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.
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.
Richard Posner offers an economic analysis of the issue of elite professional women leaving the workforce (mainly to have children) from the point of view of the university/professional school. He states that given roughly half (see his post for numbers) of professional women from elite universities drop out of the career world, the full value of their places in the university is not achieved. This means that places didn't go to a number of (mostly) men, who would have more fully "productive careers."
But I have to try to be precise about the meaning of "more productive" in this context. I mean only that if a man and woman of similar ability were competing for a place in the entering class of an elite professional school, the man would (on average) pay more for the place than the woman would; admission would create more "value added" for him than for her.
The article is an interesting read, and his economic analysis and proposed solutions to the problem are correct from an economic perspective:
A better idea, though counterintuitive, might be to raise tuition to all students but couple the raise with a program of rebates for graduates who work full time. For example, they might be rebated 1 percent of their tuition for each year they worked full time. Probably the graduates working full time at good jobs would not take the rebate but instead would convert it into a donation. The real significance of the plan would be the higher tuition, which would discourage applicants who were not planning to have full working careers (including applicants of advanced age and professional graduate students). This would open up places to applicants who will use their professional education more productively; they are the more deserving applicants.
The problem I have is with his unspoken assumption that labor market practices (not to mention US tax policy) will remain static. Today, these labor practices (and tax policies) are problemmatic for professional women (and men who want to spend more time with their family). I am not going to go into all of the difficulties, but let's state that there are serious issues with work-life balance/family-friendly policies. Enlightened companies are getting on the bandwagon and changing these policies to keep their valuable employees. I would argue that given real change is now possible in the way work is conducted (particularly knowledge work), given technological change and new business models, that the assumption of status quo is a dangerous one.
By focusing as Posner does on economically based measures universities can take, for example, we miss the most important player for in keeping women in the workforce who want to stay: the employer. Any action the university takes in such a vacuum can only have unintended consequences. Better for universities to engage with employers to look at the problem holistically vs. from their individual silos.
The Washington Post Magazine contained a very interesting article this weekend, entitled "Heaven Can Wait" that explores how retirement is disappearing for some people. Given the demographic realities of America today, delaying retirement is an increasingly necessary thing:
Having examined the demographic trends, the labor force stats, the health and longevity data, the projected costs of Social Security, Medicare and other government programs, the experts have come to a strikingly widespread consensus: Never mind that golden-years stuff. Keep working.
Of course, the government is thinking up ways to "encourage" us to keep working. And given the benefits, there may be a moral imperative to keep working as well, for the good of others.
So one prescription is obvious. Whatever else lawmakers do or don't do -- if they raise the age of Social Security or Medicare eligibility, if they establish private retirement accounts, if they index benefits for longevity -- it would be a fine thing, the wonks agree, if we'd keep working.
It's practically the public-spirited thing to do. If we remained in the workforce longer -- and labor force participation among older workers does appear to be inching upward -- we could postpone the age at which we receive Social Security checks, thus easing the drain. The higher taxes we would keep paying (including continued Social Security contributions) would help fill the federal coffers. And we could ward off a labor shortage that might threaten the whole economy.
The article offers three "serious changes" delaying retirement requires. Do you think these are the most important three? Do you have other ideas? Please share!
(a) Modifying traditional pension practices and regulations that discourage people from working longer.
(b) Persuading employers to get as excited about retaining or hiring older workers as labor analysts are.
And (c) subjecting the societal expectations and sense of entitlement built up over 70 years to a fast U-turn.
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!
My last entry talked about the difficulty in trying to come up with a "one size fits all" productivity measure. I also promised to address how we measure "productivity" at Sun to know whether the company's getting more bang for its buck by enabling people to work from multiple locations. And isn't that really the point? It seems as if all the talk about measuring productivity improvements that result from a distrubuted work program is really just a surrogate for wanting to figure out whether the program is successful or not. So here's how we know:
1. We conduct surveys on the affected group(s) both before implementing a workplace change and 6 months after the change. We ask the survey respondents what tasks they typically perform and how long it takes them to do those tasks. The self-reported improvements are startling for both those that use drop-in or satellite offices and those that work from home:
- Drop-in/satellite office users report an average 26% productivity gain. In this case, the "productivity gain" is how much less time it now takes to accomplish the same task than prior to the workplace change. The number one reason for the ability to do the same task in less time: less distractions than in the primary office. Also, the people report increasing their work time by contributing 62% of the saved commute time back to Sun. So... the people are more productive with their time and they give more time to the company.
