The GIG must go on. It is a good infection that breeds enterprise.

(The Gig workforce includes freelancers, self employed professionals, independent contractors, project-based workers and fixed term or part-time hires. India leads the global Gig economy with a 24% share of the online labour market)

There's a gig on. You would do well to join it!

Our partnership with a large network of independents, domain experts, freelancers and our close observations of life & work with them over the years, throw some interesting insights, and a rallying call for the world of business that is faced now, with a new normal.

Not the weather, pay heed to the climate

Every crisis, every shock to the system provokes both a defence as also a recovery process. Societies and communities react, respond and eventually rehabilitate & overcome. Antibodies are generated, new tactics emerge and the new normal of immunity gets defined. However, it leads to changes in the rules of the game, rules of operation, across governance, business, work, play, recreation, services and community. But most importantly it blunt-forces a change of mindsets, both individual and collective.

A crisis like Covid has already unveiled glimpses of the changed normal. Life with and after a pandemic will see changes in ways that were once difficult to fathom and equally difficult to extrapolate, given that it is a work in progress, unfolding by the day. It’s a weather prediction that would change with every surging storm and equally with every bit of sunlight. However, we can be more, sure of the climate to come.

The Gig Force – it’s now more than ever, when it needs support

Even before Covid, the world had become far more digitally connected while being physically more insulated. Emails often substituted for meetings, group messages replaced water cooler chats, slack furthered the cause of group exercises, online carts replaced in-store queues and more. Be it Corona or not, technology had allowed for and prepared a significant part of society for remote socialising and virtual presence. And that includes the work space and jobs. An increasingly significant number.

Life during Covid and post Covid has many opportunities for the Gig economy and its players, given some of its congenital, natural advantages that help it adapt, evolve and cope with the new normal - Swiftly.  And these players must be supported in times of crises, like the one we are in the middle of.

Along with opportunities, this holds equally valuable lessons for conventional organisations and work models to emulate. Large organisations in fact benefit greatly with a thriving, healthy gig economy. It allows for plenty of innovations, good infections that would make it possible for the large traditional organisations, to cultivate the virtue of enterprise.

What gives the Gig workforce its mojo? its secret sauce?

1) Freelancers and independents are like the Omega Men and Women. They are lone warriors who are conditioned to be everything in one - CEO, CFO, CTO, CMO and the board all rolled together. One - human enterprise, an enterprise in one. In a way they are mentally conditioned for solo acts, to go up there on stage alone and present a performance without stage fright. So, in a virtual lock down scenario, they are mentally conditioned to operate remotely, singularly from their base station.

2) The Gig workforce also has mastered the art of working remotely, self-disciplining themselves to operate as professionally from home or a cafe as anyone else in a cubicle or a rule box. They are conversant with technology as a life support system with no dearth of online, on cloud tools and aids. Collaboration is often a click away. Skype, Slack, and DropBox have made the gig life a reality, giving them maximum freedom, a suitable work-life balance, and the chance to pursue their passions. They are less insecure about re-skilling and are self-starters. Naturally so, as initiative is their principal armour.

3) The Gig economy also maximises the principle of Comparative Advantage (Ricardo’s ground-breaking theory that makes the world go around and its economies trade, working together in a seamless partnership) – based on relative strength and opportunity cost. This is best illustrated by how freelancers, independents and micro firms with different skills and capabilities collaborate with each other, to do large sized and exceptional work. This is how millions of discrete, inventive, independent human units collaborate seamlessly trading off respective comparative advantages towards a larger single purpose, as if by magic, telepathy. Business models built around the the Gig work force, often have a sui-generis (self-generated) community command system. At times far more fair, impactful and decisive than a hierarchy system. Collaboration, hence is a natural predisposition for them.

