Dynamic Work : remote working

Tomorrow's Leaders of Dynamic Workers

brucelynn — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:17:59 GMT

The Institute of Leadership and Management (an organisation after my other blog’s own heart) on the demands and opportunities for a new generation leadership in an era of Dynamic Work. The report is titled ‘Tomorrow’s Leaders: Managing Teams Remotely’ with the sub-title of “20th Century Bosses Hold Back 21st Century Working Practices”. It features both survey statistics on UK organisations as well as a number of case studies (BDO Stoy Hayward, South West Water, Circle Anglia) and tips for aspiring trailblazers. The abstract summarises:

“The ‘Tomorrow’s Leaders’ study, undertaken by Henley Management College, shows that managers are struggling to reinvent their working patterns to get the best from a growing army of remote workers, with visibility and presenteeism still used to judge performance.

According to today’s findings, remote working is on the rise. Three quarters (73%) of managers say flexible working is common in their organisation, and, more strikingly, 37% of all managers now look after teams who are either entirely or predominantly based away from the office.

However, although the majority of managers are working with teams that include remote workers, nearly half (44%) of respondents say managers are unprepared for the supervision of remote teams, and only 25% had received any training on how to manage such a team.”

Community Productivity

brucelynn — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:04:00 GMT

Microsoft has been talking about the ‘New World of Work’ for several years now and as time and conditions have progressed so has the vision. An updated presentation came from Katherine Randolph, Josh Henretig and Nicole Brown in a partner blogcast called ‘Enabling Telework Through Unified Communications. Good for Business. Better for the Earth’.

I particularly liked Katherine’s opening line, “The office is no longer a physical place, but more an environment where they can collaborate whether they are face to face or whether they are remote.”

For me the NWOW represents a natural progression in Microsoft’s ‘productivity’ vision. At the outset, Microsoft was all about ‘personal productivity’ and the cornerstone product was Office. But the ‘XP’ generation introduced capabilities that were less about the tool itself and how an individual user used it and more about how the software was used in a context of a team or organisation. At this point, the vision of ‘productivity’ really expanded to one of ‘organisational’ productivity and paralleled the rise of Microsoft tools as an Enterprise standard not just on the desktop, but also on the server with products like Exchange, Sharepoint and SQL Server.

Now I think Microsoft’s vision is expanding even beyond the walls of the organistion. The benefits to the new approaches to work accrue not just to the bottom line of the P&L, but also to the broader social welfare, environment and economy. Sort of a ‘Community Productivity’ if you will.

Above and below are a few of my favourite slides from the presentation (click on the slide graphic to see expanded, easier to read version)...

Credit Crunching

brucelynn — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:33:08 GMT

Some compelling numbers on the economic imperative for dynamic work in the imposing economic conditions from insurance company RSA highlighted by Katie Ledger in her Portfolio Working blog.

“When asked about the prospects for their businesses during this economic downturn, one third (34%) of respondents thought they would definitely be able to grow or maintain their level of business...A possible reason for self-employed home workers not feeling the effects of the current financial climate might be the advantages they have over larger corporations. Respondents felt the top two advantages are being able to provide a more flexible service to accommodate client needs and clients knowing that the owner-manager is the single point of contact.”

The respondents cited both flexibility on how they work as well as the economic, social and ecological benefits of less commuting as two of the top benefits to working outside the traditional office.

Dynamic Meetings

brucelynn — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:27:57 GMT

Bill Gates also used to comment that the power of the Internet was not in doing the same stuff in a different way (ie. taking orders over the web versus taking them by phone), but rather the interesting stuff was doing those things that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do without the capability. Reaching customers you wouldn’t have otherwise have reached, offering them something that you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to offer, processing the order in a way that you wouldn’t have otherwise have been able to do.

Yesterday, my team embarked on a bold new way of having team meetings through unified communication technology. We used Microsoft’s Live Meeting combined with its Roundtable device to hold a remote virtual meeting. The approach certainly presented some challenges to how to conduct such a meeting. How manage the conversations, how to cope with network latency, how to get the best out of the technology.

But the bottom line was that the tools did allow us to do something we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do. We were able to incorporate team members who would not have been able to be in the office itself that day (one had a doctor’s appointment for their ill child and another one was in Australia). Most importantly, on the day, many of us could have come into the office, but the only real reason was for the team meeting. This way we were able to have the meeting with out the expense, time and carbon footprint of the trip into the office.

The whole thing was a bit like a conference call on steroids. We could chat to each other, share presentations, all compose on a shared space and most importantly could all see each other on video. Yes, most of the time, it was just a ‘talking head’ looking not quite directly at the camera. But there is something about having someone’s face present that changes the whole feel of the interaction. It made it personal and ‘real’ and even a bit more enjoyable.

The meeting had its ups and downs, kind of like a person just learning how to drive a car and lurching forward in fits and starts. But at the end, 88% of the team categorised the meeting as ‘Some key learnings to make the next one better.’ And I think that that is the key here. What I used to say about the Internet to companies when it was just starting out was that it was critical for them to engage actively even though it then was quite immature. But, just as important as the maturity of the technology was the maturity of understanding it and its dynamics and how to make best use of it. That learning was best started early so that when it did become mainsteam (and it did become mainstream), then the company was ready and equipped to take advantage. I think the same dynamic applies to ‘live meetings’ and unified communications. Some day we will laugh at how rickety and unfamiliar things were today, but it will evolve into a business tool as central as a email, the mobile phone or wireless networking. And we will learn new skills to exploit it as we have with searching the web or hammering out texts. And with unprecedented pressures for costs savings, environmental conservation and family pressures, the demands for these new ways of working will accelerate very quickly.

Gas prices encourage telecommuting

brucelynn — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:42:38 GMT

Good piece from MSNBC on telecommuting subtitled ‘Employers reconsider traditional in-the-office work week’ looking at the economic drivers to more flexible work.

“Some employers are reconsidering the traditional five-days-in-the-office pattern as the national average price for a gallon of gas hovers around $4. The idea is to whittle down commuting costs for workers by allowing them to work from home or switch to four days of 10 hours each… The [Telework Coalition] estimates that more than 26 million Americans now telecommute at least some days, which would be about 18 percent of people employed nationwide.”