Dave Desforges began piloting "Work From Home" solutions over 3 years ago. His role required identifying additional candidate requirements and necessary remote work practices for both employees and managers at Sun Microsystems. His current work encompasses blending appropriate technology, organizational practices, and workplace environments to support mobile and distributed teams.
Jim McGee is currently a Director at Huron Consulting Group. He has spent much of the last 30 years working to understand, design, and apply information and technology innovations in organizations. Before Huron, Jim taught at the Kellogg School and was one of the founding partners of DiamondCluster International. With Larry Prusak, he was the co-author of Managing Information Strategically (Wiley, 1993). Jim has both an MBA and a doctorate in Information Technology, Organization, and Strategy from the Harvard Business School.
Regina Miller has more than 18 years of experience in Organization Development, Human Resources, Leadership Development and International Operations. Regina recently launched a global consultancy called The Seventh Suite which assists growing companies bolster their competitive edge via aligned strategy and progressive people practices. Her last corporate job was as the VP HR/OD for Oskar (Vodafone) which has been dubbed “one of the fastest growing mobile operators in Eastern Europe.” More info here.
Giovanni Rodriguez - Through a combination of luck and persistence, Giovanni has worked in the company of some of the most interesting and colorful leaders in several worlds: the law, theater, and technology. Today, he is a principal at Eastwick Communications, a Silicon Valley PR agency, where he advises both emerging companies and market leaders on executive leadership, public speaking, marketing strategy and media relations. He has worked for, consulted and advised numerous businesses and organizations including HP, Stanford University, Fujitsu Computer Systems, Cadence Design Systems, VMware, the American Arbitration Association, and the Unified Court System of New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University (Religion and Anthropology), and he has done graduate course work at the Columbia School of Journalism and N.Y.U.
Jim Ware is a cofounder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program. He has over 30 years experience in research, executive education, consulting, and management, including five years on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He was the lead author of The Search for Digital Excellence, (McGraw-Hill, 1998), and holds Ph.D., M.A., and B.Sc. degrees from Cornell University and an MBA (With Distinction) from the Harvard Business School.
Today marks the real beginning of La Rentrée, when the French return from their 2, 3, 4 plus weeks of summer vacation. In fact, for most retail and restaurants, tomorrow is the day, as they are usually closed on Monday. My experience last week makes me wonder how much longer there can be a real "rentrée" here. Many schools started last Monday and the commuter trains I rode on Friday were virtually full. The news is reporting that some tourist locations are hurting as more and more families are taking shorter vacations, and those vacations are being spent at the homes of relatives and friends, leaving hotels less than full during the peak season. Sure, the French are a long way from losing their standard five/six weeks of annual vacation, but vacation habits seem to be changing.
As an American, I have to admit being jealous of the tremendously generous benefits afforded to the French employee. Yet, having heard the horror stories of being an entrepreneur in France, I realize how difficult those benefits makes it for small companies to succeed. France is braced for big social movements and strikes in late September/early October as people react to government reforms designed, among other things, to make things easier for businesses, in the hopes that it will decrease the unemployment rate.
But back to vacation. I just returned myself from a 2.5 week vacation, during which I stayed in one place, and spent most of my time relaxing vs. running around "touring." It felt exceedingly strange. My usual vacation is one week spent frantically travelling about seeing things and doing things, and a return marked by tiredness vs. rejuvenation. This time, while I checked my email once per day and had to take care of a few work items, for the most part my days were spent reading, getting ready to eat, eating, napping, reading while laying in the sun by the pool, doing a little embroidery, getting ready to eat, eating, watching a movie, then sleeping. Day after day. I got a great tan, put on a couple of pounds and feel simply fantastic. What a great way to prepare for the hyper busy fall months!
Speaking of the fall months, I've got a couple of great interviews lined up to share with you over the next couple of weeks, and will have some commentary on other recent news and events. Stay tuned!
Today's New York Times carries an intriguing story about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's apparent anger that his own company's commitment to making all information available on the web includes information about him, of all people!
The story ("Google Anything, so Long as It's Not Google"), by Randall Stross, highlights Schmidt's refusal to speak to anyone from CNet after that firm published a story by reporter Elinor Mills, who simply used Google.com to compile everything she could about Schmidt.