4) Independents pivot faster, shift gears faster which translates to better response times during periods of change in the rules of business or pattern of work or the nature of work. They will scale up, skill up to fit the changing rules of the industry, invest in themselves to be up to date. You would often see them re-skill with each new passing summer. They keep their ammunition ready and their guns warm for the next action scene. And this is because they have fewer back up options, less back up security. In a way they are by nature and law of survival, more agile.

5) Gig professionals, most often don’t run a rat race (in fact they drop out of it). They don’t stack themselves to run in a single direction, don’t elbow each other out, don’t have the time to play Machiavelli in office which is counter-productive [often they are the only one in office :)] and are extremely comfortable collaborating and sharing in a “WE” mode unlike the “I” mode in larger, competitive organisations, often ironically so, when in fact, you would expect the opposite. So they are more equipped mentally to participate & collaborate in a community of strangers and uncertainty.

Lessons & a magic vaccine for the large, traditional organisations

This Gig workforce, is comprised of microscopic geniuses who are equally comfortable working solo as they are in collaborative, collective tasks and therein they hold great lessons and value for large unwieldy and bureaucracy ruled organisations. In the world of business, today the most valuable resource, most critical factor of production is enterprise, initiative. The Gig workforce is the fountain of enterprise. This magic potion of enterprise is the key to success and survival, and it must be nourished and safeguarded at all times.

Large, traditional organisations to survive and thrive in eras where agility matters more than ever, could shed fat, get on revised work diet regimes, organise new mindset conditioning camps and re-wire resources, try altering culture or they could do something far more organic & efficient. Instead of a long and hard, dusty relentless road, they could do well to be infected by the right company – the Gig workforce.

Large corporations could be infected with virtues of enterprise and innovation, where layers of their workforces can be instilled with the courage to hold an independent thought, foster original ideas and not wilt under hierarchy or the chain of command. The best way to get infected with enterprise right from the board level to the bean counters - is by either being exposed to it or by artificial insemination. And the Gig workforce is an excellent source.

What does that mean?

Getting infected with enterprise, by the Gig economy

Often large, fat organisations are stumbled by lethargy and “inventive” non-action. There is often furious movement & noise, but little inches progressed. The buck can be passed as there are more than enough players to play ball. The players are not to blame as they have become conditioned, infected by lethargy and have a misguided sense of being immune to replacement. That is dangerous for a large organisation in a market where the price of lethargy can be lethal. What can change this, is a good infection.

This can be done by working more often, more closely with the Gig workforce, with new age models and inventive enterprises built around it. If as a large, less agile and less urgent organisation, the only company you keep, is that of more, large, less agile and less urgent organisations then, nothing will change. You are eventually going to be the company you keep till the jungle and its newer predators swallow you up. Examples of this are plenty.  

Provision and prepare. Protect the gig. A call to businesses and investors alike

Large corporations and businesses must initiate interesting ventures, germinate prototypes of new business models, foster a lab environment within the company that continues to co-explore, co-create, co-invent a tomorrow with partners from outside, invest in cross-fertilised efforts with the Gig workforce, independents and inventive firms.

This would be a great symbiosis – large organisations with their strengths of structure, capital reserves, cumulative experience, organisation culture co-working with independents who bring in agility, enterprise, courage, initiative and a cultural mindset that’s different and yet complementary. These joint exercises are wonderful. And, the resulting transmission of infection is great for the health of both parties.

Investors should look at opportunities in newer business models that leverage the Gig economy and its collaborative codes – as these business models carry within them collective enterprise, interdisciplinary skills, diversity of talent, agility and the ability to work & collaborate if needed in isolation and remotely.

A great many benefits lie in working more closely with the Gig workforce & independent firms. Not because they are more brave but just because they are right conditioned and right "gened". Enterprise is after all the only choice they have.

The size of Gig Economy transactions was projected in the pre Covid era to grow by a 17% CAGR with a Gross Volume of ~$455B by 2023, due to factors such as evolving societal attitudes around P2P sharing and increasing digitization rates in developing countries - Source: Mastercard & Kaiser Associates May 2019