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.
Just Released the 2008 Tribalization of Business study - an in-depth look at how 140+ organizations are managing and measuring online communities
Imagine for a moment that you’re the newly-appointed CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You are standing at a podium in the company cafeteria, dressed in your brand-new $1500 Brooks Brothers suit. You’re holding your first open meeting with your new company’s employees.
You’ve just delivered a few opening remarks about how pleased you are to have joined the organization, and how much you’re looking forward to working with everyone. Now you turn to the staff with a smile and say, “So, what’s on your minds? What can I tell you about myself and my vision for the company?”
And the first question (from a 30-something kid in khakis and a sweater) is:
“What makes you worth a million and a half a year when I’m only getting paid $50,000?”
Hylton Joliffe alerted me to a great piece in the latest issue of Newsweek on the "secret sauce" in Google's management practices ("Google: Ten Golden Rules"). It's a great recipe for leveraging the talent in your knowledge workers. I wrote about the same issue briefly just last week at the Future of Work blog, stimulated mostly by Intel CEO Paul Otellini's new insights into Google as a recently appointed Google director ("Intel's Inside Scoop on Google"). Getting the most out of your knowledge workers is clearly the key to success in the future. And Google's a terrific role model. And for a more comprehensive Google story, be sure to check out the December 5 issue of Business Week ("Googling for Gold ").
I just posted this note over at my own Future of Work weblog but wanted to share it with FutureTense devotees as well.
I am very pleased that several of the Future of Work corporate members (Forest City Covington, Agilent, Boeing, and IBM) and the Business Community Centertm concept that Charlie Grantham and I are promoting are mentioned in the December 12 issue of Business Week ("The Easiest Commute of All" - paid subscription required to access), now available online and scheduled to be in print on newsstands everywhere on Monday, December 5.
Today's San Francisco Chronicle carries an important story by technology writer Tom Abate ("Tech engineers fear U.S. is falling behind"). It reports on a recent survey by EE Times magazine showing that only 10% of American engineers are confident the U.S. will maintain its technological edge over time. The survey results are available online, at http://www.mcbru.com/news/insight2005.php. This isn't just about offshoring, however. It's also about the U.S. education system, which is falling way behind the rest of the developed world. And even if you live outside the U.S. and don't care that much about U.S. competitiveness, you have to be concerned about the state of technology innovation in the global economy.
Charlie Grantham and I are are featured in a short interview column in the November issue of Fast Company. Our conversation with writer Chris Collier focused on the changing nature of distributed work.
Check it out - it's not the most profound thing we've ever said, but it's nice to see the stuff we all care about getting more recognition in such a great publication.
As readers of this blog know, Charlie Grantham and I (aka The Work Design Collaborative, or Future of Work) have been commissioned to conduct an exploratory study of the feasibility of launching a new industry association focused on distributed work.
We're well along in conducting our first round of interviews with interested and experienced thought leaders and leading practitioners. It would be premature to report findings, but I've picked up an interesting pattern that I thought might provoke some useful conversation.
One of the questions we ask each interviewee is, "What resources do you depend on for information about developments in distributed work?"
The answers have been all over the map, from naming specific market research firms and industry analysts to relying on personal networks of friends and colleagues. But what struck me this week is how many people have answered "Google" or "my RSS newsfeed."
Maybe that's not surprising, given today's technology and our increasing reliance on the Net, but I found it interesting that there don't appear to be any definitive or consensus sources (other than Future of Work and FutureTense, of course!)
So, other than Google, where do you go? What websites, blogs, analysts, or professional associations do you find helpful in sorting out trends, data, and conflicting perspectives on the future of work? I'm seriously interested in hearing from you. Where do you go? And Why?
For those of you who are deeply interested in experience design, I recommend taking a look at Corante's newest blog, called - strangely enough - Total Experience. It's being produced by my good friend and certified Internet guru Bob Jacobson and his colleague Paula Thornton. Check it out. --jim ware [Tag: design]
Several weeks ago I posted some thoughts on what Charlie Grantham and I call the “ReFormation of Work” (Parts One, Two, and Three are available here, here, and here). I was pleased to see the reactions and comments that our admittedly “far out” thoughts stimulated. Not everyone agreed with us but we clearly touched some raw nerves.
In fact, we really do believe that nothing short of a reformation in management practice is required to cope with the changes that face virtually every organization and the entire economy these days.
Specifically, our experience suggests that your future business success depends directly on your ability to understand the shifts that are occurring and to redefine your workforce, workplace, technology, and business strategies accordingly.
The Work Design Collaborative (WDC) announced yesterday that it has received a grant from the Gaines Family Foundation to create a new industry and professional association, to be called the “Distributed Work Industry Association” (DWIA).