Come on, Eric, you're basically a good guy. How can you be so inconsistent as to think that the transparency you've created for all the rest of us shouldn't apply to you too?
One of the most profoundly important (and disturbing) things about the Internet is that fundamentally no one is in charge. One of the individuals responsible for that design is David Reed, a computer scientist from MIT.
As far back as Jethro and Moses in Exodus, we've applied hierarchy to bring complexity under control. Many have characterized Jethro as the world's first management consultant. One of the reasons that hierarchy works so well in organizational settings is that is addresses the problem of information overload on managers, where middle managers serve to consolidate and route information through the hierarchy.
However, computers are not people and hierarchy is not the only, or necessarily the best, solution to information management problems. Reed, along with J.H.Salzer and D.D. Clark, wrote a seminal paper in the early days of the design of ARPANET and TCP/IP called "End-to-End Arguments in System Design" that laid out the reasons that hierarchical solutions were a bad idea in designing a network of the scale and complexity envisioned for the ARPANET. Those design insights were baked into the basic architecture of TCP/IP and are one of the core reasons that the Internet has grown as widely and rapidly as it has. If you hope to understand how the net and network thinking in general will continue to impact the future of work, this had better be one of your starting points. "End-to-End Arguments" is a pretty technical paper, although it is manageable; you might find "The end of End-to-End?," also by Reed, a better starting point.
More recently, David has been exploring other notions about how markets and technology interact in ways that don't necessarily mesh with our default assumptions. In particular he's done interesting work on why eBay and other internet companies have thrived but handing significant power over to their customers with the notion of Group Forming Networks.
Like other thinkers, the value of looking at what David is up to is twofold. First, the ideas themselves are powerful. Second, watching how someone smart tackles problems can give you insights into how you might tackle other problems more productively.
Interesting article in this morning's NY Times on computer science education and efforts to develop a richer and deeper perspective on how technology skill connects to other skills and needs inside organizations. It strikes me as another case example of a broader trend to find a new balance between specialization and general skills in organizations:
Edward D. Lazowska, a professor at the University of Washington, points to students like Mr. Michelson as computer science success stories. The real value of the discipline, Mr. Lazowska said, is less in acquiring a skill with technology tools - the usual definition of computer literacy - than in teaching students to manage complexity; to navigate and assess information; to master modeling and abstraction; and to think analytically in terms of algorithms, or step-by-step procedures. [A Techie, Absolutely, and More, NY Times]
From the AP article: "An analysis by the TeleGeography research group found 2.7 million subscribers nationwide [emphasis added] in the second quarter, compared with just 440,000 a year earlier."
That's about 5X growth in one year - and that's all with commercial providers, so it's not even counting the millions of Skype users. Bottom line: VOIP has passed the tipping point. It's another important milestone on the road to tomorrow. -- jim ware
In my The Play Ethic at Work post, Rags from Un papier, commented on blogging at work and also wrote the following post. I want to respond accordingly because he brings up some important policy related topics.
Rags writes "Regarding Blogging at work Miller of The Seventh Suite wrote to me saying "yes I believe lots of people are blogging at work - all the more reason to give employees the chance to blog like Sun, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, etc...".
Rags goes on to say "I think blogging at work and employers allowing blogging is not an easy black and white decision. I think I am somewhat cynical about people blogging at work. A disclaimer, " No I am not part of the management, I am just another peon". According to Technorati's numbers the first thing people seem to be doing at work is to post a blog article. This probably is on top of the usual surfing activities like reading personal mails and news. Now one should also assume that the blog posters spend time reading other blogs as well."
In this season of "open enrollment" (the time in companies - usually in the fall when people have a chance to change and/or enroll in benefit health care plans,) I am reminded about the scary nature of the healthcare situation in this country especially for those of us who are self-employed. When I first launched my consulting practice, The Seventh Suite, I knew I would have to address the issue. Here is a post I wrote called Management Diva Joins a Union a while back that explains about a very necessary and progressive organization here in NY called Working Today that enables freelancers to join a union for group coverage. It is open enrollment time for the members of Working Today. I am reminded how lucky I am to have joined this group and have a good healthplan. I hope there are other organizations like this out there serving the needs of contractors and freelancers now and moving into the future.
