Be a Leader, Like Beowulf!

"Beowulf," the epic Old English poem, is not just a gripping tale of heroism but also a source of valuable lessons for leaders in any era. As we delve into the world of warriors and monsters, we discover timeless principles of leadership that resonate across cultures and centuries.

1. Courage in the Face of Adversity

Beowulf, the protagonist, exemplifies unparalleled courage. Leaders, too, must confront challenges head-on. Whether it's navigating a turbulent business environment or leading a team through adversity, courage is the cornerstone of effective leadership. Beowulf teaches us that true leaders do not shy away from daunting tasks; they embrace them.

2. Lead by Example

Beowulf doesn't just give orders; he leads from the front. His willingness to take on the monstrous Grendel and later, the dragon, showcases the importance of leading by example. Effective leaders inspire their teams through action, setting the standard for hard work, dedication, and bravery.

3. Value Loyalty and Build Strong Alliances

Beowulf's success is not a solo endeavor. He builds alliances and surrounds himself with loyal warriors. Leaders, too, must recognize the value of teamwork and loyalty. Cultivating strong relationships within a team fosters a sense of unity and ensures that everyone is working towards a common goal.

4. Integrity and Honor

Beowulf is a symbol of integrity and honor. Leaders must uphold ethical standards and maintain a sense of honor in their actions. Building trust among team members and stakeholders is essential for long-term success. Beowulf's commitment to his word and his people underscores the importance of integrity in leadership.

5. Humility in Victory

Despite his remarkable achievements, Beowulf remains humble. Leaders, too, should exhibit humility in the face of success. Acknowledging the contributions of the team and recognizing that success is a collective effort fosters a positive and collaborative working environment.

6. Adaptability and Learning from Failure

Beowulf faces defeats and losses but learns from them. Leaders, too, must be adaptable and view failures as opportunities for growth. Being open to learning from mistakes and adjusting strategies is a hallmark of effective leadership.

7. Balancing Confidence and Prudence

Beowulf's confidence is evident, but it is tempered with prudence. Leaders should strike a balance between confidence and careful decision-making. Overconfidence can lead to recklessness, while excessive caution can stifle progress. Beowulf's measured approach in facing challenges highlights the importance of finding this delicate balance.

In the tapestry of leadership, "Beowulf" weaves a narrative rich with lessons that transcend time and culture. Whether leading a team into battle or navigating the complexities of the modern business world, the epic hero's principles of courage, integrity, and humility serve as guiding beacons for leaders on their own heroic journeys.

Navigating an Ever-Changing Landscape with Continuous Learning

In a world that's evolving at an unprecedented pace, the ability to adapt and learn continuously has become a key factor in personal and professional success. The rapid advancement of technology, shifts in global economies, and the constant emergence of new ideas make lifelong learning not just a choice but a necessity.

The Need for Continuous Learning

Gone are the days when education was seen as a one-time investment in the early years of life. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has ushered in a new era where skills become obsolete faster than ever before. In this dynamic landscape, those who embrace continuous learning gain a competitive edge, ensuring they stay relevant in their chosen fields.

Adapting to Technological Advances

Technology is at the forefront of change, and staying abreast of the latest developments is crucial. Whether you're a professional in the IT industry or a creative artist, understanding how technology shapes your field is vital. Continuous learning enables you to integrate new tools, platforms, and methodologies into your work, enhancing efficiency and innovation.

Navigating Career Transitions

Career paths are no longer linear, and individuals often find themselves switching industries or roles multiple times in their lives. Continuous learning facilitates these transitions, providing the knowledge and skills needed to excel in new environments. It's a mindset that fosters resilience and agility, allowing individuals to pivot when necessary and explore new opportunities with confidence.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

At the core of continuous learning is a growth mindset—an understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed with dedication and hard work. This mindset empowers individuals to embrace challenges, learn from failures, and persist in the face of setbacks. It's a mindset that not only fuels personal development but also fosters a culture of innovation and adaptability in the broader community.

Harnessing Online Learning Platforms

The digital age has democratized education, making learning opportunities accessible to people around the globe. Online platforms such as Workbench "Always on the Job!" offer a myriad of courses, workshops, and resources, allowing individuals to tailor their learning journey to their specific needs and schedules. From coding bootcamps to language courses, the options are diverse, enabling everyone to pursue their interests and passions.