- Work from home users report an average 54% productivity gain compared to working in the office. Admittedly, this may be a bit skewed by the fact that a good chunk of the work involved writing reports or documentation, and this type of work is more quickly done when able to concentrate. The number one reason for the ability to do the same task in less time: less distractions than in the primary office. Oh, and the work from homers "gave back" 58% of their saved commute time (while a lesser percentage than the satellite office users, it's actually more time as the home worker commute time was typically far greater to start with).
In this last installment I'd like to approach another inherent aspect of women’s leadership that I found to be quite effective while planning BlogHer, or for that matter, any major business or community endeavor—humility.
I can personally attest that not all women are humble. I’m pretty clear that I’m quite alpha when I want to be. But you don’t gather the trust of a community, nor of a gaggle of top bloggers and top sponsors who have heard every pitch in the book, without some humility--or shall we say, authenticity. And in my humble opinion, women do a much better job of falling on their sword. Men, think about it: how many times have you given in to your wives or women friends after they’ve said, “You’re right, Sweetie; I’ll defer to you.”
In her essay in More Space: Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business my co-author Evelyn Rodriguez writes about a shift in value memes, or set of beliefs that comprise a decision-making framework. We are moving, she says, from a green, or consensus-based dynamic, “that often views hierarchies as oppressive” and “establishes linked communities” to a yellow value-meme:
“The yellow value meme integrates systems and explores open systems and networked meshes. It reintroduces vertical hierarchies and ranking, grasps big picture, and tends to be expressive … Rather than create a duality of any sort, it tends to accept people and values—while not necessarily agreeing with their varying world views. It is the basis for ‘Integral commons.’”
When I read about the yellow value meme I thought of the underlying ethic behind BlogHer—a laboratory of sorts where I personally have been allowed to experiment with a feminine brand of leadership.
I lie about my "presence" almost all of the time. I am on Skype, which I use mainly for IM as I can't get the voice component to work (long story). As users know, you can choose a variety of presence indicators: Online, Away, Not Available, Do Not Disturb, Invisible, etc. Most of the time I am away or not available. Sometimes it is just because I forget to change my status, others because I don't feel like dealing with anything via IM. I can still be contacted, of course, but I feel less pressured to answer if I have a not available status indicated.
What happens, however, when presence becomes ubiquitous? When it is built into every application? (Microsoft has this as a stated goal according to Mary Jo Foley, who is not thrilled with the idea.) This is when things start to get problematic. As one of the commenters to her article stated:
Submit to "universal presence", whether touted by Microsoft or any vested interest in the IT industry, and you submit to universal incarceration.
So when does universal presence become universal incarceration? When users have no control over it. When presence disappears into the black box of technology, it becomes surveillance. It becomes a tool of power and control.
One way around this is to enabled the watched to watch the watchers. If I, as a Microsoft Office user for example, am "present" to my boss at all times (not to mention the bean counters at Microsoft), I want my boss to be present to me. And the folks at Microsoft. I want to be able to choose to watch them TO THE SAME DEGREE they watch me.
Whether you call it presence or surveillance, companies will be deciding whether, when and how to implement it in the coming years. I think it is important we think about what it really could mean to live and work in that type of society.
My subtitle sounds a bit strange, but it was my realization a year ago, when I attended a personal development retreat, and was brought back in touch with my feminine nature. Before that I figured that men and women were the same, but that men actively decided to be obnoxious listeners.
At the end of the seminar, when I was asked what I'd learned, I didn't know that what I had said in earnestness would inspire laughter from the group.
I said: "I learned that women really are different than men!" There really are inherent natures in each gender that facilitate entirely different management skills.
As I mentioned in my last installment, I haven’t always had the best time working for a woman or being a boss. Though I don’t think that failure to lead is a female inadequacy. Not at all. I think that my experiences were the result of bad leadership—both mine and my colleagues’.
I once wrote about an outstanding female boss I had. She was outstanding, not because she was a woman, but because she was less concerned with her SVP title than she was with determining her team’s strengths and building an organization that capitalized on them.
HOWEVER—isn’t there always a however?—I believe that, being a woman, she was much more attuned to the underlying dynamics of our team, which had morale issues from having seen a number of bosses and business models come and go. She interviewed each of us informally to get a sense of our personalities, the things we were most proud of accomplishing, and she fought for us when other demands unrelated to our core goals threatened to divide our attention. She didn’t assume that she knew the answers before investigating. Her goal was not to kick ass and take names, but to help the company thrive by helping us be our best selves.
