How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing?

February 23, 2009 at 4:04 pm · Filed under Change Management, Distributed Work, Management, Web Commuting

I am very pleased that Capital Magazine, based in Dubai, has just published the second installment of an article that Charlie Grantham and I wrote about organizational resistance to Distributed Work – and what to do about it.

The article, “How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing?“, appears in the February issue. It’s available online, though free registration is required.

This version of the article is actually a revision and update to a three-part series that ran in our own Future of Work Agenda newsletter a couple of years ago – available as downloadable pdf reprints here (Part One), here (Part Two), and here (Part Three).

We’re pleased at the continuing attention this issue is getting. It can’t be said often enough: there are very real – and completely understandable – reasons why so many organizations resist adopting distributed/flexible work arrangements. But there’s also a highly compelling business case for moving into the “work anywhere” world of the 21st century.

Why do you think resistance to an obviously more productive and more attractive way of working is so prevalent?

Nine Tensions Tensing

January 2, 2009 at 9:20 am · Filed under Change Management, Management, Networks + Networking, Tips + Pointers

Stewarding and working with networks has some science (the science of the structure of networks), but it is mostly art. Because a human network consists of a set of relationships, it is in constant change. This is the very nature of networks. On the fifth day, I summarized the broad areas of purpose that can be ascribed to networks. Today, I offer nine sets of tensions, each a continuum, that are always at work in networks, whether they are made explicit or not. Distinguishing them, and bringing them to the foreground in network design or diagnostic is a critical task of net work.

Briefly:

1. What is the balance between the value of the network to the network and the personal value that individuals receive by being part of it?
2. Has the network been structured in a top-down way, with rules of communication and decision making, or are the network’s properties (structure, governance) emergent, flexible, and responsive to environmental context?
3. Is the membership of the network closed, or is it open to anyone to participate?
4. Does the network horde and and generate knowledge internal to the network or does it actively solicit and include external views, ideas, and opinions?
5. Is the purpose of the network and the value it creates focused on outcomes and results, or do members participate for the promise of the discovery and dialogue?
6. Are the interactions among members of the network oriented toward transactions that are task-based, or do the interactions principally support exchange and creation of knowledge?
7. Is the value produced by the network primarily tangible or intangible? Is there a balance between tangible and intangible, and does there need to be balance?
8. Are the norms of the interactions, outcomes, membership rules, and governance structure codified, or have these evolved through the life of the network such that they are known and passed down as tacit knowledge?
9. Where does the network live? Does it exist only when members are together face-to-face, or only through online participation?

Managing and balancing these tensions is the work of not just the network leader, but of all members. Discomfort in a network may indicate that one of these tensions has passed the boundary set for it, and that balance needs to be restored.

Recounting:

• Eight Principles
• Seven Leaders Lessons
• Six myths of networks
  
• Five purposes
• Four design facets
• Three network tools
• Two network sources
• One network lens

Fighting Internal Spam that Hurts Productivity

November 20, 2008 at 8:21 pm · Filed under Change Management, Collaboration, Intranets, KM

Apparently, President Obama will not be allowed to have his blackberry with him. It is a security risk and he wouldn’t be in compliance with the Presidential Records Act if he carried it around. Imagine that. An efficient use of technology is a security risk. But then it got me thinking. Do organizations depend too much on email? Has email become a lazy way to communicate and collaborate? With all the copying and blind copying going on in emails, is it serving as more of a distraction than a productivity enhancer? 

A recent IDG report highlighted that there will be 40 trillion inbox clogging spam e-mail messages this year resulting in smart companies building separate email system – email systems that are detached from the Internet.On the surface, it may seem excessive to build a private email system to avoid spam. But the strategy does have merits. Its not that employees won’t be able to email the outside world (many of them need to just to do their jobs) but rather it’ll separate external email from internal communications.

Now lets see if we can take this thought process a little further. What if employees were limited to say a hundred emails a day. And if they went over that limit they were charged 25 cents per email sent. What would that do to the organization? Would it mean more meetings? More stopping by each other’s desks? Better and more efficient uses of the corporate intranet? A reduction in knowledge sharing? Increased productivity as employees would be spending less time cleaning up their inboxes? 

