Running in beta

Traditional views of work are being challenged by two separate but interrelated trends gaining increasing momentum:

• The first trend, teleworking, represents a decades-old “new work” paradigm being extended and supported by increasing connectivity and employer support. Adoption of telework has been slowed not by technology but instead by the necessity of behavior change on the part of managers. Teleworking requires team leaders capable of transitioning from “management by observation” to “management by outcome”. As today’s modern managers have become more comfortable personally working in a telemobile environment, they have increasingly extended the option to team members with positive results.
• The second trend, a move to piecemeal online work performed by contractors, allows employers to crowdsource individual tasks without hiring. According to a recent TechCrunch article by odesk CEO Gary Swart, online work is growing “70% year over year” with 6 million jobs posted online “representing more than $1 billion of work performed via the Web” in 2012. These projects, beginning with commoditized labor tasks, continue to evolve in complexity and scope as employers experience the cost-savings and positive performance of online workers.

Together, these changes will reshape our offices and force a rethinking of teamwork in a distributed work environment. Additional skills are necessary to succeed in telemobility; new tools, processes, and disciplines that replace current behaviors such as stopping by a desk or catching someone in the hallway. Employees who move to embrace “management by outcome” will reap the rewards through increasing autonomy of location and flexibility of schedule, and will be best positioned to compete in a post-work 2.0 world where a single employer is replaced by fluid employment built through networks and deliverables. With future blog posts, we will explore the tools and behaviors evolving to succeed for both workers and employers alike.

The Art of Presentation

Why do meetings fail, and how can we address it?

To address the underlying causes that result in unproductive meetings and create a culture of constant improvement, we can look to apply simple game mechanics to assess meeting performance. When was the last time you left a meeting and provided critical feedback about its design and opportunities for future improvement? Or took the time during meeting preparation to identify what specific attendee behavior you were seeking to drive with agenda layout?

Meeting gamification allows you to identify and score critical behaviors to assess your meeting performance. While working to build a simple scoring tool, you can see and comment on the proposed topic areas below.