In short
“Flash teams” for faster, cheaper innovation—temporary groups assembled quickly from experts everywhere (via internet labor markets and AI-assisted coordination) to build prototypes or solve problems in weeks rather than months.
Guest backgrounds
Melissa Valentine is an associate professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She co-authored Flash Teams with Michael Bernstein.
Key claims
Flash teams are more time- and potentially cost-efficient than maintaining permanent teams because needed skills change quickly. Technology (internet, remote work norms, online labor markets, AI for staffing, onboarding, and coordination) enables “experts everywhere all the time.” Success depends on “launch” planning, role clarity, documentation, and an “integrating manager” who connects fragmented work.
Notable examples
A doctor’s emergency-room idea for an ambulance-arrival GPS display app became a functional prototype in six weeks using ~30 global experts. Examples also include internal flash-team-like efforts at Google and industry applications (e.g., mental health triage in Australia; marketing/brand via Chief Outsider).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Concept of Flash Teams
0:48 to 2:52
Discussion on the formation and effectiveness of flash teams in innovation.
“and we really didn't know what we were doing at all?”
The Need for Flash Teams Today
2:52 to 4:48
Exploration of the changing work landscape and the importance of flexible team structures.
“I think it's something that we might want to experiment with more at HBR.”
Real-World Example of a Flash Team
4:48 to 7:01
A case study on a doctor who created an app using a flash team approach.
“But like now that it's out, I'm seeing it's the book that the world needs because it's a moment where people are really worried about like jobs.”
Applications Across Industries
7:01 to 10:46
Discussion on how flash teams can be utilized across different sectors and industries.
“So we actually worked with a doctor who worked in an emergency room.”
Recruiting and Managing Flash Teams
10:46 to 14:00
Insight into the recruitment process and the challenges of managing flash teams.
“And there's a company called Catalant that does flash teams of like MBAs, basically.”
Understanding Flash Teams and Their Dynamics
14:00 to 19:30
Learn about the organizational structure and norms that optimize flash teams.
“So things like what software are we going to work on?”
Understanding Flash Teams and Their Dynamics
19:31 to 19:51
Learn about the organizational structure and norms that optimize flash teams.
“NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works.”
Understanding Flash Teams and Their Dynamics
19:54 to 20:04
Learn about the organizational structure and norms that optimize flash teams.
“Aside from, you know, I guess curiosity and adaptability, which you've addressed, are there any other sort of key skills or attributes that you think really successful flash team managers have?”
Key Skills for Successful Flash Team Management
20:05 to 28:00
Explore the essential skills and practices for managing effective flash teams.
“They're going to look at how all the pieces fit together.”
Building Dynamic Teams with Data
28:00 to 28:50
Learn how organizations can leverage data to dynamically match skills to problems.
“So, for example, do you already have, you know, like a database that tells you everybody's skills, everybody's availability, their roles, their expertise?”
Show all 12 chapters
Implications of Flash Teams on Employment
28:50 to 29:56
Explore the broader implications of flash teams on job stability and the labor market.
“So what about the broader implications here, though?”
Integrating Flash Teams within Organizations
29:56 to 30:39
Discover how organizations can implement flash team strategies to enhance project staffing.
“So I think the pieces of Flash Teams that we see as visionary and we see as useful for society is solving problems better and like using data, as I was saying, to sort of like structure your team better.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Michael Bernstein:Marketers know how it feels to invest in something that seemed incredible but didn't live up to the hype. We optimize for impressions but then don't see any revenue. Instead, get the highest ROAS of all major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 and get a$250 credit. Just go to linkedin.com slash ideacast. Terms and conditions apply.
0:36Michael Bernstein:I'm Alison Beard. And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
0:47Michael Bernstein:Adi, do you remember back in 2022 when we were thinking about our first all-day live virtual leadership conference, and we really didn't know what we were doing at all? But we hired a freelance consultant and we pulled together people from around the company who were experts in various things, us in editorial, others in marketing, product development, design, production. And then we actually put on the event a few months later. Yeah, and it went really well. I remember that extremely well. And it's one of my best experiences at HBR. And it was partly because it was an all-volunteer team, pretty much, of people who had other jobs but who came together for this really important task.
