Free Agent: A Conversation with Dan Pink
by Jeff De Cagna
Jeff De Cagna, former managing director, Strategic Learning and Development for the Special Libraries Association. For comment or further information contact the Information Outlook - Managing Editor, Leslie Shaver at les@sla.org.
The world is changing. Instead of spending an entire career with one organization, workers are now bouncing from one place to another and even working for themselves. If an employee has skills that the company values, this arrangement can be beneficial for both sides. The employee gets freedom, while the organization gets a task accomplished without paying insurance and other benefits.
Dan Pink, who recently wrote about this phenomena in his book Free Agent Nation, sat down with Jeff De Cagna to talk about these workers.
Jeff De Cagna: Can give us the thumbnail idea of the free agent nation? What are we talking about here?
Dan Pink: We are talking about a free agentsomebody who works un-tethered from a large organization as a free-lancer, an e-lancer, a self-employed professional, an independent professional, an independent contractor, a temp, an interim executive, or the proprietor of a very small business. About one out of four workers in the U.S. economy are free agents, and that is what we are talking about. Free agent nation is a universe of roughly 30 million people who are working in ways fundamentally different from the traditional form of employment.
JD: I know you have your own taxonomy of free agents. What does that mean?
DP: The way people are working is changing faster than our capacity to describe it or count it. Our vocabulary is racing to catch up with this. So I've created my own, albeit imperfect, taxonomy.
I found it useful to group free agents into three categories. The first would be what I call soloistspeople who are classic free-lancers and migrate from project to project usually selling personal services.
The second category would be temps, people who work in interim positions for large organizations. Their jobs are usually mediated by some third party, such as a staffing agency or a temporary help firm. There are two kinds of temps. One kind is low-wage temps who tend to earn relative little money. Most of them want so-called permanent jobs. They are among the most disgruntled workers in the U.S. workforce.
At the other end of the spectrum are very high-end temps interim executives. There is an agency that places interim college presidents. There is an agency called CFOs to Go. It places interim chief financial officers.
I call the third category micro businesses. These are very, very small businesses. There are legions of businesses in this country that have fewer than five workers and sometimes just one or two employees. Seventy percent of business enterprises in America today have no paid employees. So I call these micro businesses.
An example would be Lindsay Frucci in Elkins, NH, who runs a company called No Pudge Fudge, which makes a no-fat brownie mix. She is a one-person operation. She is not selling services; she is selling a product. The company that produces it consists of her and her cat.
JD: Based on the work that you did for the book, what factors do you think set the table for the rise of free agency in the United States?
DP: One of them is the changed relationship between individuals in organizations. The social contract of work used to be that the organization would provide security and the individual would provide loyalty. Well, that bargain broke down in the late 1980's and early 1990's, and we have a fundamentally different bargain in which the individual trades talent for opportunity.
Another factor is technology. In the industrial economy, you needed large organizations to purchase, operate, and house the means of productionthe tools necessary to create wealth. The free agent economy is sort of like Karl Marx's revenge. Workers now can own the means of production.
Another factor is that companies have shorter life spans and no one can promise lifetime employment, especially in a world where most of us will outlive any organization that we work for. So the distinction between what is a company and what is a project is getting murkier.
A final factor would be prosperity. As people witness prosperity around them, they want more than a paycheck. They want a sense of purpose. They want to do work that matters. They want to work with great people. Many folks are finding it easier to obtain that meaning by working for themselves.
JD: There is a prevalent belief that the people go out on their own to do things that large organizations are not equipped to do. Where did see that fitting as you were working on the book?
DP: I don't think that explains every case, but it has to do with people recognizing that they have something that someone else wants to buy. It is not as if someone says, "I have a great new way to do graphic design." It is simply, "I am a great graphic designer, and the market will reward me for that. In fact, the market will reward me for that much more robustly than an organization would reward me if I stayed on its staff."
Now, I think in some cases, you are absolutely right. Go back to the No Pudge Fudge woman. She had a great idea. She said, "You know what? Everybody loves brownies, but no one wants the high calorie content. How about a no-fudge brownie mix? It has been tried before, but no one has done it right. I have a lot of experience in the kitchen; I think I can do it right."
Bam, a magic formula! It is a great brownie mix and she has something to sell.
JD: What is the impact of the Web on all of this?
DP: I think it goes back to the means of production point. Suddenly these tools that allow you to reach the entire planet are accessible to tens of millions of people for a relatively low price.
If you think about technology in general, the amount of technological firepower that a single individual can mar
shal today is incredible. I mean, my home office probably has more computing power than was on Apollo XI. A laptop computer today is more powerful than the big mainframes of only 20 years ago. It used to be that the only player who could get the tools would be organizations, and that is not true anymore. It is still tough to go toe to toe with a big company, but it is possible with these technologies.