In a world that's constantly in flux, the power of continuous learning cannot be overstated. It's a lifelong commitment to growth, adaptability, and resilience. By embracing the ever-changing landscape of knowledge and skills, individuals can not only thrive in their careers but also contribute to a more innovative and dynamic global community.

Work from home? Work from anywhere

Perhaps you are responding to an order to work from home? Or as an employer, you are considering the safety of your team, and your community? Working from home has gotten a big boost during this situation. But what about... remote work from anywhere? As the article at Techcrunch relates,

“Work From Home” is terrible branding, precisely because it fails to communicate the fundamental freedom that comes with these new policies. It’s not about further imprisoning us in our homes — it’s about empowering us to think and work exactly where we are personally most productive.

Sure, some remote jobs might have location requirements:

• Meetings: to be close in proximity to company for customer offices for in-person meetings
• Taxes: employment tax law requirements pertaining to their state or country
• Certifications: a job requires certifications that are location-specific
• Travel: a position is travel-heavy so you need to be close to transport hubs
• Time zone: addressing collaboration with peers a certain time zone

If you can dod the job one mile from the office, what is stopping you from one hundred miles, or the other side of the globe/ Working remotely increases flexibility and autonomy for staff. Technology such as the internet, video conferencing, collaboration platforms, and cloud services keep people connected. Attend meetings and be productive on projects from anywhere, anytime. You can also find more and better-qualified candidates, and incentivize to retain talent, and saving on overhead costs.
Read more here...

When a Chef is the Boss - Learn from Great Leadership

Here is a great role model, for these difficult pandemic times: Chef José Andrés. The celebrity chef is shuttering his Washington D.C.-area restaurants because of COVID19. He is converting many into "Community Kitchens" offering lunches to people in need.

It seems Andrés plans to scale the project across the U.S.A. through his disaster relief nonprofit, World Central Kitchen. Andrés and his non-profit have already helped serve over 3,000 people stuck on the quarantined Grand Princess cruise ship.

People of America...Important News: All my restaurants in DC area are closed until further notice. Here at @ThinkFoodGroup safety of employees & guests is too priority. Some restaurants will transform into Community Kitchens to offer to-go lunches for those who need a meal. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/3HTyT607ZI

— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) March 15, 2020

Andrés and his wife Patricia created the charity in 2010 to help feed people in Haiti after a major earthquake. Every year, the nonprofit serves millions of meals around the world to people recovering from disasters, and they are expert at getting a kitchen up-and-running quickly and working under difficult conditions.

WCK served close to 4 million meals in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, in 2017, and is still on task in PR to improve food security. Let's all take a lesson from this -- the time to help each other is now.

It Might Be a Good Time to Consider More Remote Workers

Worried about the heath implications of spreading contagions? Or maybe you are just seeking to bolster your team with a more geographically dispersed workforce.

My advice is to manage remote workers by focusing on accomplishments, outcomes, and goals rather than just workflow. Of course, you still need to put place those processes — repeatable processes are the key to continuous improvement. But micromanagement of off-site personnel will hamper productivity.

Plan for remote interactions at the outset: email, texts, conference calls, slack or other chat services. One difference between face-to-face communication and communication via email and chat is that it is difficult to determine a person's intent from electronic communication because there is no tone or facial expression to provide context. When face-to-face, you are absorbing body language and facial expression. Humans understand a lot from those cues — as much or more than verbally.

Both employees and managers should resist the impulse to overanalyze every word in every message and to read negative intent into brief replies.

Pro tip: set office hours a few days a month when everyone is in the same place at the same time — overlapping time zone differences.

Finally, by cognizant of the need to intentional facilitate productivity boosts through trust, as well as cultivating opportunities for personal interaction.

Achieving Simplicity in a Complex System

Mumbai is one of the largest cities in the world and an average working professional leaves home pretty early in the day to take the local train to commute to the work. Each day approximately 4,000 dabbawallahs deliver almost 250,000 home-cooked meals (for late breakfast and lunch) from the kitchens of suburban wives and mothers direct to workers in “the world’s most ingenious meal distribution system.”

