit and balance is subtle but important.
The truth is, work is a part of life. It’s all one and the same. You can’t balance work with life when work is a part of life.
When you stop trying to find “balance” and instead focus on what you can control to make your professional life and personal life “fit” together, you find new ways to pursue personal and career goals. Note that the root of this reframing, from focusing on the problem to focusing on the solution, works for almost any challenge. It broadens the horizons, allowing you to find non-obvious answers.
Work-life fit also implies that there’s no cookie cutter answer. It enables people to seek ways to create an individualized work-life fit, regardless of the traditional boundaries of time and place.
And whereas the search for work-life balance often feels like the domain of working moms and dads, work-life fit is about all of us. Parents, singles, married without kids, folks taking care of elderly parents or other family members who need assistance, millennials, baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, all of us. Work-life fit is the desire to pursue careers that don’t come at the expense of other factors in our life, regardless of demographic. It’s something we all deserve.
For some people, work-life fit means flexibility in when and how you work. Some examples of this are:
Can you work from home a few days a week?
Can you make up work you’ve missed on your own time, instead of using PTO every time you need to step out of the office?
Can you step out of the office for errands, school plays, medical appointments, volunteer work, or for any reason?
Can you time-shift your work day so that you are commuting at off peak hours?
Has your employer implemented a 32 hour work week with Fridays off?
Can you work from home when a family member needs attention (medical or otherwise), instead of using PTO?
But there are other subtle ways to help achieve work-life fit. For example, setting boundaries so that work doesn’t blur into personal life. A culture where vacation time is respected and encouraged, and “checking in” is discouraged. Or a culture where employees are encouraged to have interests outside of work. Or a team where colleagues can cover for you when you have to step outside of the office, or managers who understand and accommodate requests to flex your schedule.
Unfortunately, many (dare I say most?) employers aren’t there yet. Many corporations and start-ups still expect employees to be diligent robotic workers without cares or interests outside of the office. But it’s unrealistic. And times are changing.
That is why we started FlexTeam — to allow highly educated women to stay as engaged in their careers as they choose. We each found our own work-life fit by doing project-based consulting, and realized everyone deserved the same opportunity. And while we’re on that topic…
What is the opportunity that FlexTeam provides? FlexTeam provides clients with a scope of work with clear deliverables and pricing, after understanding clients’ needs. While defining the project with the client, we are identifying the best FlexTeam member(s) to do the work, so that we are able to get started on the project as soon as the client agrees to the work. Unlike a marketplace, the client does not select particular consultants, nor are FlexTeam members bidding on projects. FlexTeam’s matching algorithm select consultants for projects that align with their particular skills and past experiences. This allows FlexTeam members (who complete a rigorous onboarding process) to focus on challenging, interesting, and paid work.
Jumping ship from the traditional workforce to work for yourself (or become your own microentrepreneur) isn’t for everyone. But it’s a start. Let’s forget about the mythical work-life balance and aim for work-life fit. The world needs more options for people searching for work-life fit. Because we all deserve to find work-life fit.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
I strongly believe in the power of project-based work as a means to find work-life fit and as a way for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and “starters” to grow and scale their businesses. Project-based work will be a critical component of the work of the future.
Obviously, I’m biased; I’ve been doing project-based work for 10+ years via my own consulting firm Lau Labs and I’ve been helping others find and complete project-based work via FlexTeam for the last three and a half years. I’ve seen small companies use project-based work to gain a better sense of their business needs via new financial models. I’ve worked with women, who are in the first few months or weeks of motherhood, on projects that have allowed them to still feel connected to their careers. I’ve seen entrepreneurs pursue (or not pursue) new markets or products after getting an outsider’s analysis and report on the competitor landscape.
I’ve seen firsthand the promise of project-based work. But I often get blank stares, initially, when I talk about project-based work.
What exactly is project-based work?
Project-based work are specific projects with clear milestones and deliverables. If needs change, the scope of work can be expanded by mutual agreement. Project-based work can be entirely remote, or have in person requirements.
