thebossongroup

As an American citizen I have the right to choose whichever candidate I believe to be the right person in whatever capacity they are petitioning to assume – whether in Congress, the State Capitol, the City Council or even the Presidency. My choice is my business and as a voter I respect the fact that this privacy is the right afforded all voters. The moment the elections are over, the person who occupies that seat in government from President down to County Sheriff becomes the person I pray for. It is my belief as Christian that if a man or woman has been elected it is more than the will of the people; it is the will of our Creator. We are required by our faith to not only pray but to support and challenge him or her to make decisions as they affect people, knowing that even as the President of the United States, he has a boss (God). That’s what we believe.

So look beyond the messenger here and into the message. Government is notoriously slow catching up with the real needs in American society. I know a good deal of people who think all politicians are dishonest or at least most and there is a good deal of evidence to support that theory. But they are not all dishonest and not always incompetent. They are dreadfully slow in finding the corrective actions that our society needs to stop the financial losses and cure rampant unemployment. But that is typically because few if any have had any real life business experience.

Here President Obama is stating what has become the obvious if not elusive answer; work from home. Once again we are talking about what we can see (I say “we” because I am certain, like every other politician in the White House that preceded him, that Obama had some help putting this speech together - whether directly or indirectly). The real need is to not just get people to work from home; it is to expand the corporate mindset to envision a world where companies are not defined by the real estate they inhabit; a thought process that sees beyond cubicles and walls.

As we enter these last few years of what I am touting as the global “economic clock reset”, we will emerge as a country that will either be in the process of redefining the classic roles of employment or we will be members of a evolutionary group that has already embraced the idea of “corporations without walls”. These companies will have in place:
• Strict but fair guidelines for interpreting job functions that can be “webbed” in
• Tested personalities that will succeed from home
• Structured remote environment specifics that assure that functions are properly equipped and environed
• Transition services to smoothly help move people to homes and homes to connect to corporations
• Management processes that can account for time remotely and make at-home people feel included on the company team (sports, weekly attended meetings, a desk visit every week, etc.)
• Accountability and predictability in work performance through processes and programs that include quantitative evaluations and insightful observation
• Policy and procedures to managed tethered communities

But these programs will not materialize on their own accord. The fact that we are sending people home to work is not necessarily going to, in itself, design an intelligently functional and remote workforce. In fact, letting it evolve on its own will do just the opposite, creating a disparate patchwork of people and functions that vary without reason or deliberation. Then corporations will be making each new at-home position one of chance and inferiority. You would no more break ground on a building by starting with the roof then you should enter into the grand transformation of telecommuting by arbitrarily and capriciously sending people home.

The perspective and programs for such a complex reshaping in workspaces and workforces has to be the result of an enlightened and capable group specializing in the development of at-home communities. If we can all conclude that there needs to be some fundamental changes to the way we approach, retain and maintain workforces and in how we make abstract departments like sales and marketing more predictable and computable, then we have to look for the solution programs that bring the requisite skill sets to each uniquely staffed and singular corporate culture.

We are at a crossroads and we are locked in gridlock. Entire populations are stranded miles from declining business centers; where there is work, travel to and from city and suburb has become a national nightmare. Sprawling campuses once built to house more relaxed work centers by developing our buildings around zip codes empty out as the economy declines. Following this, the zip codes become vacant of the talent that these companies once needed and will once again look for in their resurgence.

So, as we strain to incorporate - into the pre-2006 thinking - the real estate solution for American employment- as reasonable as it sounded less than a decade ago- we realize that it is sorely out of date with what we know about employees and employment today. Instead of trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, why we don’t we just acquiesce to the obvious future employment template of telecommuting and telesales? Just take a deep breath and begin the metamorphosis into what we can easily predict of a process which will:
• Move with the corporation anywhere on the globe
• Expand and contract without the need for extraneous real estate
• Insure that key talent will always remain with the same company, eliminating the crushing cost of re-hiring and re-training
• Link disparate elements of the company’s core talent through the population of relevant and ubiquitous technology
• Significantly reduce costs allowing corporations to hire Americans and remain competitive globally while providing more money for the research and development departments where we can use our ingenuity and renown genius to maintain a leadership role throughout global markets

Sometimes we get so close to the problem we can’t see the forest through the trees. We must reset our now archaic concepts of where and how corporations look and work to transform ourselves into something more malleable and expeditive: a community without a doubt more competitive. No matter what you think of our President, his message is timely. Those who cannot hear this will end up struggling to manage an accidentally pockmarked work from home community by default. Or, you can make sure that from the onset you are in control of the how, why, where and when the tethered community will grow so that you maintain control over every aspect of its evolution. It won’t be something you have to fix tomorrow…it will be something fixed today to work tomorrow.

Sounds like a no brainer.

Frank Bosson
CEO, The Bosson Group
The Bosson Group
Reshaping the way America works...
www.thebossongroup.com

Psalm 33:12
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord
(don't you just love psalms)

frankb@thebossongroup.com
209 642 2821

The Bosson Group provides a complete solutions package for the design and execution of telecommuting for corporate America. Blending research, testing, management and technology, we can offer you a complete solution for your telecommuting needs from consultation to execution including our own remote management programs for your new 1099 contractors. We will incorporate a connected culture with specific rules, processes, technological structural elements and routine self-reconciling assessments. Combining our exclusive quantitative and observational tool nTelegenz™ with practical experience, we can provide your company with a stable telecommuting environment that can flex with the growth or compression of all economic demands.

The Bosson Group understands the needs and technology of today’s workplace and we are constantly working with, and researching out, what workplaces and technology will look like in the future. We are with you today and tomorrow to solve your evolving business model evolutions; keeping one step ahead of what you can and will provide your remote workforce.