The foot soldiers are Dabbawallahs, who pick up the home-cooked lunches in the suburbs, hop on trains, and deliver them, on foot or bike, to office workers in Mumbai. Later on, they pick up and bring back the same empty tiffins (the name for the metal containers used).

The tiffins consist of several stacked aluminum boxes with a carry-handle. Each container carries individual portions that separate curry dishes, bread, rice, desserts, and more. This means multiple courses. Tiffins come in several different compartments so as to separate starter, mains, and dessert. The tiffin serves to keep food in its original shape - no bruised fruit or mashed roti. The tiffin’s handle is at the top, keeping everything upright when being carried. Home-cooked meals are economical and can be more healthy.

While the system seems very complicated, it is the coming together of many elements, including the railway system in Mumbai. The dabbawallah rely on the train to deliver the lunch boxes around the city. Stefan Thomke, the Harvard Business School professor studied the system: “[the railway] sort of helps them in unexpected ways. It synchronizes the system because in Mumbai the railway is one of the few things that always runs on time. It forces the entire organization to run according to a rhythm.”

Another example of how simplicity aids the dabbawallah system is  the labeling of the tiffins. There’s very little information coded on the boxes. “For example, there’s no return address,” says Thomke, “but these boxes have to go back to the person who gave them to you.”  The simple color coding system acts as an identification system for the destination and recipient and origin of the tiffin.

The Dabbawala Association has been in business for over last 125 years. In 1998, Forbes Magazine recognized its reliability to match the Six Sigma standard. This means that the dabbawalas make less than 1 mistake in every 6 million deliveries. Be it a Steve Jobs or Picasso, all the great artists always had a penchant for simplicity. Value and efficiency is maintained by  keeping to basics. The process is very lean and uncomplicated. And the customer is the most important cog in this machine.

Read more here

WFH isn’t the only way to achieve improved productivity

Asynchronous Communication is the real reason remote workers are more productive. Studies show remote workers are more productive than their office-bound counterparts. As mentioned in the linked article, "...people gain back time (and sanity) by avoiding rush hour commutes. They avoid the distractions of the office. They regain a sense of control over their workdays. They have more time to dedicate to family, friends, and hobbies."

This is where asynchronous communication stands out -- when you send a message without expecting an immediate response. For example, you send an email. I open and respond to the email several hours later.
Synchronous communication is when message is sent and the recipient processes the information and responds immediately. In-person communication, like meetings, are examples of purely synchronous communication. You say something, I receive the information as you say it, and respond to the information right away.

Digital forms of communication, like real-time chat messaging, can be synchronous as well. For example Slack or other chat tools: someone sends a message, I get a notification and open up Slack to read the message and respond in near real-time. Even email is treated largely as a synchronous form of communication. A 2015 study conducted by Yahoo Labs found that the most common email response time was just 2 minutes.


Read more here...

A Huge Multi-National That Only Utilizes Remote Workers

There are obvious benefits to remote workers. Staff are more productive. It improves morale. It enhances talent recruitment and retention. And remote work offers cost savings. But how can a large organization manage?

Take page from GitLab, which has an all-remote policy. While officially based in San Francisco, the company has 850 employees across more than 55 countries, all of whom work from home. Company culture, of course, can be difficult to maintain when everyone is remote. GitLab workers stay connected through daily team calls and watercooler chats on Zoom and Slack, where employees often gab about non-work activities. "Visiting grants" help cover costs when staffers travel to regions where other employees are located.

Remote work can ease the carbon footprint of companies. It can also boost productivity and lower operating costs. But how to deal with the obstacles to effective dispersed teams? GitLab offers a few model processes.

For example, organizations should address how to ensure workers are,w ell, working. One of GitLab's core values: Measure results, not hours. "We can't measure how long you work," he says. "We don't want to measure it. We don't want your manager to even talk about it with you unless they think you work too much," says GitLab CEO Sijbrandij.

One area to address is to coordinate and communicate effectively across time zones GitLab does this by documenting everything. In addition to the publicly viewable merge requests, meetings and presentations get uploaded to YouTube. When employees have questions, they're encouraged to search the company's comprehensive (1,000 printed pages) online handbook.