It is hard to know but it might be one way to fight what I’m going to call “internal spam” just as private email systems fight public spam. This doesn’t get much attention but I’m willing to bet it hampers productivity and fuels laziness. 

One More Time: How Do You Manage Telecommuters?

September 7, 2008 at 4:36 pm · Filed under Change Management, Distributed Work, Management, Web Commuting, Work Design

 (this post is adapted from a similar one I just posted on the Future of Work blog, “Managing Telecommuters – Chapter 573.2“)

“How do you manage people you can’t see?” – that’s probably the number one question we get asked whenever we discuss the financial, environmental, business continuity, and social benefits of telecommuting (or, as we prefer to call it, flexible/mobile work).

And it probably won’t go away anytime soon. It’s a legitimate question, even though we believe the answers are reasonably well-known and not all that profound.

Anyway, with all the recent concern about gas prices and global warming, telecommuting (by whatever name) has been lots of attention lately. The most recent report I’ve seen is an Associated Press story by Joyce M. Rosenberg that appeared last week in a number of print and online publications (“Letting staffers telecommute requires management“).

Rosenberg’s focus is on the necessity for managers to reach out, to spend more time talking to remote employees by phone, and generally to focus more on results than on hours worked.

Here’s one small business owner speaking about one of his remote employees:

“The biggest issue I have is tracking time and knowing when he’s working,” said [Lloyd] Princeton, the president of Design Management Co. “The doubt starts to happen when he has offsite meetings — various doctor appointments or the vet.”

But, Princeton said, “he gets the work done. He does quality work for clients.”

That last sentence is critical. As we say all the time, “Manage by results, not by walking around.” Establishing clear performance goals and defining deliverables, budgets, and deadlines is Job One for managers of telecommuters.

But of course there’s lots more to it than that. Over the next week or two I’m going to offer some more formal guidelines and ways to think about establishing and managing a telecommuting program. And I’ll suggest at the outset that technology is critical to making telecommuting/flexwork work, but by itself IT is only a tool; as with any tool what matters is how you use it

The most important thing to remember is that it’s not just a matter of sending people home, or letting them come and go. There are a number of critical legal liabilities – to say nothing of management challenges – that will jump up and bite you if you don’t think them through in advance of launching a telecommuting program.

The benefits are enormous – for companies, for communities, for individual employees, and for the planet. But they don’t just happen naturally. Check back here frequently for suggestions and recommendations.

Tags: telecommuting management distributedwork flexwork futureofwork

If Your App Were an Employee

August 18, 2008 at 6:30 am · Filed under Change Management, Information Architecture

Kathy Sierra, author of the Head First books through O’Reilly, used to write a blog until something bad happened (a stalker?).

Anyway, her blog is still up and I happened upon it recently. One of her posts from 2007 is simply fabulous for any company that designs software apps — or for any company choosing software apps to use.

Through a series of funny graphics she compares software apps to employee types. In other words, if your app were an employee, what type would it be?

Here is a sample of one of the 8 “app types”:

In the comments to her post other people join in and suggest additional app, er… employee, types.

It’s a fun and memorable way to take a look at an app to see how well — or poorly — designed it is and how it appears to the user. Her post should be required reading for product managers, software programmers, QA staff — and project managers evaluating new software purchases.  (And maybe for some employees you know.)

Read Kathy Sierra’s post about if apps were employees — warning: some of the language and graphics are “irreverent”.

Web 2.0 is Changing the Way We Work: Report from McKinsey

July 31, 2008 at 6:59 am · Filed under Change Management, Culture, Enterprise 2.0

McKinsey has just released the results of a global survey on adoption of Enterprise 2.0. Its results are not dissimilar from the AIIM survey earlier this year (see my earlier blog post), for example, they state that the principle reasons for slow adoption are: management’s inability to grasp their potential financial returns, unresponsive corporate cultures less-than-enthusiastic leadership

More interesting for the future of work, they asked, “How, if at all, has your company’s use of Web 2.0 technologies and tools changed the way the company is managed and organized?” The responses include:

• It has changed the way we communicate with customers and suppliers (38%)
• It has changed the way we hire and retain talent (16%)
• It has created new roles or functions in our organization (16%)
• It has changed the way our organizations is structured — e.g., a flatter hierarchy (14%)

The survey also broke down the results into the categories of companies who reported satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools and those who did not. Of those who are satisfied, 33% report both that the technologies have created new roles or functions in the organization and changed the way the organizations are structured.