1:25Michael Bernstein:And we pulled it off. Yeah. So that is what our guest today would call a flash team. And she has studied groups like this who are pulled together very quickly. They don't normally work together and they develop a camaraderie and teamwork. They collaborate to put out a product or develop an idea more quickly than one would normally be able to in an organization. You can do this within organizations like we did at HBR, but you can also now, thanks to the internet, thanks to online labor markets, you can search all over the world for the right kind of expertise you need. And you can also get really granular about the type of skills that you're looking for.
2:08Michael Bernstein:And what's more, artificial intelligence can help you do all of this. So it's interesting because when we formed our own ad hoc events team, we sort of wondered, look, we probably need to set up a proper permanent team, right? So I'd be really interested in the calculation, you know, which is more effective, which is more cost efficient, whether you have the full time team or whether you just do it on a kind of ad hoc basis as needed. So my guest today is Melissa Valentine. She's a professor at Stanford University. And I think her argument is that because work is changing so quickly and you really don't know the skills that you're going to need tomorrow, it actually is more cost effective, more time efficient to build a business around flash teams.
2:51Michael Bernstein:It's not necessarily outsourcing the work, but it's having a really good idea of the talent that you can access outside and inside your organization, what skills they have, and then staff every single project really appropriately. So I learned a lot. I think it's something that we might want to experiment with more at HBR. She, in addition to being a professor, is a senior fellow at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She's co-author with Michael Bernstein of the book Flash Teams, Leading the Future of AI-enhanced on-demand work.
3:28Michael Bernstein:What exactly differentiates the kind of flash team that you're talking about from an ad hoc project team that might be put together within an organization?
3:38Melissa Valentine:So teams are recognized to be super valuable because you get lots of smart people, they get together, they collaborate. So what's different about a flash team is we started to recognize how technology can give teams different properties, different superpowers. So one of the technologies is actually just the Internet. And because of the Internet, it means that there's like millions of people all over the world who are expert in something that you might need. So with the Internet or with like online labor markets like Upwork, the search for who's available to help join your team is like so much broader.
4:11Melissa Valentine:Two is we're all a lot more comfortable with remote work now. So you can search from millions of people online, you can pull them together in a remote way. And then AI is also available now to sort of help us do the things that make a good team, like find people, bring them together, optimize the team staffing, help them talk to each other, help manage the team. It is a project team, but it's like now with superpowers because of technology.
4:34Michael Bernstein:Why do you think it's important for both organizations as a whole and then individual managers to learn how to source and manage teams in this way right now?
4:47Melissa Valentine:Well, it's funny because when I wrote the Flash Teams book, it wasn't like the book the world was necessarily asking for. But like now that it's out, I'm seeing it's the book that the world needs because it's a moment where people are really worried about like jobs. Will we have jobs in the future? And I think what the Flash Teams idea really shows is like all of us are entrepreneurs. Even if you're like in a big company, not necessarily at a startup, all of us have ideas. All of us can see here's a problem that could be solved. Here's an idea that could be brought to life. And so with Flash Teams, the barrier to what it takes to bring your idea to life or to solve a problem is so much lower.
5:24Melissa Valentine:I could just get a team started. I could get a team together in minutes. And with all of these tools, I can like be much more effective in solving problems.
5:31Michael Bernstein:And so the idea then is that there's huge both time savings and cost savings in assembling teams this way. I can get it cheaper and I can get the project done faster.
5:44Melissa Valentine:It is definitely time savings. There's possibility for real cost savings. And I think there's a hope that it can also be a lot more effective. There's a lot of tools that can help you get a better group together, like who's going to have more likelihood of success. or when you're in flight, you'll have like all these tools to kind of help see, you know, how are things going? What's the likelihood we're going to be successful? There's also like definitely some performance help that comes with all of these tools. We really wanted people to realize how accessible this idea is. So even if you're not somebody who's super tech savvy or someone who's really focused on software right now, sort of the mindset that we offer in the book is first recognizing, we call it like experts everywhere all the time.
6:27Melissa Valentine:It is really easy to find people to help. And so we try to like help people just kind of think about it in terms of like problems and tools.
