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53 million voting-age Americans

Politicos, meet freelancers.

More than one in three Americans (34%) is doing some type of freelance work

The relevance for leadership? Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and their lesser cousins have proved the power of the platform. They have shown that if your average 21st century citizen is given the tools to connect and the freedom to create, they will do so with enthusiasm, and often with an originality that blindsides the so-called creative industries.  The result is a growing awareness from those who think about business structures for a living, that good leadership is no longer about ‘taking charge’ or imposing a strategic vision but about creating the platforms that allow others to flourish and create. By way of example, Frederic Laloux – the organisational theorist currently developing a cult-like following across the world – offers a telling story about his meeting with Jos de Blok. De Blok is the founder and CEO of Buurtzorg, a Dutch nursing care firm that has grown from four to 9,000 employees in nine years, by devolving all decision-making down to small teams of nurses across the country. It’s a structure that leaves only 45 people working in central administration and management but has delivered huge gains in the efficiency and impact of nursing care in The Netherlands.

Like social media networks, their job is to create the frameworks that let others take decisions and make change.

It’s what being a leader in this new world is all about: helping others to generate change on their own terms rather than taking on the role of sole changemaker yourself.

he “silo effect” is caused by a remarkably small number of people who gradually drain the silo‘s grain. Its negative impact can be huge on the performance of the total team; eventually leading to a loss of business. However, I’ve seen clients successfully deal with these “silo effects” within the walls of their company. I’ve sat in on several Pull Design Workshops and have personally seen this transformation occur.

Keeping Your Skill Set Current Can Be Key to Keeping Your Job Small and midsize companies can’t afford to not keep up with technology, and neither can enterprise-level companies. This past fall, IBM notified employees, who it had determined needed additional training, they were required to step up their technological game, and that they would receive only 90% of their salary while embarking upon this additional training. Talk about an incentive to stay on top of changes in technology ! According to the article in the New York Times covering this move, some IBM workers received an email letting them know that an assessment had determined certain members of the team had “not kept pace with acquiring the skills and expertise needed to address changing client needs, technology and market requirements.” While some criticized the move, the reality is that employees can no longer be complacent when it comes to their grasp of technology and how to use it to help their businesses grow. That’s something to keep in mind, for sure, whether you’re just embarking on a career or whether you’re already in the workforce and want to make sure you have the skills you need to stay marketable.

The Modern Worker Needs to Be Constantly Learning

When I ask people close to Zuckerberg how, exactly, he has pulled off these achievements, I don’t hear a lot of anecdotes about him swooping in and personally making genius-level decisions that suddenly changed everything. Instead, they praise his inquisitiveness, persistence, ability to deploy resources, and devotion to improving Facebook and himself. He has a knack for carving up grand plans into small, doable victories. "Most of our conversation was about long-term strategy, and then we’d backtrack from there to what we should do over the next month," says Bret Taylor, who worked as Facebook’s CTO from 2009 to 2012 and who was at the company

or all of us who work with him, it’s like, Man, he is so good at improving."

Aim ridiculously high, and focus on where you want to go over the long term.