Project-based workers (contractors) work for a specific number of weeks or months until the project is completed. They may or may not work at the client’s office or equipment. They can’t be told exactly how to perform her job or be told she can only work for you. And project-based workers can’t be called employees.
Why use project-based consultants / workers?
Project-based workers often bring skills and experiences from a range of challenging roles, often across many industries. Oftentimes, project-based workers have the ability to see innovation as a part of their working method rather than just a buzzword. They’ve developed flexibility, the ability to make sense of uncertainty and complex ideas, and an understanding of how to communicate new ideas and roll them out quickly.
In short, the insights they provide are often worth far more than the hourly, daily, monthly, or project-based rates charged.
Let me give you a few short examples of project-based work.
Assessing your competition. It’s not enough for your company to be doing well. If you aren’t taking a look at your competitors on a regular basis, you’re apt to miss the boat on market trends that could drastically change your industry. Project-based consultants can provide you a report of your competitors.
Generate written content. You have ideas you want to communicate. Ideas that set your company or your personal brand apart. Project-based consultants can help take your outlines or bare-boned ideas to help you generate blog content, white papers, press releases, and more!
Generate social media content. We all know social media marketing is important, but we don’t all execute on it. There always seems to be other priorities. Project-based consultants can help you do the leg work of creating content.
Create marketing strategy. Speaking of the importance of marketing, we also know it’s not enough to simply post stuff on social media. It’s best to have an overarching strategy that helps you direct your efforts. Project-based consultants can analyze your existing marketing strategy and provide recommendations for best practices in your industry, and craft a strategy tailored to your specific company. What is the right combination of paid and organic marketing across multiple channels? Project-based work can help.
Helping you craft a go-to-market strategy for a new product or service for either an existing company or a new one. For an existing company, the new product could either be an entirely new line of business, a variation of a current product, or something in between. Project-based consultants can help you determine the best strategy to go-to-market, provide a report to help you implement the strategy, and could help you implement the strategy.
Perform data analysis. Any business that neglects data an analysis will be left behind. Every company has some data that can be collected and analyzed to make operations more efficient, or enter new markets, or help make decisions about creating new products or services. Project-based consultants can get this done for you, though data experts usually have higher hourly rates.
Help you with gut checks. Sometimes you just need a quick 1–4 hour call with an expert to help you gut check your current strategy, and project-based consultants are perfect for this kind of work.
Determine where to cut costs. Every company needs a robust and professional financial model that accurately models your business. Project-based consultants can help you create a financial model from scratch, working with your managers on the important assumptions, and help you update existing financial models.
Help you research just about anything. Need a deep dive report on subscription based companies that rent products and an analysis of the differences and opportunity for new entrants? Or a list of potential acquisition targets in a specific city? How about due diligence on a company you’re considering making an angel investment in? On-demand project-based consultants can find research just about anything these days.
Create business plans and investor / fundraising decks. If you are a growing start-up, you need a solid business plan and a fundraising deck to convey your story to potential investors. Whether you have all the underlying information ready to create these documents, or you also need help with all the pieces of a business plan and investor deck, project-based consultants can help! For this kind of work, project-based consultants working in teams are best, as that enables the main consultant to pull together the various skill sets needed (researcher, financial model expert, designer, etc).
Branding and design work. Need brand guidelines for your company? Or help making your website or decks more polished? Design work is a great example of project-based work.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Project-based consultants can help your business with practically any question or problem.
Ready to get started? I’m partial to FlexTeam for obvious reasons. But if you’d prefer to use a marketplace of consultants, instead of a one-stop-shop, you’ve got plenty of options. And if you’re already working with project-based consultants, may I recommend giving Liquid (brought to you by us at FlexTeam) a try .
Do you have a story of project-based work helping your business grow or overcome challenges? I’d love to hear it!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
Last week, MIT celebrated the new College of Computing with a multi-day conference filled with talks by luminaries like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Joi Ito, Henry Kissinger, Megan Smith, Thomas Friedman, and many more. When Eric Schmidt (Technical Advisor to Alphabet and former Executive Chairman of Google) opened the panel for Entrepreneurship and AI, I was struck by his comments that the world needs more entrepreneurs; that the world needs more of us to become entrepreneurs to solve the problems of our times. I’d read about Schmidt’s previous calls for more entrepreneurs in 2016, but hearing him reiterate the point felt like a call to action.