Read more here ...

Remote Work - In the future, the norm, not the outlier

Throughout history, control has traditionally been centralized into various structures (governments, information providers, banks, corporations, etc). Certainly, some of this was necessary. Before the telegraphy,  the only way to get information was from newspapers. Depending on where a person lived, they may only have access to “stale” information many days or weeks old. And these information sharing mediums were limited to those who could physically get their hands on a copy, (or have it read to them when literacy rates were only a fraction of what they are today). Telegraphs and telephones increased the speed at which information could travel from point to point. Naturally, the internet changes the landscape for decentralized communication. So why sit in an office?

Clark Valberg, CEO of design software company InvisionApp, has made it his mission to modernize the workplace... by eliminating [the office] altogether. A decentralized workforce enables employers to access "passionate talent anywhere in the world irrespective of any geographic boundary," Valberg says, but implies "a renewed respect for the need for people to have a door that closes."

Today's world is built around instant, worldwide communication. Mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have shown that anyone, anywhere can disseminate information to millions of people, with just an upload. The nature of a team might be distributed -- or scattered. In either case, the actual number of working locations might be the same, but esprit de corps is very different. People on distributed teams arrive in that situation by design -- creating a stronger team by hiring the best people, regardless of location.



Read more here... and check out WeWork's first Dublin operation...

Want a Better Way to Do Things? Start Fresh with Zero Based Design

Want to achieve radical changes in your business? Have you become distracted from long-term goals? Are you too busy putting out fires to look past short-term tactics? Perhaps it is time to consider a shake-up

Zero-based design (ZBD)encourages people to cast aside assumptions to expand the scope of discovery. It comes from the term “zero-based budgeting,” an accounting principle that implies every line item in a budget is to be reevaluated on an annual basis, under the assumption that nothing should be sacrosanct.

The name was first coined by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick in their 2013 book, The Business Solution to Poverty. The authors delineated their methodology for building a business from a frugal, grass-roots “Zero Point,” that grew to deliver economic value on a societal scale.

While ZBD has evolved since 2013, a few activities stay central to its approach:

• Defining the Zero Point: More than a fictitious “blank slate,” the Zero Point is the suite of capabilities, systems, and processes you would keep if you were to rebuild your business all over again.
• Designing the North Star: A clearly articulated and accepted description of the ideal target state is given for the business, its people, and their customers.

With ZBD, it is necessary that the North Star is visionary. It frames the ambition for business and informs the roadmap of labor required to succeed in this best target state. It helps to elevate the thinking within the business and stimulate the proper designing and activity within the short and medium term.

ZBD starts with an observation, then looks for the simplest and most likely explanation. As a result, it can appear foreign to those familiar with the traditional inductive or deductive thinking that permeates business management. It some ways, it resembles the Lean (Toyota) Method for problem-solving.

For example, ZBD practitioners tend to observe human behavior and distill the most likely insights from what they have witnessed. Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference which starts with an observation or set of observations then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation for the observations, and the resulting insights, then inspire designers to generate game-changing ideas and then pose the question “how might we” rather than ask “why can’t we.” Such priming questions are crucial, as they foster the belief that innovative outcomes are achievable and that we can overcome obstacles that would otherwise be considered insurmountable.

Dislocation of the Workforce Known for Decades

Knowledge workers can work wherever is needed, as the communication infrastructure and information management systems support the workforce. Working from home (wherever that might be) is not limited to only when the weather kills your commute. With today’s internet, ever-evolving collaboration tools, and forward-thinking leaders, remote work is becoming the norm.

See this interview with the head of Intel, from 1981.

Productivity is enhanced. From a 2014 study, in which the travel website CTrip enabled a subset of  workers to work remotely on a regular basis, they then compared productivity to office-bound counterparts. With all other factors being equal, the remote workers ended up making 13.5 percent more calls than their comparable office workers. According to a 2016 survey of American remote workers, about 91 percent of people who work from home feel that they’re more productive than when they’re in an office.

Working remotely can make a worker more productive; according to studies, as long as the job is one that can be performed in such an environment, most people are more productive. Of course, raw productivity isn’t the only benefit. Having employees work from home can save businesses thousands of dollars per month (per employee) depending on office expenses, and could also raise employee morale, improving retention and collaboration. On top of that, remote workers take fewer sick days and less vacation time, giving them more work days overall.

