My guess is that this is going to be a bit difficult. My impression is that the needs EA organizations know they have are fairly specific; they look like “really great research into key questions”, or sometimes very tactical things like, “bookkeeping” or simple website development. “Consultant” is a really broad class of thing and really needs to be narrowed down in conversation.
Generally, organizations don’t have that much time to experiment with non-obvious contractor arrangements. This includes time brainstorming ways they might be useful. If one is having a lot of trouble getting integrated (as a possible contractor), the best method I know of is to just work in one of these organizations for a while and develop a close understanding, or perhaps try to write blog posts on topics that are really useful to these groups and see if these pick up.
Around having things like a directory, I expect the ones to work will be more narrow. There are a few smaller “contractor hubs” around; or “talent agencies”, that assist with hiring contractors and charge some fee on top. I think this is a pretty good model for low-level work, and I’d like to see more of it. It does require people with either really good understandings of EA needs (or the relationships), or really good ability to do some super-obviously useful problems (like accounting).
If anyone is interested in doing consulting, one easy way to indicate so would be by just posting in a comment in this thread, or there could be a new thread for such work.
Some advanced market commitments (i.e., organisations publicly committing to pay for consulting services if they are offered) might also be helpful.
My guess is that this would be a tough sell, but I appreciate the idea.
The EA infrastructure probably helps but most people don’t know much about how to set up and run an organisation
One (small) positive is that I think contractor setups can be some of the easiest to get started with. If you’re just doing contracting with yourself, and maybe one other person, you don’t even need to set up a formal business, you could just do it directly. The big challenges are in finding clients and providing value. You don’t need much scale at first. But those things are challenges.
I imagine it could be considered nice for organizations to hire more new contractors than would otherwise make sense, as that would be effectively subsidizing the industry.
Thanks Ozzy, that’s useful. I don’t have time to respond in full or say much more, but I will mention:
After reflection I still think that the catalyst needs to be something that solves the coincidence of wants issue (i.e., consultants don’t know who would hire them if they took the time to advertise and work in this space and orgs don’t know who they can hire or if it would go well).
I think that next steps that could help could be as simple as i) someone creating something like this for consultants in EA and posting about it on the forum when filled and ii) the next time someone does a survey of EA leaders they could ask them to benchmark how much more they to spend annually on consultants if they had the talent available, and for what exactly, then share that on the forum also.
I think that you go narrower after the first two steps are done as right now we don’t have much to work with. Though maybe Luke’s suggestions are evidence enough to form narrow directories in those areas, or to have them as ‘specialisations’ in the initial database?
I think that a talent agency is a great idea. I can imagine a ‘head-hunter/recruiter’ with contacts across both the organisations and the consulting networks would help to accelerate things.
Agree that working in existing orgs is a good idea for potential org founders. I am warming more to the RP incubator idea!
I agree that doing things as a sole contractor is probably easier but that’s also a lot more stressful for many people as you assume full responsibility for the work and need to be across all of the accounting and other aspects. It’s probably got some of the issues of being a sole founder in that it asks a lot of one person. It probably works well in a lot of cases though.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the ideas here.
My guess is that this is going to be a bit difficult. My impression is that the needs EA organizations know they have are fairly specific; they look like “really great research into key questions”, or sometimes very tactical things like, “bookkeeping” or simple website development. “Consultant” is a really broad class of thing and really needs to be narrowed down in conversation.
Generally, organizations don’t have that much time to experiment with non-obvious contractor arrangements. This includes time brainstorming ways they might be useful. If one is having a lot of trouble getting integrated (as a possible contractor), the best method I know of is to just work in one of these organizations for a while and develop a close understanding, or perhaps try to write blog posts on topics that are really useful to these groups and see if these pick up.
Around having things like a directory, I expect the ones to work will be more narrow. There are a few smaller “contractor hubs” around; or “talent agencies”, that assist with hiring contractors and charge some fee on top. I think this is a pretty good model for low-level work, and I’d like to see more of it. It does require people with either really good understandings of EA needs (or the relationships), or really good ability to do some super-obviously useful problems (like accounting).
If anyone is interested in doing consulting, one easy way to indicate so would be by just posting in a comment in this thread, or there could be a new thread for such work.
My guess is that this would be a tough sell, but I appreciate the idea.
One (small) positive is that I think contractor setups can be some of the easiest to get started with. If you’re just doing contracting with yourself, and maybe one other person, you don’t even need to set up a formal business, you could just do it directly. The big challenges are in finding clients and providing value. You don’t need much scale at first. But those things are challenges.
I imagine it could be considered nice for organizations to hire more new contractors than would otherwise make sense, as that would be effectively subsidizing the industry.
Thanks Ozzy, that’s useful. I don’t have time to respond in full or say much more, but I will mention:
After reflection I still think that the catalyst needs to be something that solves the coincidence of wants issue (i.e., consultants don’t know who would hire them if they took the time to advertise and work in this space and orgs don’t know who they can hire or if it would go well).
I think that next steps that could help could be as simple as i) someone creating something like this for consultants in EA and posting about it on the forum when filled and ii) the next time someone does a survey of EA leaders they could ask them to benchmark how much more they to spend annually on consultants if they had the talent available, and for what exactly, then share that on the forum also.
I think that you go narrower after the first two steps are done as right now we don’t have much to work with. Though maybe Luke’s suggestions are evidence enough to form narrow directories in those areas, or to have them as ‘specialisations’ in the initial database?
I think that a talent agency is a great idea. I can imagine a ‘head-hunter/recruiter’ with contacts across both the organisations and the consulting networks would help to accelerate things.
Agree that working in existing orgs is a good idea for potential org founders. I am warming more to the RP incubator idea!
I agree that doing things as a sole contractor is probably easier but that’s also a lot more stressful for many people as you assume full responsibility for the work and need to be across all of the accounting and other aspects. It’s probably got some of the issues of being a sole founder in that it asks a lot of one person. It probably works well in a lot of cases though.
Hi Peter,
I already created a directory for EA aligned consultants.
Best,
Jona
Excellent! Sorry, I didn’t know about this. I will promote it to a few relevant people.