MIT was founded in April 1861, two days before the start of the civil war. It was founded before we knew of the existence of DNA or atoms, before cars, before telephones, before the internet. And yet it has endured and innovated to stay at the forefront of technology, while becoming a model for college level entrepreneurship education.
Today, it’s become commonplace for universities to nurture entrepreneurs and to teach entrepreneurial skills. But few high schools, middle schools, or elementary schools incorporate entrepreneurship into their curriculum. MIT has done its part to inspire high school student entrepreneurs with the spinoff of LaunchX (originally started as a program of MIT called MIT Launch) and by the relatively new creation of a world education lab dedicated in part to reinventing preK-12 education. And there are many other programs here and there for high school student entrepreneurs.
But I believe that we need to do more to empower our children (including younger children) to become the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. To help them become change-makers who will make “a better world” (to borrow the name of MIT’s $6 billion campaign). Moreover, I am confident that an entrepreneurial education gives students the skills to succeed in any career or workplace.
What do I mean by an entrepreneurial education?
First, there’s the obvious — supporting students of all ages to turn their ideas into companies. But to me, it’s more than that. It’s giving students low stakes opportunities to fail. It’s showing students how to find joy in challenging themselves and to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s helping students apply their learnings to real world problems. It’s nurturing their natural creativity, curiosity, and ability to find patterns and make connections. It’s providing opportunities to pursue interests and passions, and to collaborate and work in teams. It’s grounding education in ethics, empathy, and compassion so that they can prevent biases. And it’s teaching skills that are crucial to success in entrepreneurship, skills that are transferable to other careers and to life in general.
These skills are innumerable. But as a start, they include empathy, persistence, grit, confidence, self-awareness, communication, collaboration, curiosity, prioritization, flexibility in thinking, integrity, computational thinking, creative thinking, resourcefulness, optimism, conflict resolution, story telling, and so much more. It may sound old-fashioned, but I believe character education and ethics are also central to nurturing tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. Social emotional and ethical learning (SEEL) is not an over-hyped buzzword; this kind of education is critical for success in today’s hyper-connected world. As every job function becomes augmented with automated computing, it’s “soft skills” that will give our kids an edge. Moreover, we’ve all read about the misdeeds of Facebook and other Silicon Valley start-ups, and it seems clear to me that empathy and ethics could have prevented some problems.
As the world becomes more complex and interconnected, so does the work people do. As machine learning and artificial intelligence begin to do more of our work, it will become more important for people to do work that machines find it harder to do. An entrepreneurial mindset will help our students to succeed in work of the future. And it is imperative that tomorrow’s entrepreneurs are fundamentally ethical and trained to recognize and overcome biases.
MIT’s celebration left me feeling hopeful and inspired.
Hopeful that we can give tomorrow’s innovators, thinkers, doers, and leaders the ethically-grounded education that will allow them to use machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science, and other tools that have yet to be developed for the good of the world.
And inspired to help make that future a reality.
What are your thoughts on entrepreneurship and education, and the future of education?
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
I’ve started and operated several companies, all of which used independent contractors (and some of which also used traditional employees). Some key business tactics I believe in include: relying on empirical data to make decisions (whether or not that means using rigorous programming based data analysis techniques); preferring slow incremental growth via low risk bets (versus making high risk decisions that could lead to disaster); keeping cash reserves to protect against disaster; and that trust is critical to successful relationships with colleagues, workers, and clients.
Those practices can be implemented in any company, whether you use independent contractors or traditional employees. But over the years, I’ve compiled a list of operating practices I would adopt if I started a “normal” business with “normal” employees. If you are starting a business with employees, maybe you’ll find you, too, want to adopt some of these practices.
Here’s an overview of 15 business practices to adopt as you start your small business. I could probably write a full post about each of these practices (and for some of these, I already have), so I’ve tried (with limited success ) to keep each section brief:
Whenever possible, reduce the number of choices to customers.
