Effective Communication for Flash Organizations (Part 1)

Flash organizations are interestingly, rapidly becoming more popular in the world today. In an economy where jobs are no longer secure because of layoffs and other unfair treatment by some employers, it is not surprising that people have found a way out for themselves.

A flash organization is the name that Professors Melissa Valentine (Management Scientist) and Michael Bernstein (Computer Scientist), both of Stanford University, call ephemeral setups to execute single, complex projects in ways that are traditionally associated with corporations, nonprofit groups and governments . A flash organization is developed by a pop-up employer, who just sets up the team to carry out a project, and thereafter disbands the team.

Flash organizations are not new. Industries like the movie, software development and events, have lots of pop-up employers; putting together the best hands that they can find to execute the production of a movie or an event, after which the team is disbanded.

It is important to note that this system best works with project-based organizations, and there are three key factors to making a flash organization work effectively: a reliance on data and computing power, the establishment of clearly defined roles (organizational structure), and – believe it or not – middle management or a project manager (PM). For a collection of people who don’t know each other and perhaps, are working remotely on the same project, clear direction is important.

This idea already works with outsourcing and contract work.  Many companies already allow their employees to work remotely. It’s a short jump to shift toward hiring remote workers per project and saving the overhead of having them on full-time staff.

What is the implication of this new paradigm on labor? People are definitely going to loose more jobs. They will have to worry about things like healthcare and retirement plans. They will also have to bother on the source of their next jobs and other competition.

No matter how this turns eventually, some skillsets will still be important and some people will still dominate this market.

In my next blog post, I will be preparing you for this new paradigm.