JD: How should we think about the entry of women into the workforce as a factor in the rise of free agency?
DP: Well, I think it is a huge factor on a number of different dimensions. Free agency is the next chapter in the migration of women into the workforce. We didn't have women in the workforce in any large numbers until 25 or 30 years ago, and that first generation of women tried to play the same game that men were playing. I think a new generation of women are playing a very different game.
You really see this in the numbers. Women are becoming self-employed at 12 times the rate of men. Women are starting small businesses at an incredible clipfar faster than men. For many women, I think traditional corporate structures are uninviting, unfulfilling, and not something of which they want to be part.
There are many women who have hit the glass ceiling and decided to leave, but I think there are many more who see the glass ceiling, see what is above it, and say "I don't even want to go there, anyway." Instead of hitting the glass ceiling, they go out the side door.
I think that free agency offers people an easier way to reconcile the demands of work and the obligations of family, and I think that even in the most enlightened households, those demands press women more heavily than they press men.
I also think that the skills required to thrive in a free agent economyparticularly building relationships, nurturing relationships, and maintaining relationshipsare the sorts of skills that women are usually better at then men.
JD: How is free agency changing or impacting the way we understand networks, communities, and the whole notion of social capital?
DP: I think that free agency creates a richer and more robust form of social capital. I am not sure whether the traditional workplacewhere people inherit all of their contacts, inherit all of their colleagues, don't make a conscious decision about who to affiliate with, and are forced into arrangements with peopleis the best way to foster social capital. It is not a bad way to foster social capital, but I do think it is clear that social capital is essential for a society or an economy to thrive.
There are misconceptions that free agency erodes social capital in some ways, and I really think that is fundamentally wrong. I think that free agency actually fosters a much more robust form of social capital. That is why you have the proliferation of all of these networks.
To survive as a free agent, you have to be a trustworthy person. You have to be a caring person. You have to be a person of incredible integrity. You have to be a person who helps others. People who thrive are the one's who are best at adding to the reservoir of social capital and the people who are treacherous, don't have integrity, aren't trustworthy, and end up failing in a free agent economy.
In my reporting, I found a huge number of small groups. These free agent nations, small clusters of independent workers who come together to help each other on their businesses and to give each other advice about life, are a form of social capital.
JD: What advice or what suggestions would you offer people who are thinking about becoming free agents? What should people consider before they make that choice?
DP: Well, the worst-case scenario is that you go back and get a real job. So the worst-case scenario is really the status quo.
The second thing is to recognize that becoming a free agent is more about your own personal desires. You have to really think hard about whether you are able to sell something that others want to buy. The third thing is the skills and connections you have because those are the two really make-or-break elements of free agency.
JD: What is the most surprising thing that you learned as you were preparing the book?
DP: I think the biggest surprise was a big-picture surprise. When I started writing about this topic, I thought I was writing a very hard-headed account of the inexorable forces of information-age capitalism and how they were sending people to the periphery. This was about technology and it was a mega trend and very hard-headed.
Then after 70 interviews or so, no one breathed a word about the inexorable forces of information-age capitalism, and, instead, we are talking about values and emotions and those sorts of things. That was the biggest surprisethat so much of the individual explanations have relatively little to do with massive mega trends. These forces exist in the background. They are enablers, but the fundamental motivators are much softer thingsfreedom and authenticity and accountability and self-defined success and this yearning for doing work that matters.
JD: How would you describe the free agent's information use and behavior as compared to people in more traditional work settings?
DP: That is a really interesting question. I haven't given it a lot of thought, but I do think that there are differences between what a person has to do when he or she is working independently versus when he or she is working for an organization.
When you work for yourself, you are the head librarian. You are the chief information officer. I think that the independent worker looks at information much more shrewdly than someone working in an organization.
It's not that people who work in organizations look at information shrewdly. But I do think someone working independently has to be much more shrewd about finding and evaluating information because they are not having anything handed to them.
So, if they have a question about something, they might go to a colleague, but they can't go to a corporate library and have the corporate librarian find it out. They have to find it out themselves.
So I think free agents are more conscious of the role that information plays in their lives. Since they are the governors of their own time and attention, they have to be much more strategic about how they parcel that time out.
JD: What impact, if any, has the rise of free agency had on those people who still remain inside organizations?
DP: I think it is definitely having an impact. First of all, it is showing people who remain inside of organizations a new set of possibilities for their own life and their own careers. It's prompting them to rethink their own affiliation and attachment with the organization, and to think about "If Sue left, why shouldn't I leave? What is it about Sue that got her to leave?"
As more and more people thrive in free agency, I think the people who remain inside of organizations will feel less dependent on the organization. At the same time, it is not that when you leave corporate America to go to free agent nation, you have to renounce your citizenship in corporate America. You are not like a defector from Cuba.