Barry Schwartz’s 2004 book The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More. We’ve all been conditioned to believe that the more options the better. This book’s counter-intuitive premise is that adding options reduces the likelihood that people will select any, whether the decision in question is trivial (which gourmet jam to purchase) or very significant (which health insurance plan to sign-up for). And when most people stop to think about it, they can think of personal examples when more options led to indecision. For me, this often happens at coffee shops — when I see too many different breakfast sandwiches and scones to choose from, I order only coffee. In contrast, I love shopping at Costco and only having a few brands of yogurt to choose from!
Don’t be afraid to turn down customers or clients, or to refer them to your competitors.
It is scary to turn away business. But there are two theories behind my tip. The first is opportunity cost — if you accept “bad” business, you may be losing some “good” business because your time and resources will be tied up with the “bad” client / customer. Bad can be defined in any way you choose — customers who try to negotiate price, customers who threaten to take their business elsewhere, customers who need lots of extra time and attention, etc. The second theory behind this idea is that if you aren’t the best fit for the client (whether that’s because of price, or skills, or other reasons), then referring them to someone who does fit their stated needs helps you to build trust. And when they trust you, they’ll be more likely to recommend you to people who are a good fit for your company. As an added bonus, sometimes, when the issue is price, the clients may learn that you get what you pay for and end up coming back to you. Take a look at The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford and Trust Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships by Charles Green to learn more about these ideas.
Create ‘Good jobs.’
The Good Jobs Strategy
MIT professor Zeynop Ton, in her book The Good Jobs Strategy, defines good jobs as fulfilling jobs that pay well. Companies like Southwest Airlines, Trader Joes, Costco, UPS, In-N-Out Burger, use human-centered operational excellence to offer low prices to customers while ensuring good jobs for their employees and exceptional returns for their investors. Ok, that’s a lot of buzzwords. Put another way, make four operational choices — Offer Less, Standardize and Empower, Cross-Train, and Operate with Slack — and you will find that (contrary to popular belief) you can run a successful business and pay your employees a living wage or more. Read this post I wrote in 2016 to learn more.
Subsidize family care.
When people know that their loved ones (young children, elderly parents, and other dependent family members) are being cared for, they can focus on their work at work. I believe in universal high-quality childcare for all, but that’s a post for another time.
Paid family leave.
This is corollary to subsidizing family care and I could write an entire post about the importance of paid family leave. The short version is simply that allowing people to take care of their loved ones: 1) allows them to be more focused at work; and 2) secures loyalty from your employees.
Hire for soft skills.
I’ve always done this when hiring independent contractors, and it carries over to employees as well. It’s better to hire someone eager to learn who works well with people, than someone who has already perfected the skills but lacks emotional intelligence or communication skills. Mastery of content is important, but that loses value if you can’t communicate your thoughts or collaborate with others. Read more about my thoughts on this topic here.
Invest in your people.
Turnover is costly. Provided you’ve invested in creating a relationship of trust with your employees, it is cheaper to train and develop your existing employees, than it is to find, recruit, and onboard new ones. Cultivate your employees.
Encourage vacations.
Listen to @ProjectTimeOff’s Katie Denis’s advice. Unplug when you’re on vacation and your company will be better for it.
Trust your people and they will develop new skills & talents in your absence. And your business will grow and thrive.#productivityhttps://t.co/Jucc6Oh6rS
When people go on vacation, and truly step away from the office, they come back to work happier, more creative, and more productive. More vacation days has been shown to decrease the number of sick days taken off! And when you, or other executives go on vacation, ignore emails unless it’s truly an emergency that onlyyou can fix. Doing so shows your people that you trust them (if you can’t tell, I’m a big believer in trust) and gives people the chance to develop new skills and talents in your absence. And it helps reinforce the company culture that vacations are encouraged.
Additional paid leave between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day.