I'll reserve my thoughts on play and fun at work until I read this book by Pat Kane for myself. (I am not so big on the whole fun/play thing or at least calling it that but more on that later...and maybe I'll even decide to reserve an open-mind on the topic!)
Kerabu points to a cool blog called The Play Ethic by Pat Kane who has written a book called The Play Ethic. It will be published in the UK at the end of September. "Kane expresses the hope throughout the book that the play ethic can be a bridge between results driven management and meaning driven employees in the emerging style of modern organisations."
In particular, "... Generation Xers and Yers who make up increasing percentages of today’s workforce have been brought up in a culture of play – gaming, play-stations and interactive technology – and we need to adopt different patterns of employment to accommodate their needs. New workers are looking for something more fulfilling and enriching – something that matches their experience. Perhaps, therefore, instead of looking for a work-life or work-play balance, we need to seek more ways to integrate the two."
Nasdaq - a stock exchange that exists only virtually, with no physical trading floor - was opened yesterday by Cisco CEO John Chambers at a ceremony in San Jose, California - the first time that the exchange was opened from anywhere outside New York City (and it's not as simple as it might seem to do that). It was an intentional demonstration of Cisco's ability to move large volumes of data instantaneously across large distances. Another victory for distributed "work." Full story in today's San Jose Mercury News. -- jim ware
DK sounds like a really neat guy with a very big mission. "Everyone is always wondering what kids are thinking. DK gives you a view into the complicated and sometimes contradictory world of today's teens." His organization, Phatgnat, us-them-you together "operates between the commercial and public sectors. Phatgnat creates opportunities for companies and brands to engage and communicate with young people whilst supporting local and central government’s youth-oriented initiatives through specific, high profile projects."
Just picked this off IFTF's Future Now, the blog of the Institute for the Future: 'Provocatively, from Knowledge@Wharton : ... "Something fundamentally big is happening that will profoundly affect the life of every person and every business over the next five to 15 years -- the collapsing of everything into one single, global, ubiquitous, collaborative virtual IT world.' ... Are we ready?" Follow the link to the Wharton report - it's well worth reading. --jim ware
The third big lesson we can learn from open source and blogging is that ideas can bubble up from the bottom, instead of flowing down from the top. Open source and blogging both work bottom-up: people make what they want, and the the best stuff prevails.
Does this sound familiar? It's the principle of a market economy. Ironically, though open source and blogs are done for free, those worlds resemble market economies, while most companies, for all their talk about the value of free markets, are run internally like communist states.
There are two forces that together steer design: ideas about what to do next, and the enforcement of quality. In the channel era, both flowed down from the top. For example, newspaper editors assigned stories to reporters, then edited what they wrote.
Open source and blogging show us things don't have to work that way. Ideas and even the enforcement of quality can flow bottom-up. And in both cases the results are not merely acceptable, but better. For example, open source software is more reliable precisely because it's open source; anyone can find mistakes.[ Paul Graham]
Well worth your time. I suspect that most large organizations will have an extraordinarily hard time grasping and acting on the trends Graham highlights. Those that do manage will have an edge in attracting talent.
Some good advice about the important role of mistakes and what to do with them. My goal has always been to make "interesting mistakes."
New essay: how to learn from your mistakes. If you're doing something interesting, mistakes are inevitable. How you learn from your mistakes defines what kinds of mistakes you'll make the next time: the same ones? new ones? mistakes that get you closer to success or move you away from it?
I have to say I am pleased at the reactions and comments that these musings on the changing nature of work have generated. It's a tribute to our readers and to the whole blogosphere that we've getting so much thoughtful feedback on my earlier postings (Theses 1-7 are here, while 8-14 are right below).
And now, for the final installment:
15. We must master Ambiguity
We no longer live in a world of certainty—if we ever did. The illusion that Homo Sapiens controlled their fate has crumbled with the evolution of the industrial, mechanical age. This, coupled with the increasing velocity of nearly all human activity, has generated an era of constant and continual change.
Work projects will begin with some goals and vision, but will continuously morph as the projects rolls on, being responsive to external influences. This new reality means that project budgets will be moving targets, deadlines somewhat arbitrary, and final design impossible to predict. Managers who thrive on certainty must evolve into leaders of ambiguity – or be left behind.
Giovanni Rodriguez
Elizabeth Albrycht
Dave Desforges
Jim McGee
Jim Ware
