Most businesses around the world are small. Small businesses generate most new jobs. Most full-time and part-time jobs exist at larger companies. And all in between is the continuing rise of the freelance nation.

Now, while many of us who participate regularly in the weekly #TChat Twitter Chat are unemployable freelance free spirits who wax poetically — and I say that with all due respect — I’d argue that most of those full-time and part-time jobs are on the job, meaning required to be in the office, in periodic collectives to individual desk time, most of the time.

My fellow free spirits may throw me statistics saying, “But look — more companies are open to telecommuting; more people are working from home!” Maybe. And maybe they’re working from home only one day a week, or every other week. Not a watershed moment in the progressive world of work history, but better than a stick in the eye, as my dad always says.

Keep in mind that when start-ups are building teams, most prefer to hire the core teams in their near vicinity to ensure a cultural gelling of sorts (not counting the development teams, which could be all over). And the rest of the corporate world really does want to see the white of their employees’ eyes, even if they have offices all over the world and do talk virtually to one another.

Back to us unemployable free spirits — that’s my name for those of us who would have a really tough time confined full-time or part-time to a 5′ x 5′ cubicle and a cold, gray metal desk, complete with locking cabinets stuffed with unusable stuff. Unemployable free spirits are the ones who challenge the status quo, who launch new, innovative ideas and businesses, and who help to generate new jobs. We’re the ones who move and school when it comes to changing the world of work, who convince business leaders to lighten up and embrace social media.

We’re the ones who help to inspire self-management and empowerment and working remotely, even autonomously when need be (and we do need be). We’re the ones who say employment brand and corporate brand are one and the same and should be treated as such.

We can’t have us without the other. The very nature of the 21st century bold entrepreneurial spirit has risen from the ashes of companies and jobs burned right down to the ground, while the interconnected global economics still pull painfully like a grand tug-of-war over a foggy moat of muck and misery. The teams of us and them and you run along the moat banks until we find the shortest distances across, finding common ground in reaching the other side, some semblance of progress.

It’s then that the connective hardware and software tissues of choice unite us all collaboratively, the fleeting phantom sinews that appear in the mist.

That’s when the magic happens.

Thank you for joining us, and check out the slide show below of yesterday’s chat. Your tweets lent insight into just what, exactly, it means to be on a team today — and it means a lot. If you missed the preview, click here. We’ll see you next week.

Image Credit: Pixabay

 

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#TChat INSIGHTS: The Teams of Us and Them and You

#TCHAT RECAP: THE TEAMS OF US AND THEM AND YOU

Storified by TalentCulture · Thu, Jun 14 2012 14:46:18