Obviously this isn’t possible for all companies (retail shops, for example), but if at all possible I’d reduce operations during this period. Forcing people to take time off means your employees come back to work rejuvenated. For employees with young children, they often have to take time off anyway and this can be a huge stress reliever. Plus, no one really wants to work during this time anyway (employees and clients) and you save your employees from fighting over who gets to take leave during this time. Lastly, think of it as part of your benefits package, that allows you to hire and retain the best employees. Not convinced, take a look at this post from Inc. (not written by me).
30 hour weeks at full time pay.
The eight-hour workday is a relic of the industrial era; Henry Ford pioneered the five day work week (down from six days), and that’s how we ended up with the 40-hour work week. Most of us can agree that we’ve moved beyond industrialism. Isn’t it time we move on from business practices created for that era? I believe that if you trust people to squeeze all their productivity into 30 hours, instead of 40+, and you’ll have more engaged, happier employees. That sounds too drastic for you? Here are some alternatives: 35-hour work week; a four-day, 10-hours per day schedule; create core hours (say 9:30am to 1:30pm) where employees are required to be working (then trust that they will work from home in the mornings or evenings to work the required number of hours).
Encourage people to be their full selves at work.
Need to take long lunch to recharge? Leaving early to coach your daughter’s baseball team? Coming in late after your son’s school play? Taking your mom to her doctors appointment mid-morning? People are more productive (and loyal) when they don’t need to hide a part of themselves during work hours.
Trust your people with the big picture.
Share your vision, make it a shared vision, and employees will dedicate themselves to your vision. Work becomes more meaningful. Feeling inspired, people are more likely to go above and beyond to help each other and your customers. And when you share the big picture, every employee feels empowered to contribute ideas. Innovation happens more quickly.
Don’t grow for the sake of growth.
Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham is one of my favorite books. It highlights businesses that chose to stay small and true to themselves, instead of growing for the sake of growth. Another book in this vein is Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. Built to Last has a slightly different message, but the common ground between it and Small Giants is the idea of building a meaningful, enduring business.
Diversity and inclusion strategy.
D&I is a hot topic these days, and for good reason. The business case for a D&I strategy is clear — increasing diversity leads to tangible economic gains. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2018 study is just one of many studies that have made a clear business case for diversity. There are many resources out there for companies who choose to tackle this issue (and I hope that most will), so I won’t write too much about this here. What I will say though, is that we should (perhaps unintuitively) focus on inclusion (how people are treated) before diversity (the demographics / numbers). Start with inclusion and company culture — what things are said and unsaid, who speaks at meetings, who gets chosen for presentations and projects, etc — and work on overcoming biases. Then, work on diversity.
Commit to pay transparency.
Employees are happier and more motivated when salaries are transparent. They work harder, they’re more productive, and they’re better at collaborating with colleagues. All this leads to greater profit for the employer. But researchers say transparency is also important because keeping salaries secret reinforces discrimination. So back to D&I — committing to pay transparency will help close the pay gap, and increase diversity, all while helping your bottom line.
Whew, you made it through all 15 business practices! These practices may seem extravagant, but they’re practices that have worked for successful companies. They might not all be appropriate for yours. But I believe in treating employees with decency and respect, and giving them meaningful work while allowing them to also have lives outside of work. And I believe that doing so will ultimately improve your financial performance.
What are your best practices for operating businesses? Please share them!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
I started FlexTeam in 2015 with two other MIT alums. In the early days, we all worked on everything: project scoping, operations, operations strategy, people ops, staffing, business development / sales, marketing, customer success, engagement management, project management, community management, content creation, quality control, copyediting, product development, consultant training & education, social media management, invoicing, and all the other things that come with running a startup or small business.
But as we’ve grown, we’ve all narrowed our focus a bit. My focus now lies mostly with our consultants — onboarding, education, training, learning & development, community building, best practices & processes for projects, project placement, etc.
My personal interest in FlexTeam has always been our consultants.
So when we started FlexTeam, I was the one who sent out our first call for consultants. We started with a simple email to our sorority list (yes, I was in a sorority at MIT). The subject line was “remote / work-from-home opportunities,” the body of the email was five sentences long (plus our contact information) and included a link to a google form to sign up to work “as a freelancer remotely for FlexTeam.” That google form got 30+ responses within a few days.