Other interesting notes from this great study:

• Companies in which it is the business units, rather than IT, leading the initiative have more success

• Satisfaction is greatest in Asia/Pacific (40%), with Europe and North America trailing at 20%

• Satisfied companies are using Web 2.0 technologies more extensively for interaction with customers (the “Community 2.0″ phenomenon)

Much more food for thought is in this study (breakdown of the use of tools internally, with customers, etc.) and I do hope that more detail is forthcoming on, specifically, the new roles and functions in the organizations and the ways in which companies are restructuring. This data will point us toward the future of work.

Enterprise 2.0 — The State of E2.0 as per Practitioners

June 20, 2008 at 2:33 pm · Filed under Change Management, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Reviews, Web 2.0, social networks

I’m still integrating and thinking about what I heard at the E2.0 conference in Boston a week back. My thinking was helped by a review of the excellent videos that are now available. Andrew McAfee moderated a panel whose membership was drawn from people who presented their (successful) case studies of E2.0 implementation. The panel represented a number of perspectives on introducing social tools:

• Simon Revell, of Pfizer,* adopted a “just do it” approach, introducing the tools, creating edgy introductory videos (see “Meet Charlie”), and nurtures the successes.
• Ned Lerner, Sony Computer Enterprises, responded to top-down management directives to use these tools (easy in a company whose business is internet gaming).
• Pete Fields, Wachovia*, who developed a concept for an integrated tool set that connected to corporate communications policies, and worked across the organization for 18 months to get buy-in before launching.
• Sean Dennehy and Don Burke, CIA*, who were inspired by Cal Andres “The Wiki and the Blog” to explore Wikipedia and see how discussion and history pages could naturally support the way that intelligence analysts work.

(* indicates a video of this case study is also available, on the same page linked above).

McAfee started by acknowledging that Enterprise 2.0 hasn’t yet taken over the planet, for a variety of reasons:

• The tools are not yet perfected
• Management is impeding adoption in some way
• Users are slow to take up the tools

There was general agreement that the current use within these organization is less than 10% of the employee populations, but each see that the growth is continuous in a positive direction.

Many of the “lessons learned” from these early adopters will sound quite familiar to those of us who have been on the leading edge of introducing technologies for collaboration and knowledge management into organizations, but there are some new twists. What works:

• Acknowledge and reward the early adopters and champions
• Pfizer has consultants available to help business groups get started and use tools appropriately
• Change management is essential. Wachovia involved organizational development, organizational pyschologists, and corporate communications, but still underestimated the difficulty of traction beyond the early adopters
• Look for ways to implement the tools “in the flow,” as part of work. Look especially for existing work processes that can be vastly improved and implement there. Organize around big problems, and don’t keep all the social tool usage under the radar.

Cautionary tales:

• Middle management can be harder to convince than senior management. (They are rewarded for “making the trains run on time,” not for encouraging people to spend time learning new tools.)
• It’s faulty to assume that what’s true on the web will work the same way in the enterprise
• Fight against lockdown. Turn down requests by users to have “private” spaces accessible by only a few people (yes, this one from the CIA!)
• Not all organizations are ready for transparency.
• Don’t assume that because everyone can have a voice that decisions will be made by the majority (the crowd). Leaders must learn to use the opinions of the crowd to inform and shape decisions, not to make them.

True to the spirit of web 2.0, the conference site (linked above) remains available as a community archive of presentations, comments, and interactions. What is the spirit? I liked Pete Fields’ definition of “Enterprise 2.0:”

Connecting people for the purpose of deriving business value

Browsing through this site should help you find people with whom you might connect to delve deeper and find more… to help with your own journeys.