Freelance vs Employment

It is "in between project time" again and I am looking for something new. To get me started, I think I should use my blog again, as type of self-coaching tool, where I would sit and write about my steps in the process to look for a new job or project. 

One of the problems I have faced so far is: What on earth do I actually want? Headhunters call and tell me about some job they have and then ask whether I like it. I would say "yes" or "no" but in the end, I feel I am missing a list of things I should look out for more categorically rather than imagining I could do something or not. 

The first step today is to think about freelancing vs employment. What do I want? 


THOUGHTS ON FREELANCING:

I have been freelancing for the last few years and for me it works pretty well. I would be hired for a project and these assignments can last from a few weeks to a few years. I like freelancing, as it gives me lots of flexibility which I appreciate so highly. It also allows me to do my voluntary job whenever I want to do it and not necessarily on a weekend (I am not allowed to write about my voluntary job but I mentioned it on my blog somewhere. Let's say it involves the terms "law and order"). 

Recently, I started to wonder whether I should go back to employment, as there are also negative sides to freelancing: It is not so much those few weeks or months in between projects, it is also that one reaches a glass ceiling and the jobs out there for freelancers can all be a bit "basic" at times. Lucky me, mine were good so far, but I know what's out there. I am ready for more in my life and feel I need to push my career a bit more. Nonetheless, I would still go ahead with freelancing and projects as I find it satisfying and rewarding to help my clients to be successful. 

Typically, these are the areas where I would see myself working in:

- Management Consultant/Project Manager/Programme Manager/Project Director/PMO for a consultancy company that specialises in operational excellence, efficiency and performance improvements, coaching, change management, manufacturing and supply chain.
- The same as above, but contracting directly to the end-client rather than through a consultancy company.

Freelance heaven would be, if I had a list of all sorts of clients who I could call or who would call regularly for shorter assignments and keep me busy. 


THOUGHTS ON EMPLOYMENT:

Employment is a different beast. Even though flexibility seems gone, this does not mean that I would enter a life of boredom and being restricted to the daily treadmill. Employment is still an essential way to climb up the career ladder and put more long-term meaning into one's work life, rather than hunting from project to project. 

What would I like to consider where I could use my skills the best? That would be of course any position where one is needed who can detect causes of all sorts of problems arising in companies and deal with them effectively. I can imagine this to be a board or "reporting to board" position, possibly in Operations. 

It would be an industry job, somewhere manufacturing or supply chain. Or in the internal consulting branch of a major international player that is looking to strengthen their continuous improvement efforts. 

I am a bit hesitant to work for another consultancy company. Somehow I have done that during the first few years in my life and it feels I have done it enough. I would not like to rule it out though, as I could possibly like a Regional Operations Director role or anything similar to that. 

Last week I met a headhunter who is looking for 2 positions: The one is for a company that looks to get outsource contracts from the national security industry and the other one is one of the major international property services companies. For the first I am interesting because of my voluntary job AND my knowledge of performance improvement, for the latter only my consulting knowledge would be of advantage as I would come in to ask all the right and difficult questions which would then enable them to think "improvement and change". 

What I like about these 2, those are completely new areas for me. I never worked in either, the security nor building industry. What a challenge to tackle!


EXPERIENCE AS FREELANCER:

If my conclusion is that in the end I should possibly consider another full-time position, would that mean I have to automatically say freelancing was not worth doing? Absolutely not! One learns so many essential skills as freelancer; the best thing for me is that I know I can rely on myself and can do it all alone. I learned to ask for business and find opportunities, as in the old days I always expected work would be there for me one way or another. I am responsible for whatever I am doing and there is no organisation in which I could hide and wait till the storm is over. These are all extremely good skills and I am very proud of having them.  

In the end, freelance work or employment, it does not really matter. Once I commit to an assignment or job I do it full-heartedly. So yes, let's get this job hunt going and see what I will come up with.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (6)

And then, finally, after the management system was ready to go and the managers trained and trainers and coaches we needed to tour the country (all 4 sales regions) and train, train, train...

And I must say, the area sales managers did all an extremely good job. I was rather impressed.

Polish Supermarkets

I nearly forgot to mention one project I was on, and that was that Polish supermarket chain in Warsaw. That was in 1998 and only shortly after Poland finished as a socialist state and "turned western".

An interesting aspect of the job was that we needed full-time translators all the time as nobody spoke any other language but Polish and Russian. That was tough and slowed down the project progress. From its layout, the project was close to the furniture retail one. It was a skills project with optimisation of the management of supermarkets. So, management training was an essential part of it, especially coaching with those translators acting as intermediators. I sometimes wondered wether I coached them or my clients.