6:35Michael Bernstein:It might help for listeners to just hear an example of a flash team that tackled a project that might traditionally have been handled within an organization, you know, drawing on people in different offices, maybe from that company, but instead was outsourced to this global network that you're talking about and able to accomplish those goals more quickly and more cost effectively.
7:02Melissa Valentine:So we actually worked with a doctor who worked in an emergency room. So he was one of our early users and he had this idea for an app in the hospital that was going to really help patients. So his idea was that when ambulances were approaching the hospital, they could have like a GPS kind of signal that was displayed on the emergency room wall that was like showing when the ambulance would show up. Because what he had noticed is that ambulances would show up and then then people would gather all the right doctors and like the right equipment and stuff. And he was like, what if we use that 10 minutes to like get ready?
7:33Melissa Valentine:So that was like his simple idea of like, what if we could build that app? Typically, the way that would work in an organization is he would pitch it to his boss, who might pitch it to his boss. They would finally talk to IT, and then IT would be like, that's not on the roadmap, right? So it would never get built. Because even though it's a very simple idea and would actually help, it's just not an organizational priority necessarily.
7:55Michael Bernstein:Yeah.
7:55Melissa Valentine:So this doctor, he was super entrepreneurial, and he wanted to just build this app. So he did convene a Flash team using our approach and using our software. and within six weeks they had built the app a functional prototype they'd actually like tested it with some like ambulance drivers and the doctor's local community and it was pulled together with 30 experts from all over the world i think that he ended up having like a cto we would call her who was like an engineer in bangladesh and she sort of oversaw the whole thing but what was really cool about that one is just how quickly it came together he had the idea he started like using this approach.
8:31Melissa Valentine:And then within six weeks, he has this like functional app that he was like taking around to like VCs and stuff. But it is something that theoretically he could have
8:41Michael Bernstein:pitched to maybe only his manager to take out of some discretionary budget that they might have had at the end of the year. Have you seen that approach work within organizations or companies where because it's sort of a smaller investment, it's easier to get approval for an individual manager to create a flash team to work on a particular project that they're excited about?
9:05Melissa Valentine:Yeah, yeah, you've got totally the right spirit with it. Since then, we've seen so many examples across so many companies where people are doing this. So that's a great, you know, example, like maybe a manager has like a smaller fund that could be used for it. But across all of the different examples, it can be like a big company like a Google, for example, like we met people who were doing essentially Flash Teams within Google. And so in that case, like you're not searching across the whole internet to find someone to come build something with you, right? You're just like looking across the whole like Google workforce and then using some of the tools of like optimizing the team staffing, figuring out who's available when, and like all of that is algorithmic.
9:44Melissa Valentine:You can use AI to do it better. You can use large language models to do it easily.
9:49Michael Bernstein:Do you see this as a tool or process or strategy that is sort of for technology forward companies or does it work really across industries?
10:01Melissa Valentine:One of the things that has been most exciting about flash teams is when we present this to groups, almost everybody has an idea of like what they would do with a flash team. Somebody was an employee at the Minneapolis DMV, and they just sent a LinkedIn DM and was like, we could do a process redesign, we could fix this dashboard or whatever. There was a group of mental health experts in Australia who were like, we could do flash teams of mental health triage, because it's a huge continent, so how do they find each other? And it really highlights the spirit of the book, is that we're all entrepreneurs, we are all problem solvers.
10:37Melissa Valentine:The takeoff so far has certainly been more within software, but there's examples of flash teams of business models. And there's a company called Catalant that does flash teams of like MBAs, basically. There's a company called Chief Outsider, and they'll pull together a flash team that will make like brand or marketing for you. So it's really taken off across different industries.
11:00Michael Bernstein:So I want to dig into some of the practicalities of doing this. And let's talk about recruitment first, you know, the idea of assembling your team. We've talked about those online labor markets like TaskRabbit and Upwork, and I know there are different ones around the world. How exactly do you start the process of saying, I have this idea, I don't even know what types of people I need to help me build it. Which market should I go to? How do I advertise the project? Just walk me through that process.