The new association will focus on developing industry standard productivity measurements, provide professional development programs for industry leaders, and seek to influence state and federal regulations that help or hinder the growth of distributed work.
The full story is available at the Future of Work blog (which is sponsored and maintained by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham, co-founders and Executive Producers of the Work Design Collaborative).
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?
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
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
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
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.
Here's the next seven (big caveat: I know these are broad generalizations, and subject to plenty of qualifiers. But that's okay, since I'm not trying to predict an actual future, but rather stimulate conversation and thinking about what the world would be like if these conditions actually become reality):
8. Work will be more collaborative, less individualistic
People will shift their work activities to their core competencies for approximately 80% of their time. Everything else will be handed off to someone with complementary competencies. Individuals themselves will become less ‘vertically integrated’ and grow loosely coupled collaborative networks to meet their needs outside their core competencies. No more "jack of all trades.’" The remaining time will be devoted to learning new skills and competencies.
9. Corporations will morph into confederations with shared liability
Modern corporations are an artificial legal structure created within the past one hundred years to minimize the risk associated with control of large asset bases. As Peter Drucker so aptly notes, they have out lived their usefulness. The assumptions that have underlain their need are not longer valid.
Primary among those assumptions is that large organizations were required to capitalize the investments required in the ownership of the means of production, such as factories. With a shift to more knowledge work this isn’t necessary for a much larger portion of the working population. Confederations of business clusters will instead move to the forefront. They will be held together by strategy, rather than by ownership of assets.
"The PC platform is going to outlive the Windows platform. In other words, because the PC platform is essentially open, it can run other operating systems, and it's open to people modifying it. So it will have a longer life span than Microsoft Windows, which is maintained, operated, and completely controlled by a single corporation. I don't think Microsoft is going to maintain its ascendancy forever. In fact, I would be surprised it it's anywhere near as dominant 10 years from now as it is now."
The whole thing is worth your time if you care at all about the future of technology.
In an attempt to return this blog to a more serious tone (just kidding Elizabeth), I want to offer up some thoughts on the future of work. I promised a couple of weeks ago to share some of the ideas that Charlie Grantham and I have been nurturing for some time.
So, what follows is a sampling of some trends that we believe are becoming more real every day (these are the first 7 of a total of 23 "Theses" that we've framed about the changing nature of work. We're trying to find a corporate door somewhere to nail them to).
1. Social bonds between worker and firm will decrease
Historically workers have been subservient to corporations because companies owned the means of production, such as factories. Individuals’ livelihoods depended on companies and they formed close connections with employers, often for life. These dependencies will decrease because large organizations are not needed to create value in a knowledge-driven economy.
There's a great story in today's San Francisco Chronicle about telework, shared workspaces, and the power of technology to provide business continuity "insurance" ("Work is Where You Hang Your Coat"). The story, by Carolyn Said, features Sun's iWork program and uses Sun's support of a distributed work pilot at the City of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors being led by our friend Gloria Young. - jim ware [Tag: distributedwork]
There is an important article in this week's Newsweek Magazine about the future of municipal WiFi systems ("Pulling the Plug on Local Internet").
The issue of course, is that private ISP's are fighting the whole concept of low-cost municipally managed WiFi - they see it (correctly!) as a serious threat to "their" franchise. -- jim ware
It's No Longer the Information Age, Now it's the Conceptual Age
Here's another take on Renaissance People: there was an intriguing article in Sunday's Boston Globe about the need for conceptual thinkers in the "new" economy. Penelope Trunk writes about the fact that the most secure jobs in our global economy are those that require deep knowledge of customers, technology, etc. Information and data aren't enough anymore, as Dan Pink's new book, A Whole New Mind, makes very clear. For a recent review of A Whole New Mind, click here. -- jim ware
My friend Debra Moritz of Jones Lang LaSalle just alerted me to an interesting and provocative study suggesting that those much-heralded open office plans may actually decrease worker productivity.
The study, reported yesterday in FM Express, an Australian website, was conducted by researchers George Mylonas and Jane Carstairs of Macquarie University, and presented at the Australian Industrial and Organisational Psychology conference last week.
[accessing FMExpress requires a subscription; however, there is a 21-day free trial available - and it's easy to sign up]
Here's a brief excerpt from the study:
"A new report has completely debunked the purported link between open plan offices and improved productivity, and says scientific research actually shows the exact opposite is the case."
For a somewhat longer excerpt, please visit the Future of Work blog.
Giovanni Rodriguez
Elizabeth Albrycht
Dave Desforges
Jim McGee
Jim Ware
