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Please Submit your question about building and running your own VO if it is not already answered here or covered by the other VO material on our site.

Q: Is the VO Approach a new idea?

A: No
People and societies have been forming 'common interest groups' for many purposes since the dawn of civilisation. However, what is new about this idea is the doing of it. In conjunction with modern ICT, the pragmatic VO Approach has now made it possible for distributed groups of individuals, organisations and communities with a common interest to actually work together in the real world to deliver more Products and Services to larger markets while maintaining their independence.

Q: Does the VO Approach always Work?

A: No.
When its good its very very good. But when its bad, its horrid!

Q: How can your VO succeed?

A: Like any business, there are many factors that will make a difference between your VO's success and failure. No business, not even a flexible, resilient low overhead VO, can survive consistently poor strategic, tactical or operational activities. The keys to the success of your VO are:

Consistently delivering your VO's quality products and services to real customers in real markets at competitive prices;
Having a VO Membership of competent people who actively participate in your VO from the perspective of 'What's In It For Us' (WIIFU) as well as WIIFM;
Earning and building your VO's reputation with your customer base as a long term quality supplier;
VO business growth and good VO Cash flows.

Q: What are the major risks to the success of your VO?

A: The life blood of your VO is your ability to consistently deliver quality products and services to real customers in real markets at competitive prices. Anything that inhibits the flow of this life blood is a risk to the success of your VO. The risks include incompetent or non performing people, poor VO processes or practices, low quality deliverables, inferior products or services, lack of markets, few or unhappy customers, uncompetitive prices and many other things that you can think of.
Of all of these factors, the most critical are having:

VO processes that work
VO Members that really participate.

If you can get these right, everything else will follow.

Q: Can anyone join your VO?

A: No.
Although this is your call because it is your VO, our experience is that not everyone is well suited to participating in a VO. Responsible competent people who are good communicators, make things happen, have resources and are accountable for their actions will typically do well in a VO. On the other hand, people with limited skills or experience, no business network or resources and who also have an 'employee' mindset (or an expectation that there is a 'they' who are responsible for them) usually find the VO Approach to be unsatisfactory. Our advice is to choose your VO Members with great care.

Q: Should a person who is a full time employee of another organisation join your VO?

A: No.
Unless the person in question is very well advanced in making a real and genuine transition from being a full time employee to being a self employed person, and will have the availability to perform work for your VO, then they would be joining your VO with a strong expectation that your VO will provide work opportunities for them. So unless your VO can provide an ongoing flow of work to meet that historic employee mindset, then it would more appropriate for the employee to prove that they have become successfully self employed before you accept them as a member of your VO.

Q: Can an Organisation join a VO?

A: Yes.
When there is sufficient trust between a VO Organisation and the VO, a VO Organisation Member can provide its products, people, resources and services through the VO to address the additional markets and opportunities that the VO finds. When well focussed on its own business, a VO Organisation Member can also be well rewarded for recognising and developing opportunities for the VO. The caution is that for all sorts of good reasons, organisations can not usually resist the temptation of adding the infrastructure and resources to claim their VO's markets as their own over time. While it is possible to find many individuals who act with integrity, organisations that act with the integrity required by active VO Membership can be scarce. Accordingly, we recommend that at least one senior executive of a VO Organisation member is also a Member of your VO in their own right and that as such, they are responsible for the behaviour of their VO Organisation Member.

Q: Can a VO have Overheads?

A: Yes but
In its pure form a VO minimises its cost structure and maximises its functionality and flexibility by funding its minimal overheads expenses on a performance basis. This means that operating expenses for essential roles such as promotion, professional indemnity insurance and administration costs are funded from agreed reserves that are established as VO Roles (% of revenue / gross margin).

Q: Can a VO own Assets?

A: Yes but
The membership of a pure VO comprises distributed, accountable, performance oriented people, organisations and communities who already have their own business infrastructure and assets. When they join your VO, members simply leverage their current assets and resources to support their participation with your VO. Consequently, other than needing to maintain sufficient funds as the net asset backing for the VOs share capital, your VO does not usually need to own a lot of its own assets - unless they are an investment that generates a genuine positive return to the VO.