I must admit, I did not really like the working environment there. We had a project room without windows and it looked more like the Führerbunker. The hotel was dreadful and food and service absolutely appalling. I was not a friend of eastern Europe then.

It took me a few years to become an absolute admirer of eastern Europe. But those stories will follow in much later blog entries.

Selling Furniture

The other skills area which is interesting is sales enhancement. Basically this means up-selling and more-selling by giving training to the sales force. This sales force can be either in a shop or they can travel from client to client. This does not matter, as the skills-set is always the same.

One needs to train them the "5 steps of selling", how to ask what kind of questions, closing techniques, preparation and "post"paration systems (post-paration as "what to do after a sales call?"), etc. Even though everybody talks about relationship-based selling these days, which is different to the usual selling skills, but on that commodity goods level, the usual skills-set is more than fine and appropriate. I will go into more detail when I am talking about my first project as project manager where I managed a sales programme.

So, my next project was back to the old one, the furniture retailer with 50 shops around Germany. We developed a selling skills model for them, trained it, and followed up on the newly learned techniques with coaching, mystery shoppers, audits, etc.

The project closed prematurely. The weekly invoice was too high to bear for the client. I think they tried to do it themselves with the task forces we trained. A few months later after the project has been stopped the company went bust and into administration. It does not exist anymore.

For me it was a good project as I learned everything about selling.

Salad Processing

One of my skills projects which I took part in as a trainer was the salad processing one. This company had 2 sites, one in Magdeburg and one in Stuttgart and they produced ready-made salads which one can buy in plastic bags in the supermarket or any of the fast-food chains.

After an analysis of their business processes it was clear that they wasted salad in the cleaning and "production" process. So, in a project we defined a cucumber as mascot, and developed posters where it was taught how to cut lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, etc. In the aftermath I find it amazing what kind of projects one can have.

So, basically, we trained them how to clean different kind of salads and lettuce. We measured the outcome, but I must admit, I have no idea anymore how successful the project was. I think it went well though.

I did mainly deliver the management training and coaching, especially in the east German site. Main problem in that site was the lack of any management skills and I had to train them from the very beginning. On the west German site the main problems was that nobody understood anyone because too many foreigners were working there speaking all sorts of languages. So, I gave training and coaching in German, English, and French. That was fun!

I got a video camera for Christmas and I used it mainly to record the role-plays when I trained confrontation skills. I loved it, so did they. It was a very powerful tool.

Skills Training

Before I describe the next project I ought to explain the other package, which I mentioned already, and which can be sold to clients, too - skills training.

As opposed to management training, which is for all management (as the name indicates), skills training is for operators and in general all concerned work force that does not manage.

Skills training has 2 main areas where it can be applied: either it is sales training, where sales staff is trained how to sell (more detail in a later entry), or it is some sort of throughput optimisation training, where operators are trained to improve the "yield" rate (explanation in the next blog entry).

Skills programmes can have the following features:
- A mascot can be created for the training programme and material. It makes it easier for employees to recognise the theme and remind them of the newly trained skills,
- Employees are not trained by consultants but by their own line management.
- In TTT seminars (Train-the-trainer) line management is being trained what and how to train the employees, coaching skills are also trained, as line management will act as coach afterwards,
- In TTE seminars (Train-the-employee) employees are being trained by line management,
- In CTC sessions (Coach-the-coach) feedback is being given to line management about their training and coaching sessions in which a consultant should be present (at least initially),
- In CTE sessions (Coach-the-employee) employees are coached by their line managers,
- Using the mascot, special training material must be developed by the consultancy company.

What you see is what you get

Talking about operations management consultancies there are generally 3 main products a client can get, at least as specified with my first company I worked for - performance enhancement, management training and skills training. The first 2 are interlinked and compulsory, the latter optional.

Performance enhancement or operations improvement:
This part of the project will get the benefits cashed in. Consultants are allocated to specific areas and ought to develop them and implement what has been promised/sold to the client. I already talked about activity lists and manloading. That's one part of it.

Management training:
In order to make sure that those performance improvements "stick" with the clients' management (supervisors, managers and above) training needs to be given. The training programme needs to be tailor-made (or at least sold as such) to what the clients' specific needs are. The first few parts of the training are always the same modules though. But that's okay, those modules are vital.

Skills training:
Staff and workers get skills training. Projects like these might be "sales enhancement" programmes or "throughput optimisation" initiatives.

More detail to be found in further blog entries...