11:31Melissa Valentine:Yeah, so having done it a bunch now, we sort of like instinctively and intuitively kind of know how to think about looking for people to help. Recognizing the need for help, there's probably an expert who could help me with this. There's probably somebody who knows how to do this. And then starting to kind of formulate the first question that you have. In this day and age, the cool thing is you can even like take that to a large language model. Who would be the first team member if I wanted to make this software app? And I mean, I do that with my like exec ed classes now. I'll ask people like, what problem would you solve and who's the first expert?
12:07Melissa Valentine:And honestly, just asking that question to something like ChatGPT gets you a pretty good sense of the expertise you're looking for. The next thing that we tend to do is look to something like Upwork, like a large, you know, like an online labor market. And what I like to show people is that Upwork will have these really helpful profiles that tell you a lot about who the person is. And sometimes it will even have a little area that says available now. And then you can just interview that person for like 15 minutes. You pay them for your time and you just kind of get an idea. You say, you know, I want to be the first generative AI use case in my company.
12:44Melissa Valentine:What should I do? And you find the right expert and they can give you a sense of like spend 15 minutes talking to them and you have like a decent sense of it.
12:50Michael Bernstein:And are there really enough people who are making themselves available for gig work, they aren't full-time employees at other organizations, to be your expert on any topic?
13:03Melissa Valentine:I like to do a fun exercise with my undergrads where I'll tell them you need a professionally designed team logo before class is over. And they all kind of start being like, you know, there's no way and it's like stressful. But in every in every case, they've like found somebody within 80 minutes, like every team, every undergrad has like found somebody. What I'm trying to illustrate with that is, yes, something like Upwork has millions of people who are available. It's a very kind of like live dynamic network. So finding people to talk to and who want to help out is it is it's very fast. It's very dynamic.
13:38Michael Bernstein:For managers who are trying to assemble the sort of crack team of experts from around the world, what are some of the biggest challenges that you see them run into and how do they overcome them?
13:48Melissa Valentine:One of the chapters in the book, we have a phrase that I just cannot underline enough, which is you have to get the launch right. So if you put a lot of thought into the launch, things are going to go much better. So things like what software are we going to work on? What are some of the team norms? Like what is some of the team structure? Just having that kind of like place for people to land. so they show up with all of this entrepreneurial energy to like help solve a problem but it's like helping them know how to get started from the beginning and not spending a lot of time being like are we on teams are we on google meet are we on slack are we on whatever it is it's like you like deploy kind of this suite of communication tools and like the knowledge repository you just have that going at the start and then people get together and they just go and are there ever
14:42Michael Bernstein:problems, you know, in that you've hired the wrong person and have to get rid of them and replace them or a person's skills don't really match the project you're working for.
14:52Melissa Valentine:If a manager is like really kind of leaning into the flash team model, there's like two ways that I think they have to be ready to adapt fast. One is your plan is certainly not right. Your plan will certainly need to adapt like the moment you get there. So you spend a lot of time kind of like getting the launch ready. You push play and then, yeah, somebody shows up and they don't have the skill set or like one of the tools is down or like the internet is out somewhere. And so like from day one, you have to be ready to adapt. But then the second piece is because you're hiring so fast, sometimes it's not the right fit.
15:25Melissa Valentine:Maybe it's the wrong skill set. Maybe it's the wrong fit. But when you're going really fast and kind of like doing like a six week sprint, when just everyone's trying to get things together, we sort of have this, you know, HireFast FireFest. Now I do need to do a big asterisk here. We have a whole chapter about like being a good manager, being good to people. So like the gig economy can be exploitative. And that's like certainly not the intent here. The HireFast FireFest is not intended to be exploitative. It's intended to be people really believe in the idea and you've given them a chance to like really help build something that you also really believe in.
16:03Melissa Valentine:The group just coheres. It's been really fun to like build and like see how much solidarity can develop in these kinds of groups when people are just really building together. So if somebody is like out of sync with the group, it doesn't feel good to them. It doesn't feel good to the group. So sort of just like recognizing where the energy is really flowing and where things are really working and then just not letting something introduce a lot of dysfunction into a group that's pretty task focused.