My phone rang early on Saturday morning. Calls like these, from people who assumed I had no personal life, used to come from my mother, but that was before I started working on the BlogHer Conference.
“You up?” it was Elisa Camahort, one of the BlogHer co-founders. She and Lisa Stone took me up on my offer to “help out where I could” back in March. Who woulda thunk we’d practically end up appendages of each other?
“Yep, I’m up,” I said, lying.
“I need you to look at something before I send it out,” she said. It was a note to a key figure we needed to engage for a session we were developing. After three months a Pavlovian response was starting to kick in. I had unlearned my usual Saturday-brush-off response, “yup, looks fine”—and sat at my computer to read the note she’d written.
Since March, we’d moved full-force into developing a conference for women bloggers. The finish line (at least for now) is July 31—the day after the event. What started as a pet project scheduled in the periphery of my time has stirred in me a renewed interest not only in blogging and the power of online communities, but in the power of feminine leadership. Why, despite my varied past working with women leaders, was this experience so transforming, and others so disappointing?
Elizabeth Albrycht pointed me to this AOL/Salary.com report about the amount of time workers "waste" at work and the "cost" to the company. The part I found most interesting was the top reasons people gave for this time not spent working while at work.
Top Excuses for Time-Wasting
33.2% Don't have enough work to do
23.4% Underpaid for amount of work I do
14.7% Co-workers distract me
12.0% Not enough evening or weekend time
16.7% Other
So, one third say they do personal things during work time because they don't have enough to do. Is that the worker's fault, management's, or both? If the company isn't assigning goals and measuring you on accomplishing those goals, then maybe everyone needs to rethinkwhat they are actually being paid to do. In my opinion, the company is paying you to do certain tasks, not to occupy a chair. However, if management is not providing these tasks and/or goals, is the employee then expected to just "look busy?" Of course, the employees could also show some initiative and tell their manager they have some free time to tackle something else. More important (to me at least), as the report mentions, where do you draw the line between wasting time and learning from what you find/read, especially from a knowledge worker perspective? If some people can accomplish their tasks in less time, why is it a problem that they broaden their horizons by learning about other things while on "company time?" Especially if the company is likely to benefit at some future point.
All this does make me wonder how this translates into productivity measurement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says output per hour for business has increased by about 4% each year for the last 3 years. So people are more productive, yet they supposedly waste more time at work than their employers think. Makes me curious how productivity is being measured. Next time I'll give my 2 cents on that topic: just how do you measure productivity of knowledge workers?
Well, according to Federal Computer Weekly, it's "employees who:
* Need little supervision and don't mind working alone.
* Have good organizational skills and self-discipline.
* Can be available, if necessary, to communicate with co-workers and customers via e-mail or phone.
* Have a place to work that is free of interruptions and offers a safe environment for government property.
* Live within commuting distance because they will probably continue to perform some of their work at the office.
* Are required to write or perform computer-related tasks."
I think they're right about every one except living within commuting distance. There's only 2 reasons why that would be necessary:
1. The right collaboration tools don't exist to permit effective remote meetings, or
2. Management still isn't comfortable with the fact that they would have to manage differently if they can't see you regularly.
And when you get right down to it, both of these reasons are false too. Unless you are part of a workgroup where everyone is located in the same place (and how many of those still exist today?), then chances are remote meetings and management are already happening. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to allow people some degree of choice in their work location.
According to Office of the Future: 2020 there are 6 skills professionals will need to prepare for success in a future of increasing ability to work from anywhere:
- Analysis: Analyzing information and exercising good judgment
- Collaboration: Establishing rapport and facilitating team building
- Technical aptitude: Selecting the best technical tools and using them effectively
- Intuition: Identifying and adapting to the needs and work styles of others
- Ongoing education: Engaging in continual learning
- Negotiation: Participating in business discussions that produce positive results
While I find this to be interesting, I don't know that I'd call these skills, but categories of skills. To me, we need to much more concrete about the specific skills people need to have (or develop), in order to be as objective as possible when determining how much flexibility employees should or should not be allowed in choosing their work environment. We've done some reasearch on this topic in Sun's iWork program which I'll write about in a future post.
Giovanni Rodriguez
Elizabeth Albrycht
Dave Desforges
Jim McGee
Jim Ware