Instead, more and more people are going to be holding dual passportsone in free agent nation and one in corporate Americaand they are going to migrate smoothly between the two worlds. This duality has a very profound effect on organizations and the people who remain in organizations because more people inside organizations have had the experience of being out on their own. I think that creates a fundamentally different relationship between these employees and their employers.
There are many free agents who go out on their own for a while and say, "You know, I don't like this" or "I am getting sick of it" or "I want to recharge my batteries."
They go back to work inside of a company, but they go back on very different terms because they understand their market value. They know they can survive without a corporate attachment. So they go back and strike better deals. They have more satisfying work arrangements, and I think that changes everyone else who remains in the organization.
JD: Do you think there is a market for information professionals trying to specialize in meeting the information needs of free agents?
DP: I think it is a very good business proposition because free agents are going through the same sorts of reasoning that companies went through 10 years ago where they say, "Oh, wait a second. I need to focus on my core competency." If your core competency is not information retrieval, but you need that for your business, it might make sense to outsource it. The best people to outsource to would be other free agents. So I think that is an extremely viable business proposition for information professionals who want to go out on their own.
Let's say that you are a great marketing person. Do you want to spend a couple of hours searching the web for a couple of facts when there is someone out there who knows how to operate every search engine, how to distinguish between what is a good fact and what is a wobbly one, and who can do the job in 15 minutes instead of the two hours you would spend doing it on your own.
JD: Do you think that Starbucks or Barnes and Noble or places like that have supplanted the role libraries used to play? Can libraries and the people who work in them serve as the knowledge brokers of the Free Agent Nation?
DP: I am not entirely comfortable with the trend of all public spaces and knowledge spaces being privatized because the great thing about America's system of public libraries is that anybody can go into it. The "free" is a very important and powerful point.
Starbucks is not free. Barnes and Noble is not free.
So I think the idea of people being priced out of entry, even though the entry is relatively small, is extremely dangerous.
Public libraries can become an essential part of the free agent infrastructure if they devote some of their physical space to something like free agent meeting places. Why not meet at the public library or go to free seminars on how to run independent businesses? Libraries can be extremely powerful, not only as a repository of information, but also as a gathering spot for communities.
Many libraries are offering access to computers and the web. I think that is another powerful feature because some people cannot buy these means of production. But if you can't buy them, you can at least use them for free at the public library.
The idea that people are going to be priced out of the entry into these things is extremely dangerous. But if libraries see themselves as places that are designed to expand people's horizonshowever we define thatthat would be fantastic.
I don't necessarily love the idea of people doing their research at Barnes and Noble. I am not sure it is good for Barnes and Noble and I don't think that it is right for the individual. I would love to see libraries become these thriving gathering spots for free agents and everybody else.
I grew up [in Central Ohio] in a place where the public libraries were excellent, and they were essential in me becoming the person I am today. In my tiny city of 14,000 people, we had an incredible public library. When I wasn't playing baseball in the summers, I would be at the library. The library used to sponsor these things for kids in the summer where you would read a book and tell a librarian about it. Then you would have to read 10 books and they put your name on a board. It was great.
I was listening to an interview with Phil Jackson, the basketball coach, and he was talking about some of the techniques that he used to get his players to drown out the crowd noise and overcome the pressure of playing in front of 40,000 screaming people. He told them to imagine a place where you would go to as a kida place where you felt more comfortable than any other place in the world. For some people it was a little nook in their house or apartment. For some people it was the back yard. For me it was a particular row in the enormous downtown Columbus public library where there were all these books. You can sit there as an 8-year-old child or 10-year-old child and have this enormous amount of information and excitement right before you. There is truly nothing like that sensation.
JD: When you are not doing interviews or talks about free agents, what do you like to do in your spare time?
DP: I lead a very binary life because my wife and I have two little girls. When I am not working, I am in my role as a parent.
When I am a free agent, I love what I do. So it is not as if I am craving time to escape from work. I am the luckiest person in the world in that I am able to make a living by talking to people and writing about it. So I am absolutely grateful for that.
I have had almost no days where I said, "Oh, God, I don't want to go into my office today." So I am very fortunate in that respect.
Then, when I am not in my office, I am chasing after children or being chased after by children.
Aside from that, I love to see movies with my wife and, since becoming a free agent, I have become a rather obsessive runner. I find long-distance running a cheap and effective form of psychological health.
In terms of my reading, I am a bit of a sucker for certain kinds of thrillersgritty, location-based thrillers. I just finished reading Carl Hiassen latest because I find Florida just such a funky place. I am also a big fan of George Pelecanos who writes about the seamier side of D.C. 
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