16:28Michael Bernstein:Don't let things fester. Yeah. Yeah. Taking a step back, these online labor markets also make it very easy to sort of enter into contractual relationships with people such that you've agreed to pay them for a certain amount of hours or for a certain block of work. So that is handled up front.
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16:47Melissa Valentine:Yeah, so that's one of the technological capabilities online labor markets will give you. They will do the contracting. They'll know things about like the local labor laws. They'll handle like the IP or like the NDA and stuff like that. So a lot of that is handled in the labor market, which makes it really fast to just get started. We also see like the application of this idea in just large companies already. I mentioned a few of them. And there you already have like full-time employees who are already on all the platforms. So in that case, you're just pulling together a flash team internally, then that's also all kind of taken care of already.
17:21Michael Bernstein:Yeah. And then, you know, as a manager in that launch process that's so critically important, you and your co-author talk about establishing clear roles right at the start, which is sort of advice for any good project manager, right? Everyone needs to know what they're doing and have sort of clear assignments and no overlaps. And when there is an overlap, it's acknowledged and just sort of set out that framework before everyone starts.
17:47Melissa Valentine:Yeah, Flash Teams really brought our attention to the idea of role clarity, which is, as you're saying, I mean, that's a management classic, right? Always like a good practice to have. And the reason it's so important with Flash Teams is it's a group of strangers. So they're coming together. They've never met before. And it's like already instantly clear who has what expertise, what they're responsible for. So they can immediately start working as a team. And there are a lot of good examples of that happening in different places like on film crews or in hospitals. So those are places where you have temporary teams like this.
18:22Melissa Valentine:But I will say the other thing that's super helpful about role clarity, because we're talking about like not every manager knows exactly who to hire. If you've never done software before, maybe you don't know what is the difference between UI user interface and like UX, like user research. But you can just ask somebody that. They already know. They have a lot of role clarity. So they can start to teach you who they are, what their responsibility is, the kinds of decisions you'll make. And they'll just help you. They sort of teach you their roles. You become kind of like the general contractor.
18:53Melissa Valentine:And then they teach you what their expertise is. They teach each other what their expertise is. So that kind of role clarity just makes the whole thing work together really easily.
19:01Michael Bernstein:Yeah. I love the analogy of a general contractor. you're the same way a person would bring in trades people you know to do tile or carpentry or plumbing or electrical work you know you're doing the same thing for the project that you're working on it's just instead of them coming to a physical place they're coming to your sort of like online work hub to do that yeah exactly yeah exactly yeah they say that every day your business is late to ai you fall two days behind. But how do you keep up? The competition is only moving faster. Fortunately, there's NetSuite Next. NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works.
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20:03Michael Bernstein:Aside from, you know, I guess curiosity and adaptability, which you've addressed, are there any other sort of key skills or attributes that you think really successful flash team managers have?
20:16Melissa Valentine:when you have energizing vision of what success is if there's somebody who's there who's like this is what a solved problem looks like or this is what it means for this idea to come to life then that person is often like playing a really key like integrating function a risk with a flash team you know people aren't together they might be on different time zones it's just that the effort gets fragmented but if you have somebody who has that kind of like driving energy and they're very passionate about solving this problem, then they're going to play this integration role. They're going to look at how all the pieces fit together.
20:51Melissa Valentine:They're going to troubleshoot. They're going to problem solve. So yeah, there's a bunch of studies that we've done over the last, you know, 10 years studying flash teams. And I think that that integrating manager role is really important. That's without that, the flash team is much less likely to succeed.
21:06Michael Bernstein:And you also address the idea that they have to insist on documentation. There's a funny anecdote where the project managers just kept saying to everyone on Slack, yep, just look at the docs, look at the docs, look at the docs, because that's where everything is recorded to make sure people stay on the same page, right?
21:24Melissa Valentine:That's totally true. And that's actually the story of the same guy that I was talking about at the beginning. And he's one of our favorite examples because he was like so patient throughout that. And he did all of the like kind of back channeling where he was asking all of these questions. And like when the answers weren't coming together, he just kind of stayed persistent, you know, really playing that like integrating leadership part. But you're totally right. Like documentation is absolutely key because everyone is online.
