Saturday, March 9, 2013

Home Workers? Off with Their Heads!


Marissa Mayer of Yahoo gets the rules of the Fortune 500 CEO “Good Ole Boy’s Club”. It goes something like this - if you stamp your feet, pound your little fists on the table and push people around enough, then they’ll know who the boss is!” It’s one approach among others. Most more sophisticated approaches today are slightly more enlightened.

Some leaders would rather encourage the infinitely more evolved approach to a problem of this magnitude with one that is less polarizing by saying something like; “Certain aspects of new developments visa vie “work from home” positions in the work environment need closer scrutiny and certain mathematical justification before I can endorse them. Until then we will opt for the standard albeit slightly dated approach to work environments and bring everyone back into the office”.

All these people will now:
·         Add to gridlock
·         Suck up our precious resources
·         Get stuffed into already crowded offices and wall to wall cubicles
·         Add to the human stress in work environments which is proven to be unhealthy physically and mentally
·         Cause more redundant costs in real estate, IT, taxes, benefits and more
·         Reduce the company’s availability to the top talent pool by not including the people who can't or won't meet some arbitrary geographical restrictions
·         Increase our costs as a company thereby reducing our reach and flexibility to generate profit doing business globally 
·         Rule out a manner of business that done properly can reduce costs, increase profitability and make us more competitive

What’s the old saying –“Keep your mouth shut and let people wonder if you’re an idiot instead of opening your mouth and removing all doubt”. Yep, let’s go with that one. You’re the boss though so it’s your way or the highway. It’s good to be the king, right?

Hey your highness allow me the opportunity to edumacate you (Yeah, I spelled that right – thought it be more appropriate for your intellectual level). You are making the classic mistake almost all your predecessors have made and that is to think that just because things have been done a certain way since the dawn of the Industrial Age, they should continue uninterrupted another 150 years or so. So let me enlighten you. The dawn of the Technology Age is providing us with new opportunities in all aspects of the corporate structure – including how and where we can work.

What do you think outsourcing was?

Here’s a hint: it was a very expensive and poorly thought out “work from home” solution. In that gem of an idea we gave away our greatest technological ideas and patents to people who had mastered a mid-western accent. Well, that was a little more than a hint. Still I’m not sure you understood it. 

You've got that rare but distinguishable mentality that must be the result of breathing the strangely salted air densely stuffed into the clouds of your own personal Olympus…that certain Wiley Coyote-esque mentality that keeps you locked unto one bad idea after another like a pitbull on a human leg without any room for alternative thinking.

Here’s how it going to work. Well defined, intelligently built remote communities that combine a “remote to tote” component are the work environments of the future and for many smart companies that future starts today. It works like this:

·         It is not an across the board invitation for everybody to grab a laptop and go home
·         It has to be the result of a carefully analyzed evaluation of certain positions
·         These “potential” functions are tethered using the latest hardware and software combined with both online and in-house cultural integration
·         They are the result of a stringently applied process that includes; analysis, observation, interface activity mapping, cultural impact studies, double blind tests of all aspects related to productivity;  all wrapped into a proven program to evaluate what functions can move remotely and how and who this includes
·         And finally, the “remote to tote” concept of working certain people into company cultures by bringing them in to shared or in special cases “claimed” work spaces one day a week, three days every two weeks or even one week a month.

What can a company accomplish using this approach?

·         Reduced stress from workers
·         Greater productivity
·         Increased profitability
·         Reductions in “real” costs
·         Less people jammed onto already crowded and crumbling highways
·         Less office space packed with people doing redundant work because nobody has evaluated your company workflow in a decade
·         A greater pool of better talent not restricted by geography

I could continue into a real conversation on how you, as an enlightened leader, could assess the “mathematical probability factor” we generate using “nTelegenz” our one-of-a-kind preemptive analytical program and our own Trademarked “Tethered Communities™” which creates intelligent, easy to manage, practical and proven “seamless home to work environments”. But this idea isn't for you. It’s for the person who replaces you when your boss (shareholder) looks at the costs of the company soaring and can’t get an intelligent answer from you. The conversation will go something like this:

Boss: Our company operating costs are increasing and we’re not seeing any real increase in productivity to offset these costs, what’s going on?
You: Well we brought all those losers back and I proved my point; they were lazy at home and their just as lazy here
Boss: What are you doing about it?
You: Well, since pounding my little fists on the table and herding them all back into cubicles didn't work, I suggest some good old “inquisition” motivational “re-education” program!
Boss: Inquisition? As in the “Great Inquisition” using the rack and torture and all that?
You: Now you’re getting the idea. We just keep going back in history until we find the business model that works.
Boss: Back in time not forward?
You: Yeah, what have we ever learned from the future - unless you believe in crystal balls...Now the past, we know we can rely on methods from the past.
Boss: (now sarcastically) Like working children of 8 and 9 years old, fourteen hours a day?
You: I hadn't thought of that but I like the way you think, boss!

Good luck with that whole new uniform you’ll get to wear. I hear you get some comfy slippers with them.