Create Diverse Workplaces Using Artificial Intelligence Ethically

Companies should be aware of and recognize that artificial intelligence algorithms are created by humans with biases and beliefs -- and make every effort to eliminate those biases.

A.I. takes input data and races off to make inference and decision making about the world at lightening pace,” --Dipayan Ghosh, a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

Read more...

Work Outside for Better Health

Need a place to enjoy the sunshine, blue skies and a place to charge your mobile? OUTBOX is an innovative workspace offering on-the-go professionals a perfect spot to escape the office -- work and create in the fresh air. OUTBOX was designed in creative partnership with Architectural Technology students from the Department of Applied Technology at Montgomery College.

This month, the Outbox, an outdoor office space in Silver Springs (sic) in the US state of Maryland, reopened for the summer. It was created last year by real estate development firm Peterson Companies

Read more here...

Analog Planning Tool

Each January I start a fresh paper planner/calendar. While I live and work by my product, www.workbench.net, I also maintain a paper-based tool. This allows me to work on task lists, calendar and a short list of contActs wherever I am, whenever.

One planner that I like very much is the Hobonichi Techo. This year marks the second year the Hobonichi Planner is available in an English edition. Sonya Park, owner and creative director of select shop ARTS&SCIENCE, has directed the project for an international Hobonichi Planner that can be enjoyed by customers anywhere in the world. The simple page design provides ample freedom and is easy for anyone to use. Several features of the original planner have been maintained in the English version, including the one-page-per-day design, lay-flat binding and daily quotes. The stylish, textured black cover is stamped in gold with the Japanese characters for techo along with the ARTS&SCIENCE logo. The 2014 edition cover features a slightly more matte finish.

For the convenience of global users, new features of the 2014 edition planner include a listing of holidays around the world, and a “Coming Up!” page before each month to allow users to write down important dates and devise plans for the month ahead.

From 1101.com

Time Magazine - More In Touch than the Nobel Peace Prize

Time Magazine has named Pope Francis as "Person of the Year" -- the third pope so honored as Time’s Person of the Year (Pope John Paul II made the cover in 1994 and Pope John XXIII made the cover in 1962). Lilian Cunningham at the WaPo writes,

By the judgement of Time’s editorial staff, the pope–elected earlier this year after a surprise resignation by predecessor Pope Benedict–was the most influential global newsmaker of the past 12 months. Earlier this week, Time narrowed the finalists down to ten, then five. Pope Francis ultimately won out over Edward Snowden, Syrian president Bashar Assad, Texas senator Ted Cruz and gay rights activist Edith Windsor.
The magazine first released such a cover in 1927 under the name “Man of the Year,” and conferred the title on Charles Lindbergh for his solo trans-Atlantic flight. Since then, the annual covers have featured global peacemakers, U.S. presidents, tech billionaires, dictators and more amorphous concepts, like “the protestor” and “the endangered earth.” The editors’ intention is not to praise the figures selected, but to acknowledge their influence in shaping the news and history of the outgoing year. (Hence why Adolph Hitler made the cover in 1938.)

The magazine's cover story sometimes seems to make more sense than the actions of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, who have turned this esteemed artifact into a political football. At The Economist, recognizing an institution (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons -- a very noble cause, of course) and not a person reduces the heroic nature of past laureates, like Nelson Mandela (1993). This award seems consistent with the recent mediocre underwhelming recent winners (last year, the European Union or Barak Obama (2009), who had been president for just 12 days before nominations). The magazine's chart of past prizes calls out this pattern of suspect winners. An organization, not a person, won the fourth year. In an enlightened sign, the first woman won a year later. Yet non-Westerners weren’t recognized until the 1970s.

Why do such awards matter? Calling attention to those who do "good" (or, in the case of Time's criteria, just "do" important things, good or evil) in the world is important to the health of our combined human psyche. Dark days continue, economically and socially, around the world. When the person who invented an awesome tool -- used for both good and evil -- is humanistic enough to dedicate his earning to fostering peace, we should take the assignment of that prize with gravitas.