21:50Michael Bernstein:And people in different time zones need to know what's happened while they've been gone. And, you know, I've interviewed leaders of all remote organizations and they say that's absolutely critical because otherwise, you know, the lack of coordination creates overlap work, miscommunication, you know, just a lot of mistakes that wouldn't otherwise happen.
22:10Melissa Valentine:Yeah, totally. It is foundational to remote work. And I'm not sure if this is where we're headed. The fun thing about it, I think, is that becomes like the data source that then is like feeding all of the AI tools that are going to help with more things like, you know, people knowing what they're supposed to do, like what decisions have been made and so forth. It becomes like the trail of decisions and then also the data set that the AI will draw on to like help people coordinate better. Yeah.
22:35Michael Bernstein:So talk about that, how you incorporate AI into designing a better, you know, not just team because of the people you've recruited or AI agents you've recruited, but because of the way the team is working together.
22:51Melissa Valentine:I was saying like the launch is everything and sort of the individual onboarding similarly needs to be very effective. When we first did a Flash team, we were relying on like 2017 UI. So it's, you know, like a description of what your task is. But now the onboarding is using LLMs. It can be like very dynamic, very interactive. You click into the Flash team, you're brought to the platform where everybody is, and you're welcomed by your own onboarding agent who tells you what you're doing and what platform we're on, who's your manager, who's your teammates, what everybody's doing. I mean, and that is happening in non-Flash teams to larger companies, that kind of onboarding, very interactive onboarding.
23:31Michael Bernstein:Are there tools that project managers or flash team managers can use to sort of foster the kind of teamwork you're talking about, the launch and then the coordination?
23:44Melissa Valentine:One of the examples that we have is a bot that can kind of help you decide how to experiment with your team design. So let's just let's say that you started out and you decided to launch your team pretty decentralized. And then over time, you're like, we're not going fast enough. I think maybe we could try like a more centralized or hierarchical team structure or whatever. you could develop a spreadsheet using even chat gpt that will like recommend to you like when's the right time to try a redesign and then how do you measure how the redesign went and then how soon can you try another redesign and then how do you tell it how it went so that kind of feedback loop where the manager like tries something collects information on how it went try something else i mean that's available to anybody and we really talk about just the capabilities and the kind of easy software hacks that are in reach for anybody.
24:35Melissa Valentine:And you can go pretty high tech with some custom software as well. So our lab does a lot of proof of concept software. We're not doing any like enterprise grade software that like somebody should come and like buy. If they want to support our research, they can get certainly available. But ours is very like proof of concept. We'll just be like, can you convene a team on demand hiring everybody in like 15 minutes? And then we prove it's possible.
24:59Michael Bernstein:Are there any other ways that you see AI enabling more effective flash teams?
25:06Melissa Valentine:Well, a fun one that we've been talking about a lot lately is AI simulations. And my co-author will talk about them as like what-if machines. So using like AI simulations, you can sort of take the five people you're considering hiring, you know, input their roles, some of their experience and you can simulate like what happens if this team is given this task? What happens if this team has this structure? And you can sort of simulate whether it's going to work. And then that helps you kind of like reverse engineer and like design in a certain way. That's been a pretty fun one.
25:40Michael Bernstein:And what about incentivizing teamwork? Because you're basically collecting a bunch of gig workers who are independent contractors and they want to get their work done. And ideally, you know, I'm sure they want the project goals to be met, but once their work is done and they're paid, you know, they don't necessarily need to see it through and help their colleagues who are on this Flash team with them. So how do you make sure that people really do feel like a team? Yeah, I think that the nature of remote work can kind of lend itself to that sort of
26:11Melissa Valentine:fragmentation. So part of the launch, I think, is thinking about where you need people to feel like there together, where you need cohesion and thinking about if there's a way to, as you said, like set up the, you know, the incentives or the accountability so that it's like a group level incentive or like a group level accountability.
26:30Michael Bernstein:And, you know, looking at all your experiments, looking at, you know, scenarios where this has been accomplished in companies, do you think that eventually, you know, it could be applied to almost every kind of work that's happening within our organization provided, you know, people can work remotely to do it?
