Archive for Work Design
by Jim Ware
August 21, 2009 at 12:38 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Management, Work Design
Here’s some new evidence about how cube farms destroy creativity and collaboration – or at least don’t encourage or enable productive work.
Harvard Business Review online has just published a provocative short piece by Laura Sherbin and Karen Sumberg called “Bulldoze Your Cubicles for Better Collaboration.”
The idea really isn’t new, and the data isn’t that surprising, but it’s nice to see the recognition growing that cubicles don’t work – or produce good work by their “inhabitants.”
Here’s one brief excerpt:
Companies are finally realizing what their employees have known for ages: Cubicle cultures just don’t work. With concerns about knowledge-sharing among older and younger generations of employees skyrocketing, organizations are concluding that impersonal “cube farms” discourage collaboration, stifle employee engagement and, as a result, strangle innovation at the exact time when it’s desperately needed.
Perhaps the most important idea in the article, however, is something I’ve long believed: Baby Boomer and Millennials/Gen Y have more in common than most people think–especially when it comes to how they view the workplace:
“Bookend Generations,” a study of how Baby Boomers and Generation Y view work, found that both Boomers and Gen Ys prize interacting with high-quality colleagues—so much so that both generations rank it equal to or higher than financial compensation. Far from glaring at each other across the generation gap, 58% of Boomers say they enjoy helping Gen Ys navigate the workplace and the same number of Ys report that they look to Boomers for professional advice more than any other generation.
The Bookend Generations report is available (for a fee) from the Center for Work-Life Policy.
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by Jim Ware
August 10, 2009 at 7:54 am · Filed under
Management, Talent Management, Tips for Tough Times, Work Design
Just found a good article in The Futurist about the future of the job market. In the current economy we’re all concerned about creating enough jobs to get back to something resembling full employment. But given the demographics of the work force, employers who think long term may have a very different challenge ahead of them.
This isn’t new news, but it serves as important reminder of how critical demographics is to thinking about the future.
This comment is from an article by Patrick Tucker in Examiner.com:
The newest issue of THE FUTURIST magazine features writing from career and labor experts John Challenger and Edward Gordon. The picture they paint of the future of work may prove surprising for a number of readers. For instance, despite the presence of millions of people out of work, a shortage of skilled labor could have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy in the decade ahead, according to Gordon.
The full article in The Futurist is available only to paid subscribers, but it can be downloaded as a pdf file for a one-time fee of $3.00. The essential message is simple: as the Boomers retire, there is likely to be a huge shortage of talent in the United States (and no doubt in other countries as well).
As an employer, you should start doing something about it now, while the current slowdown gives you a bit of a break. As an individual, do some soul-searching about what kind of job you want to be in five to ten years from now, and get started on the research and training you’ll need to have.
by Jim Ware
June 16, 2009 at 10:45 am · Filed under
Communities, Culture, Distributed Work, Management, Tips for Tough Times, Webinar, Work Design, social networks
Please join me and my partner in crime Charlie Grantham, along with Eric Bensley of Citrix Online, and James Hilliard of BNet next Wednesday, June 24, for a free one-hour webinar called “Keeping Your Team Connected in a Distributed Workplace.”
The webinar is sponsored by Citrix Online We’re very grateful for their continuing support of our research and ideas.
Again, the webinar will be on June 24, at 11 AM Pacific/2 PM Eastern. Register here.
We hope you’ll join us. We’re going to be talking mostly about the leadership and interpersonal principles for keeping members of a distributed team connected with each other, their tasks, and the company.
by Jim Ware
May 13, 2009 at 12:34 pm · Filed under
Economic Development, Management, Technology Management, Work Design
I’d like to encourage anyone interested in the future of work to consider attending the Worktech(tm)09 Conference in New York City on May 20. It’s being held at the Time and Life Building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas.
Our across-the-pond colleague and fellow futurist/author Phillip Ross, CEO of Cordless Group in the U.K., is behind Worktech, which has been held annually for the last several years. He’s an expert on the impact of new technologies on work and the workplace – and a very dynamic speaker.
Dan Johnson, head of global CRE Workplace planning for Accenture, and a member of our Workplace Innovation and Performance Network, will also be a speaker. He’ll be describing Accenture’s new workplace strategy and highlighting a case study from Accenture’s Tokyo operations.