That was 2015.
Today, we have hundreds of independent consultants in our database and a long wait-list of women who want to join us. Our consultants are alums of MIT, HBS, Wharton, Stanford, Princeton, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Bain, Merrill Lynch, & many more elite organizations, who reclaim their time by working with us on challenging projects for our clients. Our consultants work with FlexTeam to help them create their own work-life fit. And our clients get access to highly experienced, highly educated women that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to hire (whether on a project, part-time, or full-time basis).
So what have I learned about people and career success?
First, computational / algorithmic thinking is fundamentally important to being successful as a management consultant working remotely and independently.
What is computational thinking?
Computational thinking is a term that has been used for decades. The phrase computational thinking popularized by an essay by computer scientist Jeannette Wing. Wing suggested that thinking computationally was a fundamental skill for everyone (not just computer scientists). I think of it as the ability to solve problems algorithmically and logically:
the ability to break down a problem into its component parts;
analyze and organize data;
recognize patterns (within the problem and with past problems);
identifying, analyzing, and implementing potential solutions;
and iterating when feasible.
I think the ability to work with uncertainty is also part of computational thinking.
Why is computational thinking an important skill?
As the world becomes more complex and interconnected, so does the work people do. More importantly, as machine learning and artificial intelligence begin to do more of our work, it will become more important for people to do work that machines find it harder to do.
But for FlexTeam, I’ve found that solving client’s problems requires consultants (or, at the very least the project manager, who supervises other consultants) to be able to think computationally. Our clients expect the work to get done; but they don’t want to spend time telling us how to do the work. That’s why they’re paying us — to get it done without having to expend additional resources or brainpower to it.
A consultant lacking in computational thinking skills is able to get the work done, but requires attention from others to figure out a plan of action. More than that, she needs help with gut checks (does what I’ve produced make sense in real life?), has difficulty coming up with recommendations (a key component of FlexTeam’s offerings), and she sometimes lacks creativity to get the job done.
The computational thinker is more adapatable, agile, and able to manage time and priorities. And as they are self-motivated and curious, they find joy in solving problems.
Communication skills are also important
Since we work remotely (our consultants are all over the United States, with a few spread out across the globe), written communication skills are obviously important to us — our consultants communicate with our clients via chat on project pages, and our consultants communicate internally with each other via Slack. Also, most of our projects require us to deliver a report or memo of some sort to the client, so it’s important to write clearly, effectively, and precisely.
But we think that effective oral and written communication skills are important to succeed in any career these days.
Again, as machine learning and artificial intelligence begin to do more of our work, it will become more important for people to do work that machines find it harder to do — effective communication is one such task. Computers can surely put together pieces of writing, but understanding nuances of communication are best left to humans.
Can a computer take a client’s message, and tease out what the client really means? Can it tailor their message (whether oral or written) to the audience? Can it read the audience to know how best to phrase their message?
I think not.
Our best consultants are able to intuit what a client’s main concerns are, even if they are unspoken. They are able to intuit how frequently a client wants to be updated, and how much detail the client wants. They are able to communicate effectively to other consultants what work needs to get done and when, and knows how to motivate them when necessary.
You can certainly get by without superior oral and written communication skills, but you’ll be more successful if you excel at those skills.
As Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson say in Rework, “Hire the better writer.”
“Soft skills” make all the difference in career success
So far we’ve learned that computational thinking and writing skills are important to career success. Obviously, some core competency in knowledge is also important. But it may surprise you to hear that “soft skills” like grit, resilience, persistence, being a good listener, empathy, a desire to learn, a cooperative attitude, resourcefulness, kindness, a “always do your best” attitude, optimism, ability to deal with difficult personalities, and manage conflict (among many others) are just as important.
In fact, we’ve found that consultants who lack these “soft skills” typically produce work that client’s are less satisfied with. These “soft skills” enable consultants to go above and beyond for our clients. And the truth is that having soft skills like emotional intelligence usually correlates with computational thinking abilities and writing skills. These skills build on each other!
So what?