26:47Melissa Valentine:I think the vision that we have with Flash Teams, kind of the vision of it, you know, there's all of this kind of like team science and organization science. There's like a recognition of like how we're effective together as a team or how we're effective together as an organization. And so the last part of the book really like thinks about if you were to use AI to sort of augment team science or use AI to kind of augment organization science, then it means your teams are going to be much more effective. Your teams are going to act and coordinate much more intelligently and also your organizations.
27:18Melissa Valentine:The part where you like get people together on the fly is important and recognizing that when they're working online, you're getting all of this data and the data can then be used as sort of like a team science exercise. I think that's the vision of like where it could head. And so I think that, yeah, for any industry, certainly they could be using data to like structure and design their teams more effectively. Yeah.
27:41Michael Bernstein:So if you're advising a C-suite leader who wants to sort of bring the culture strategy of Flash Teams to the group, what do you recommend they do? How do they introduce the idea?
27:55Melissa Valentine:I think the first step to me would be looking at what data do you have on your workforce? So, for example, do you already have, you know, like a database that tells you everybody's skills, everybody's availability, their roles, their expertise? Once you start to see, you know, like a data set of like a large group of people and you start to see how expert, you know, how like how many skills and like how much expertise there is. And then you can start to like think about more dynamically, like matching people to problems. That tends to be the kind of missing step that I see in a lot of companies.
28:34Michael Bernstein:Yeah, absolutely. And where the gaps are so that you do then turn to an online labor market to sort of fill in people as needed. And then maybe one of those people who helps you for several projects is a good potential hire because you've already worked with them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So what about the broader implications here, though? You know, because you're recommending that organizations try to move into this flash era, which inherently means that they have fewer full-time employees because they're pulling together teams ad hoc with the skills they need at the moment. But what does that mean for workers, you know, in terms of job stability, benefits, you know, like health care and retirement?
29:15Michael Bernstein:How does that change the labor market?
29:18Melissa Valentine:I think there's a real kind of need and opportunity for kind of society and leaders as a whole to like look at, you know, this question of like employment and look at all of the kind of social safety net that goes with employment at present. Society as a whole is like thinking about gig work, full time employee, you know, temporary employment and all of that stuff. I think that the Flash Teams perspective, I think we've tried to like really decouple that from like full time employment. You can take, for example, like even just like a job like Stanford, like I do like a different project every year, but I have full time employment.
29:56Melissa Valentine:So I think the pieces of Flash Teams that we see as visionary and we see as useful for society is solving problems better and like using data, as I was saying, to sort of like structure your team better. However, it doesn't need to play out in a way that is like precarious gig work.
30:11Michael Bernstein:Yeah. As you said, you know, it can be done within organizations. If you have a large global organization, you can staff projects more dynamically, almost in the way that consultancies always have, even though they've sort of required physical presence generally to send client teams to a particular location or destination or group of C-suite executives that they're working with. It's sort of like that model for any kind of work. Exactly. Well, Melissa, thank you so much for talking to me today and having me wrap my head around this whole idea. I hope I get a chance to experiment with a Flash Team soon.
30:47Melissa Valentine:Thanks for having me on.
30:51Michael Bernstein:That was Melissa Valentine, an associate professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She's the co-author with Michael Bernstein of Flash Teams. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a colleague and be sure to subscribe and rate IdeaCasts in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you want to help leaders move the world forward, please consider subscribing to Harvard Business Review. You'll get access to the HBR mobile app, the weekly exclusive insider newsletter, and unlimited access to HBR online. Just head to hbr.org slash subscribe.
31:26Michael Bernstein:Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Du, audio product manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist Rob Eckhart. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.
From the publisher
Across industries, organizations are struggling to move as quickly as they need to on key priorities and new initiatives. The solution for many, says Stanford's Melissa Valentine, might be "flash teams" -- project groups that can be instantly, efficiently, and cost-effectively brought together and organized via online labor markets and AI and other digital tools to solve any problem. She explains why companies and leaders should embrace this new type of collaboration, how flash teams work in practice, and the pitfalls to look out for. Valentine is coauthor along with Michael Bernstein of the book Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work.