The Key Business Growth is “Fluidity”

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of speaking with Elaine Pofeldt, a Forbes writer, former Fortune editor, and the author of The Million-Dollar, One Person Business. Elaine is also co-founder of 200kfreelancer.com, a community for indie professionals looking to build a thriving business.

With our shared interests on the future of work, and more specifically, the future of the individual worker, we spoke about how people can break through their career inertia in the new hybrid world. As I’ve said time and time again, fluidity is the key to success. Entrepreneurs, agile businesses, and side hustlers looking to succeed are already embracing this mindset — but others need to follow suit to truly realize their growth potential.

Elaine asked me about adopting fluidity for companies and individuals for her column on entrepreneurship. Here’s an excerpt from the article. You can read the full piece on Forbes.com here.

Elaine Pofeldt: What alerted you to the trend toward fluidity? And how has the pandemic played a role? 

Connie Steele: What alerted me was specifically the way millennials were looking at how to navigate their careers. The way they were approaching work was much more multi-faceted than in earlier generations. Instead of a siloed approach, they moved to one that was more about being fluid, collaborative, multi-modal and multi-dimensional.

Technology has had a big impact on the way that everyone is thinking, doing, perceiving and behaving. As I was looking at the roles many of us were filling during the pandemic, the need to “context switch” between all of them was a big shift between what it was like before and what it is like now. Everything has now converged. It’s converged in such a way that work and life are now one and the same. The personal and professional are also blended. So are the digital and physical. 

Generational differences are bringing more fluidity. You’ve got Gen-Zers who approach their life in a way that is naturally much more fluid. There’s a growing trend toward saying, “I don’t want to be boxed in. I just want to be me.” How they define who they are and what they believe are carrying over into the workplace. 

It’s not only Gen-Zers. If you look at the job titles of Millennials on LinkedIn, it’s “I am a marketer, designer, musician, entrepreneur, activist. They have recognized they can’t be singly sourced. Because they came out of school during a recession, not everything they did worked. If you are in a recession, you have to operate differently. You’ve got to find new ways of making money. They did side hustles because they had to. They are always parallel pathing. They want to test and learn. They don’t know what they will like. Technology has made it so easy for them to sample. They’ve also seen people doing something they don’t like and sacrificing their passion for money—and don’t want to do that.

Pofeldt: As you discuss in the book, more organizations have gone from siloed, cubicled organizations to matrixed teams who collaborate remotely. How can the self-employed make the most of this trend in their businesses?

Steele: Uncertainty is the new certainty today. When you don’t know what’s going to happen personally or professionally, you have to go with the flow—learn how to quickly diagnose a problem, plant a flag and go with it. When you go with that skill, you’ll be able to make the most of the environment. If you’re depending on having incredible predictability every day, you will not be able to survive. 

We can learn a lot about navigating this environment from Millennials. They are used to having options. They don’t feel like they need to fit the mold in the same way earlier generations did. They know how to go after what they want and manage their own risk, too, maybe through a side hustle. 

Pofeldt: Could you talk about the trend toward individual autonomy? Is everyone who has a job essentially a business of one? And what about self-employed people who already have autonomy? Will there be systems in place that make this easier?

Steele: I do believe there is going to be a greater trend toward platforms that will help solopreneurs who want to take control of their destiny. I think that’s going to become the norm. If you’re not thinking like the CEO of “you” going into the future, you’re not going to be able to manage the risk that comes along with it. 

There’s no certainty with any job at all. Knowing that anyone is prone to losing an opportunity, whatever it may be, means you need to be solely responsible for what your course is going to be. You are a product or service on the web by default today. Everyone’s default is to go to Google. Anyone can find anything they want about you. They will formulate an opinion of you whether you like it or not. It's better that you shape what that opinion is going to be rather than someone determining what it is. 

Read the rest on Forbes.com. And learn more about Fluidity in Building the Business of You or by joining the Business of You e-course.