Amy’s dad has been kind enough to recommend and lend me “Free Agent Nation - The future of working for yourself” by Daniel H. Pink. Mr Pink used to be Al Gore’s chief speechwriter and while doing this job noticed that more and more of his colleagues were leaving to strike out on their own to become self employed, independant contractors or micropreneurs.

The book drills down into statistics and first hand accounts to illustrate its main point, that is the move away from Organisation Man to the Free Agent. In practise this is a move from the traditional career ladder inside one company or associated companies towards micro or individual enterprise. Handily it gives a per chapter ‘quickie’ summary page, and stats throughout the book, which I will give you the most interesting below:

• The largest private employer in the USA is a Manpower Inc - a temp agency. Historically this was ‘job for life’ companies such as ‘ma’ Bell , IBM, Ford etc.
• Two out of three workers in California do not hold traditional jobs ie. permanent full time. Oddly enough work laws and social assumptions are based around everyone working like that.
• Netscape was formed in 1994, IPO’ed in 1995 and was gone by 1999. A 4 year life span - is that a project or a company?
• In 1982 (recession time) 12% of USA workers feared they would be sacked. In 1999 with a 4.3% unemployment rate 37% feared for their jobs.
• When Roosevelt introduced 65 as the USA’s retirement age the life expectancy of the average American was 63. Today it is 76 and rising.

One further observation in the book is for the Free Agent they often face the lure of expansion, yet the majority find that building into a larger company goes against their strengths. Thus a nanocorp culture is born which fits both a personal philosophy and due to its agility it could be seen as a competative strength.

It is not so much a guide to becoming a ‘Free Agent’, more validation of the growing trends in employment (or non-employment!) and its impact on society. There is a ‘resource guide’ containing steps to getting started and surviving as a free agent but that is not what the book is about.

To use a Maslow quote (the fuller one than in the book) :

“Real achievement means inevitably a worthy and virtuous task.
To do some idiotic job very well is certainly not real achievement.
I like my phrasing, ‘What is not worth doing is not worth doing well.’”

Quite simply make sure you add this book to your next Amazon order or pick up a copy when you are hovering around a bookstore.

Next up on the bookshelf is another Pink book - “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future“. The right brainers are often said to be the more creative and free thinkers and this covers the move from the information age to the conceptal age. All good relevant fun