Q: Can a VO have employees?

A: The short answer is no.
In a VO, members are typically contractors who are rewarded for performing VO roles that deliver results. These contractors pay their own taxes after expenses using their own business structure. Our recommendation is that you consistently apply this principle in your VO.
The long answer is No but;
and if you think you have good reasons for departing from this fundamental VO principle, it is essential that any VO funded service must add, and must be seen to add, more value to the VO Members than the cost of those services to the VO Members. If you go down this path, remember that sooner or later you will be asking performance rewarded VO Members to fund services that are provided by employees who are paid regardless of the results they deliver. Be very careful and consult thoroughly with your VO Members before you add that employee.

Q: Do all VO Members have to find work opportunities for the VO as well as perform work?

A: Yes.
A VO works because all the Members of your VO
Gain Value from your VO with:

Access to a larger marketplace
$ Rewards for performing VO Roles
Support from your VO colleagues
Leveraged VO Promotion
Lower Input Costs
Dividends for participating as a VO Shareholder

and Add Value to your VO with:

Refering their 'not you' Opportunities to the VO
Supplying their Products and Services to the VO
Supporting their VO Colleagues

Although the more active 'marketing oriented' VO Members typically generate sufficient work opportunities to keep a number of their VO colleagues happily performing work at any one time, the continuity of your VO's 'work flow' eventually becomes a matter of balance between the work generators and the work performers. If this balance goes significantly off in either the generation or perform direction, your VO will not run at its best until the imbalance is corrected.
To keep a level playing field in potentially volatile markets, we recommend that your default membership selection criteria strongly encourage your VO Members to be people who can both 'Add' and 'Gain' value by their active participation in your VO.

Q: Can a VO become a Traditional Company?

A: Yes but
If unchecked the natural tendency of any organisation is to seek the funds to grow its own infrastructure. Consequently, if you want to stay VO it takes rigorous vigilance to resist the trend to conform to a more familiar conventional business model. It is very easy to find a good reason to rent a bigger office on a long term lease, pay performance guarantees to a non performing sales force, have a great car plan, retain a benevolent CEO, get a Sales Manager on salary to lead the way, and just one more person in Admin, and ... Before you know it, you are a traditional conventional company with the full annual / quarterly planning / budgeting / performance / quota cycle and you are living to work again.
If this is what you want, then gopherit - but it is not a VO.

Q: Can VO Members work for themselves and other organisations?

A: Yes.
One of the major strengths and attractions of the VO Approach is that it allows its members to maintain their independence and 'do their own thing,' perform work for the VO that they are competent to perform and also bring their 'not you' opportunities to the VO for their appropriately qualified VO colleagues to perform. As documented in the VO Business Model, the distinctions between 'Personal Work' and 'VO Work' require clear agreement within your VO Membership.

Q: What are the Management Roles in a VO?

A: People who work in a VO do so as consenting, co-operating, competent, communicating, self-managing professionals. Consequently, many of the traditional 'management stuff' is unnecessary and most of the rest is taken care of at an operational level in the performance of the various agreed VO Roles. If the VO adopts a corporate structure, the VO Board that is elected by the VO Shareholders advises and supports the Chairperson to provide governance and guidance on VO strategy, structure, process and practice. The VO Board also ensures that the VO satisfies legal and commercial compliance requirements and is run to satisfy the expectations of the stakeholders as expressed at their AGM.

Q: Is it a good idea to have 'sleeping partners' as shareholders in your VO?

A: No.
Since a VO typically leverages the existing infrastructure of its VO Members and those Members are usually already successfully self-employed or are organisations, it is unusual for a VO to have major capital funding requirements. In addition, since one of the keys to a successful VO is the vigorous participation of the VO Members, we recommend that your VO invites those VO members who consistently generate wealth for the VO's by 'Adding' and 'Gaining' value to become VO shareholders by way of a special resolution passed by the existing shareholders. This approach ensures that your most active members appropriately enjoy the additional reward of the Shareholder dividends that flow from their leadership and participation. However, to ensure long term VO dividend and share value growth, we also recommend that Shareholders can remain as Shareholders of your VO only for as long as they are active participants in the VO.