Software development -- not management friendly

While we might not all agree what methodology works best (waterfall, agile, some combination of X-treme, etc.), we all know that software projects can be painful.

But they don't have to be. Management and marketing teams generally have a difficult time understanding the mind of the creative types -- be they graphic designers or software developers.

There's a trick that I employ that has worked over the years: manage programmers the way beekeepers domesticate bees. With the right application of beer, flexible hours, and input into a project, I've been able to get excellent Java/Objectve-C programs to swarm in place. And then harvest the honey they produce (satisfyingly workable applications).

Having a group of programmers who get along, who enjoy a challenge, who work as a team means building a small group that has esprit-de-corps. One team I cultivated matched junior devs willing to challenge each another, and an expert coder that the rest (including gem) looked up up to. Not for pair programming, but as a mentor and a high-level problem solver.

If the team gets too big (or, even, too productive), management and sales will take a big interest in what is going on in the developer department. But these are not robots working on the line to churn out, well, lines of code. The suit-wearing business types find that developers are unpredictable, odd-hours-keeping and anti-social, to boot. Planning, attending in-person meetings, working on schedules, producing reports -- these are anathema to creatives.

Seeing developers struggle with the team aspect of productivity in an organization can be painful. I've worked with software experts who could easily figure out the most effective way to write an algorithm to fulfill the defined requirements. But he was out-of-pocket when the team needed to design a solution that would not negatively impact a downstream system -- if the problem wasn't in his code, he had no ownership of it. And solutions frequently were inefficient or a long time coming.

Ultimately, that developer moved on, but I learned a valuable lesson -- team building helps everyone understand how to leverage each other's strength. Instead of a waste of intellectual capital, teams can find synergy through mutual understanding and -- best of all -- cooperation.

Orwell has nothing on the NSA consultants writing white papers

Over at my fav online magazine comes revelations of wide-spread "corporate speak" used to pepper NSA documents. The insidious nature of obfuscation and deliberately vague word-smithing helps lend credence to the agency's desire for ubiquitous/universal surveillance.

Here are some excellent examples from the leaked document:

“We must proactively position ourselves to dominate that environment”
“Fully leverage internal and external partnerships to collaboratively discover targets”
“a collaborative information space that mirrors how people interact in the information age”
“Drive an agile technology base mapped to the cognitive processes”
“Integrate the SIGINT system into a national network of sensors which interactively sense, respond, and alert one another at machine speed”
“Collectively foster an environment that encourages and rewards diversity, empowerment, innovation, risk-taking and agility” [Which reminds Vulture South, the Human Resources sector seems to have contributed to the infiltration task-force]
“Enable better, more efficient management of the mission and business by establishing new, modifying current, and eliminating inefficient, business processes; by strengthening customer relationships; and by building necessary internal and external partnerships.”
“Align and standardize administrative business processes”
“Champion the development of a unified NSA/CSS U.S. customer engagement strategy”
“Counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor*”

This kind of language deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words -- euphemisms primarily meant to make the truth sound more reasonable. This intentional ambiguity in language or actual inversions of meaning disguises the nature of the true message.

The Business Climate in Washington is as Cold as the Weather

With so much of the Washington DC economy wrapped around work for the U.S. federal government, it is no surprise there is a chill in the air, even for a brisk February. President Obama is asking Congress to stave off "sequester", but many are bitterly resigned to the across-the-board budget cuts that seem inevitable. After 18 months of uncertainty (well, mostly) over an administration change, many were ready to get back to work on valued contracting opportunities such as Eagle II and others.

Defense contractors are pulling an "ostrich" move -- seemingly in total denial about the impending tsunami.

The sequester is a package of automatic spending cuts that were part of the Budget Control Act, which was passed in August of 2011. The cuts, projected to total $1.2 trillion, are scheduled to begin in 2013 and end in 2021, evenly divided over the nine-year period. The cuts are also evenly split between defense spending, with war spending exempt, and discretionary domestic spending, which exempts most spending on entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid. The total cuts for 2013 will be $109 billion, according to a White House report.

Austerity hasn't helped other governments deal with the economic downturn, particularly in my adopted homeland of the Republic of Ireland. In fact, such measures may be more than a bitter pill -- they may in fact retard growth overall.

