In a competitive talent market place like the US where finding the right resources can be a challenge, companies have adapted their organizations and cultures in order to be able to work with external and remote talents. There is a smooth working relationship between the in-house and external teams. Effective collaboration is encouraged and keeping teams motivated is a priority.

In France, employers still believe the notion that in-house teams are much more driven and devoted compared to their external counterparts. However, that notion is changing due to globalization and the rise of the millennial culture, and their change in expectations.

Today more than ever, a winning team can be internal and external. By blending the granular business knowledge of your in-house team with the external talent experience of working across a range of projects and industries, you can form a powerful development team.

The concept of Fluid Organization

The fluid organization offers practical building blocks, integrates the best of self-management and hierarchy, and helps generate the full force of the organization’s potential, according to Arne de Vet and Filip Lowette.

In the past 20 years, the growth of technology and the pressures of competition have obsoleted the inflexible, slow-moving, insensitive orgnzational structure.

Companies are realizing that merely being digital isn’t fluid enough. There is a need to supplant the traditional approach with the different structural approaches that make smaximum use of the individual and collective talents that reside therein. They must invest in longer-term corporate innovation programs to stave off disruption. Even tech giants such as Amazon, Tesla, Google, GE are organized in smaller teams that often cut across business lines and market segments. Why that?

Reason number 1: Remaining competitive

How an organization is structured determines its ability to remain competitive and relevant. The traditional structure allows exercising more control and thus offers more stability. But it doesn’t make the best use of today’s talented and expensive human resources. It also creates an environment of dependence. When you have a fluid and open team, accountability and decision-making are distributed within the team. The fluid organizational structure has even more benefits when you need to manage an internal and outsourced team. 

With hierarchy almost non-existent, the in-house team can work like well-oiled cogs with the outsourced team. A less defined arena is created where both “leaders” and “followers” collaborate to master the tasks at hand. It infuses passion and purpose among the workforce and they set themselves up to solve problems nimbly and quickly. Such a model is more biological than logical and thus encourages spontaneous and free-formed reactions to what is needed immediately to accomplish the mission at hand.

Reason number 2: Attracting Millennials 

Millenials are looking for two main criteria when making career choices:

• Purpose
• Flexibility

As an employer, you need to offer them a flexible framework, a project-oriented project.

Large companies, in particular, find it challenging to attract and retain young talent. The younger generation of employees does not like being limited to a certain set of duties and loves to explore their career paths. Also with the rise of micro-entrepreneurs(previously called auto-entrepreneurs) in France, there has been a need to make changes to the French business structure. It has rather become a norm these days, that workforce must be malleable. Employees should be free to build connections, and continuously co-design paths of action as they move.

Conclusion

All these reasons are exacerbated if you plan to develop in the US. As an unknown European company, you will have a hard time hiring talented people although this is when you most need expertise.

Outsourcing part of your team is a great solution and can also be a way for you to start setting up a new type of organization.

If you’re looking for guidance on building a new organization for your US development, feel free to contact us!

Marie Buhot-Launay and Vipra Arolkar