There’s lots more in both speakers and networking opportunities.
You can register for the conference here, and download a pdf brochure about the agenda and speakers here.
Unfortunately New York is too far away from the west coast for me to get there, but I’d love to hear about the program from any of you who do attend. It looks like a terrific contemporary review of what’s happening in the workplace (and beyond) right now.
by Jim Ware
April 19, 2009 at 3:04 pm · Filed under
Distributed Work, Management, Work Design, productivity
<this is a cross-post from the Future of Work blog>
On April 2 Charlie Grantham, Diane Coles, and I delivered a presentation at the IFMA Industries Forum held in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Our major focus was on the economics of distributed work. We spoke first about the fundamental changes going on in the economy (familiar to anyone who visits here often, or is alive and breathing these days).
(The full presentation is posted online within this post; you can view it below the fold.)
by Celine Roque
April 15, 2009 at 10:42 am · Filed under
Web 2.0, Web Commuting, Work Design
I’ve just received my copy of “Undress for Success: The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home” by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish. As someone who writes about e-working (or teleworking) often, I can understand why, in the first part of the book, the authors brought up the fact that most surveys and studies don’t usually agree about the number of Americans e-working today. Why? Because different researchers and companies define the word differently. An excerpt from the book:
Some researchers count small businesses, others don’t. Some surveys include people who work from home as little as one day a year, while others focus on people who primarily work from home. Some fail to distinguish between paid and unpaid work. None separate out those employees and business owners who work at home from those who work from home.
To address the many incarnations of e-working available, the book is separated into several sections that address the concerns and needs of the following kinds of e-workers:
- Corporate telecommuters,
- Online freelancers,
- and home-based business owners.
Each of those three sections contain informative starter guides for beginners. I’m glad that they separated the sections distinctly so that, for example, those who are interested in convincing their supervisor to allow them to telework don’t have to read the section on how you can apply for freelance work online. There’s also a section on how to set up the technology needed for working at home, which can come in handy if the reader is intimidated by the technical stuff.
Although the book quotes several statistics, it also contains anecdotes from actual e-workers. These stories makes the idea of e-working more real to the reader, rather than a theoretical situation. This is essential for people who want to become practicing e-workers. After all, these numbers and stories are what bring the “fantasy” of e-working into reality.
As an e-worker for my entire professional life, I often forget how overwhelming the idea of working from home can be to people who aren’t used to it. With all the information available on the web, it’s hard to separate practical advice from scammy, short sighted ideas. Fortunately, the authors do a good job of providing a clear, concise guide in the form of this book.
by Patti Anklam
April 9, 2009 at 8:08 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Communities, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, Web 2.0, Work Design, social media, social networks
I’ve been working lately on two projects with companies building social networking platforms with a purpose. While some aspects are clearly around technology, features, and the like, there are also the subtle aspects that go into understanding how these sites will be used. In a meeting with one of the clients, we talked about this difficult area of how to ensure that the use of the site aligns with its purpose: will people interact on the topics that we want them to, will the site discourage irrelevant content or social tourists from joining?
The word “social architecture” came into my head (or all of our heads simultaneously, it’s always hard to tell, isn’t it, when an idea emerges from the collective consciousness in a conversation?).
Like a good web 2.0 doo-bie, I tweeted that I was interested in using the term but needed to understand it more. My friend and colleague, Andrew Gent, tweeted back a definition, but then went on to do much more: he researched it, thought about, and has written a wonderful blog post, Social Architecture, that offers the definition that he tweeted back to me:
Social architecture is the conscious design of an environment that encourages certain social behavior leading towards some goal or set of goals.
Andrew’s blog details the current use of the term with respect to social media as well as its history in the field of architecture. When I began my own superficial search, the thread I followed was biased toward the design of the interaction of various social media (Sam Huleatt: “To me, social architecture is best thought of as a cross between three elements: interface design, social media functionality and user engagement strategy.”) which didn’t reflect what I needed. Andrew has, I think, hit on the more sociological and social engineering (without the negative connotations of that term) disciplines needed to shape a user’s experience.
While Andrew’s context is the corporate intranet, where it is possibly simpler to design intent and purpose into the environment, my work is currently leading me to social networks in the world, a case where an individual company wants to draw people into a network to expand its field of vision and expertise. No answers yet, but Andrew’s exposition is a terrific start and I thank him very much.
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