Telework - the future. And more productive

(Tom paraphrasing/citing here...)

Many firms are uncertain about what policies on home working to adopt. As a result, firms in very similar industries adopt extremely different practices. For example, in the U.S. airline industry Jet Blue allows all regular call-center employees to work from home.

The trade-off between home-life and work-life has also received increasing attention as the number of households in the US with all parents working has increased from 25% in 1968 to 48% by 2008 (Council of Economic Advisors, 2010). These rising work pressures are leading governments in the US and Europe to investigate ways to promote work-life balance. For example, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) published a report launched by Michelle and Barak Obama at the White House in summer 2010 on policies to improve work-life balance. One of the key conclusions in the executive summary concerned the need for research to identify the trade-offs in work-life balance policies, stating:

“A factor hindering a deeper understanding of the benefits and costs of flexibility is a lack of data on the prevalence of workplace flexibility and arrangements, and more research is needed on the mechanisms through which flexibility influences workers’ job satisfaction and firms’ profits to help policy makers and managers alike” (CEA, 2010)

First, the performance of the home workers went up dramatically, increasing by 12.2% over the nine month experiment. This improvement came mainly from an 8.9% increase in the number of minutes they worked during their shifts (the time they were logged in taking calls). This was due to a reduction in breaks and sick-days taken by the home workers. The remaining 3.3% improvement was because home workers were more productive per minute worked, apparently due to the quieter working conditions at home.

Second, there were no spillovers on to the rest of the group – interestingly, those remaining in the office had no change in performance.

Third, attrition fell sharply among the home workers, dropping by almost 50% versus the control group. Home workers also reported substantially higher work satisfaction and attitudinal survey outcomes.

Finally, at the end of the experiment the firm was so impressed by the impact of home-working they decided to roll the option out to the entire firm, allowing the treatment and control groups to re-choose their working arrangements. Almost one half of the treatment group changed their minds and returned to the office, while two thirds of the control group (who initially had requested to work from home) decided to stay in the office. This highlights how the impact of these types of management practices are also ex ante unclear to employees.

Read the full report here...


- Posted by Tom/Bluedog

The 21st Century Employee Model - distributed workforce

Dan Pink chronicled the growing ranks of people who work for themselves in his 2001 book, Free Agent Nation. Many people may have started their own shops to become a part of the freelancer nation, even larger organizations can use freelance workers or others in alternative employment arrangements to help meet some of staffing needs.

In the multimedia/video/film world, experts come together to create, write, shoot, edit and distribute products. Such ad hoc teams form the basis of knowledge work that is creative, and profit-focused.

Such ad hoc project may involve work that requires less than a full complement of staff to complete and has immediate benefits. The work may involve frequent discussions between client (requester) and the team. One of the difficulties of having unaffiliated exerts work in groups on a project (software development, a video, a research paper, etc.) is that there are always a few who do not get fully involved in the project. This is an easy trap to fall into. Usually, one or two of the team members know much more about the topic, tools, or subject matter, and so end up putting the majority of the project, document, proposal, or whatever, together. Others are more adept at creativity, spreadsheets, running the software tools, etc., so these people end up doing a few specific tasks. Problems arise when one or two do all of the work. The rest of the group, with a lack of activities to keep them busy, often end up left out, underutilized, and even put off. Shortly, the stakeholders get frustrated with disorganization and the 80/20 rule kicks in: one or two people do the lion's share. For most, this lessens the benefit of such ad hoc cooperatives.

This can be easily avoided.

Staring out with a strong plan, and getting participant buy-in upfront makes the way forward clear. Providing an easy-to-understand project plan (perhaps with a GANTT or other visualization) and schedule keeps everyone focused on the goals. Assigning and tracking tasks, with everyones' input, results in measurable progress. If you have chosen your team members well, self-motivation will be evident.

It is not uncommon for many of us work regularly with colleagues based in different buildings, cities, countries, and even continents. Members of the work group may be in different time zones, speak different languages, and be of different cultures. Providing feedback and encouraging communication -- in real time or off-line via comments, discussion forums, email or even texting -- promotes bonding and ensures team members know they are valued.