Recently, I was having an interesting discussion with a London-based advertising executive. In our conversation, we wondered if the employer-employee contract was increasingly shifting away from previously dominant concepts like lifetime employment and large corporations towards more fluid forms of working together.

I strongly feel that the current recession has shaken some ancient truths (that were already on the verge of extinction) to the bone – increasingly, corporations are forced to manage their human resources in a way that helps them maintain flexibility and stay nimble. Regardless of what we may think, this will not go unnoticed – the face of work as we know it may be changing for good.

Younger generations and those that have skills that are in demand have always known this, and have increasingly started seeing themselves as “hired guns” in the “war for talent” – whether they publicly admit it or not.

The difference this time is that it is not just the younger or higher educated who have been impacted by recent events: almost everybody has a friend, colleague or family member who, often after a lengthy career with the same employer, suddenly found themselves out of a job. Often times, they have been the hardest hit of all – heavily specialized in jobs that are mostly on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder, their skills are increasingly out of synch with corporate needs, being outsourced, off-shored or otherwise replaced by more flexible forms of employment.

After the dust has cleared, our collective psyche will remember those people, and their turmoil – lifetime employment is dead, and the way forward seems uncertain. Putting the blame on large corporations would be too easy an answer – are we witnessing a paradigm shift that will deeply impact the way we view work and professional relationships in the future ?

Tribes Or Guilds

In the Middle Ages, Europe’s educated labour force was organised in guilds, where heavily specialised tradesmen came together to strengthen their collective bargaining power and pass on their skills. As their influence grew, they developed many of the traits of capitalism we now know so intimately, including division of labour, specialisation and segregation of labour classes.

According to Seth Godin, “Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world. It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.”

In the future, will we see a revival of the tribal or guild-based model, where individuals come together to form fluid and fluctuating collaborative networks that are based on shared ideas, ambitions and complementary skillsets ?

Shifting Tribes, Shifting Lives

In truth, this is happening already: increasingly, professionals are bonding together in tribes that fluctuate with time, interests, physical location and needs. Freelance consultants find there is much value to be derived from this approach, where they come together under a common brand umbrella to pitch their collective skillsets to potential clients, thus gaining larger assignments and tackling job security issues. Often, the client is unaware of this – it looks, feels and acts just like any other company.

There are several factors that will help accelerate this movement, and expand the model to other professions as well.

• As the psychological contract between employer and employee continues to change, people will increasingly stop believing in the concept of lifetime employment, and find other ways to protect their livelihood. Being part of several professional tribes (e.g. consultant, start-up entrepreneur, lecturer and day trader) and carefully managing their professional reputation can help them do just that;
• With the advent of new collaborative technologies, it becomes easier for individuals in remote locations to come together under a single brand umbrella and work on larger or more attractive projects – more than that, they can derive significant advantages in terms of cost savings and speed to market, allowing them to beat other, more established competitors to the punch;
• Increased outsourcing does not hold benefits only – or even, primarily – for large corporations; individuals and networks can now efficiently and effectively outsource routine parts of their operations to lower-cost locations, meaning they – and everybody else – can focus on what they do best;
• More accurate ways of measuring performance help shift the mindset from a  control-oriented middle management-mindset to a more effective output-based model, where contributions are being measured in terms of their overall performance rather than time spent in the office;
• More transparent ways of delivering feedback mean better opportunities for those that excel to stand out from the crowd, and less chances for slackers to hide. Where this may lead to increased competition (“survival of the fittest”) in the short term , it is also likely to lead to a hidden benefit: as competition increases, individuals may choose to focus more on what they are really passionate about – as they enjoy what they do more, they will continue to invest and build their skills until they too are at the top of their game.

It remains to be seen what this will mean for brands: as society shifts its forms of collaboration, the collective way in which we view brands is also like to change. Will we continue to prefer global brands, but have them managed increasingly by local micro-tribes ? Will we see a continued rise of trusted local brands “making it big” ? Or will global brands be gradually replaced by very localized nano-brands ?