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Connecting and Engaging Teams
in a Distributed Workforce
Prepared by:James WareCharles GranthamThe Work Design Collaborative, LLCwww.thefutureofwork.net
Connecting and Engaging Teams in a Distributed Workforce © ©A Citrix GoToMeeting Corporate White Paper Prepared by James Ware and Charles Grantham
Executive Summary The economy today is going through a fundamental "reset"-the old rules don't apply anymore. We are seeing a virtual explosion of distributed/mobile/flexible work across all market segments, including large organizations, small businesses, and free agents/entrepreneurs. In fact, our research suggests that fully 15% of the U.S. workforce now spends one or more days a week outside a corporate facility, and we project that number to grow beyond 25% within five years. Yet managing mobile workers and distributed teams can be an enormously difficult challenge. When your staff are working asynchronously and at great distances from each other, keeping them focused on their tasks and connected with each other and the larger organization often seems nearly impossible.
But connecting and engaging distributed teams is not Mission Impossible; it just requires some new tactics, new policies and guidelines, new technology tools, and updated HR management practices. It's not simple, but it is certainly doable; and the payoff in increased productivity and performance makes the effort well worthwhile. In this brief white paper we will describe the economic "reset" that is changing the rules for creating value; discuss the rise of mobile work and distributed teams and the challenges they present to managers; and suggest a core set of guidelines for keeping the members of distributed teams in touch with each other, with their joint activity, and with the organization as a whole.
Context: The Economy Is Going Through a Fundamental "Reset" The old rules don't apply anymore, and the new rules are still being invented. The bottom line is this: The social institutions that were conceived and built to support industrial capitalism are broken. They are largely dysfunctional in today's knowledge-based economy. It's interesting that the first cracks in the system came in the financial sector, but the energy sector and its supporting international geopolitical system has also been under major strain for at least a decade. And we all know what's happened to manufacturing in North America. Einstein said it best: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." For 250 years humans in the developed world have been constructing a society to support an industrial mode of production. Schools, governments, military machines, health care systems, even cities and transportation-all are based on maximizing efficiency. The gods we have worshipped for the last 250 years are Bigger, Better, Faster, and above all Predictable.
© Copyright 2009 by The Work Design Collaborative, LLC. All rights reserved. Connecting and Engaging Teams in a Distributed Workforce Page 2
But, what does this "reset" portend for the future of work? Is there a pony in here somewhere? We think there is. But only if society as a whole can switch to some very non-conventional thinking, as Einstein suggested. First, let's admit that in this age of discontinuity, history isn't a very good predictor of the future. In fact, it may send exactly the wrong signals.
Where does that leave us? We can't rely on traditional economic models, or on "tried and true" principles of management and leadership. Value today comes less from owning or deploying physical assets (like raw materials or the factories that turn those materials into products). Even return on investment (ROI) is no longer a reliable, or even meaningful, way to measure success. In the Information or Internet Age, you can often make more money in the long run by giving things away, or by rounding up a large base of followers who in turn spread the word about your ideas, your brain power, or your connections to yet more people. Your success depends on your ability to connect people with each other, to connect people with ideas, and to generate new ideas.
In other words, the coin of the realm in this new economy is being connected-which means having access to the information you need when you need it (even when you can't know in advance what you need to know, or when you'll n... [download for more]
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