If you are looking for a job, assess your computational thinking abilities, writing skills, and “soft skills”. Where can you improve? How can you work toward improvement? Where do you excel? How can you highlight those skills in your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile?
If you are hiring, recognize that at some point there is a level of technical capability or job function competence that is sufficient. After that, the person who is the better writer, who is better at computational thinking, and who has better “soft skills” is going to get you more productivity than someone who is simply more technically brilliant. He or she will be more eager to learn, more eager to work, and simply achieve more. She’ll get more done and go above and beyond.
And if you’re a busy business person looking to get more done, think about working with FlexTeam. Our top consultants excel at all of these skills and are ready to help you achieve more.
Let me know what other skills you think are important to career success!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
Okay, I didn’t exactly give up my consulting business. I’m still doing some work through my company Lau Labs for friends and friends of friends. But I essentially shelved it to start FlexTeam. Here’s why.
My Solo Consulting Business
I started advising and consulting for entrepreneurs and small business owners more than a decade ago. Business plans, websites, basic financial models, marketing, branding, operations strategy, business development … I pretty much did it all for small companies. And I was pretty successful at it.
Then, I Became a Mother
I’ve always been interested in work-life fit. But during my first pregnancy in 2010, I became increasingly interested in “solving” the “problem” of ambitious, educated, talented women and men “opting out” of the traditional workforce for to spend time with their kids or other personal reasons. I started thinking about how I ought to start a company to get projects for all these smart moms.
Once my daughter was born, I kept working on consulting via Lau Labs but also considered myself a stay-at-home mom (SAHM). And as I became friends with more SAHMs, I started to feel the urgency of creating a company to get projects for all my smart SAHM friends. Women who had once had successful careers, who had begun to discount their self worth after quitting their jobs. Women who transitioned to part-time work, only to quit after finding they were doing full-time work at part-time pay. Women who were throwing themselves passionately into motherhood, parent teacher associations, and fundraising. Highly-educated, highly-experienced women wondering if they’d ever be employable after being at home with their kids.
A Difficult Pregnancy
Long story, the pregnancy with my son was not easy: very frequent doctors’ appointments. And so, while I still thought about creating this mom consulting company, I put working on it on hold for awhile. It didn’t stop me from brainstorming. Talking with other moms, I began to envision providing a whole suite of services to mothers who left the traditional workforce. Services like project-based consulting work, resume services, workshops to help women transition back to work, confidence building exercises, training sessions, networking events with a community of like-minded women, and more. And once my son was born, I began more actively seeking out partners for this endeavor and working on a business plan.
Starting FlexTeam
All this time, I continued to do consulting work via Lau Labs. Working from home and out of coffee shops (and hotel lobbies) and doing pretty well, if I do say so myself. Especially considering the number of actual working weeks I was putting in — which I coordinated around school breaks, school performances, and other personal obligations.
But when the opportunity to start FlexTeam with two other MIT alums (including a former roommate) came up, I put Lau Labs aside. And instead of working just when I wanted to, I began working 25 to 60+ hours a week (still from home or coffee shops or hotel lobbies) to make my mom consulting firm a reality. Why? Because I had seen too many smart moms struggling with motherhood and their career. Women shouldn’t have to choose. Men shouldn’t have to choose either.
So why did I put my consulting business aside to start FlexTeam? Because, as Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson said in Rework, “What you do is your legacy.”
The work we are doing with FlexTeam is important. I’ve seen women regain their confidence after working on a project or two with us. I’ve seen women use FlexTeam’s projects as one of many sources of work, allowing them to work full-time from home. I’ve seen women go through the onboarding process and learn something insightful about themselves and what they want.
Today, FlexTeam’s highly experienced, networked, and intelligent consultants have over 8,000 hours of time each week to spend working together to solve our client’s business challenges. We are generating a better income for women; a tight knit professional community that is fueling our growth of projects; a growing body of knowledge and technology that helps us scale the value of our time; and a long waiting list of others that want to join.
And more importantly, are you doing something to make the world a better place? Are you doing something that matters? What could you be doing to make a better world?
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
