I was recently asked a question that I hear all too often:
You have been studying today’s most favored methods of working for many years. What are the big headlines about that? Just where are we going? Or rather, are we all going to stay home and work from there all the time ?
No, we’re not all going to “cocoon” and never leave our home offices! That would be insane.
One of the toughest messages for me to get across to corporate executives is that the “new way of working” is not about everyone working “home alone.” It IS about flexibility and mobility. The wonderful thing about today’s (and tomorrow’s) technology is that it enables “work anywhere” – but it certainly doesn’t require it.
There is still, and there always will be, major value in face-to-face work – collaboration is still richest when it is in-person (and most of us prefer it that way, most of the time). However, given the costs (in both time and money) of travel, and the increasingly powerful technologies that are now available, people are interested in reducing their commuting time (whether to the local office or to another city altogether) when it makes sense.
And most of us have mobile technologies, have participated in conference calls and so-called web meetings, and we are getting used to remote collaboration.
So, to answer the question more directly, I believe the future of work will be more distributed, but more importantly, it will be more varied. More and more people will work from more and more different places over the course of a day or a week.
But note that this way of working only “works” when executives and middle managers learn to manage less and lead more. By that I mean that organizations MUST develop “management by results” and not by time clock. Set goals, make it clear what constitutes success, and let each individual determine where he or she needs to be at any give time, for any given task. Measure outcomes, not time in the office.
When we were in school, our professors never told us where to read the homework assignment, or when to write the term paper. We were treated like independent adults (even though many of us – at least at first – abused that privilege, we eventually learned how to self-manage). Isn’t it time that organizations worked the same way?
Again, to say it once more: the future of work is about variety, flexibility, mobility, and self-control – not about staying home!
Get out of the way of your workforce, and let employees make individual choices about where and when to get their jobs done (always in the context of what they are accountable for achieving). Measure them on the outcomes of their work, and reward them for getting the job in less time, not for the hours they spend doing it.
For more on this important but complex topic, I humbly recommend two white papers (downloadable at no cost):
“Managing a Remote Workforce: Proven Practices from Successful Leaders”
and
“Managing People You Can’t See“
Both papers were sponsored by my good friends at Citrix Online, an excellent source of ideas and information about working remotely.
