Managing A Global Virtual Workforce

In many of my presentations, I point out that an increasing number of people will no longer have traditional 9-5 jobs in office buildings.  Of course, I’m not the only one to observe that the labor market is potentially global and that entrepreneurs who live anywhere can connect with others who have the skills they need to make their businesses successful.

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When I say these things, people generally agree – in the abstract – but they seem not to know how they can actually do this.  They just don’t know how to start and sustain a global virtual business.

This is a particularly important problem for entrepreneurs who do not live in one of the half dozen biggest metropolitan areas in this country or their equivalent metropolitan areas elsewhere.

With that in mind, it’s worth noting that last year a book was published that can set virtual entrepreneurs on their way.  It’s “Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business” by Chris Ducker, a serial entrepreneur based in the Philippines.  (He’s also responsible for the slide above.)

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Ducker starts by describing the feeling that entrepreneurs have that they must do everything themselves because they can’t find others to help them.  And, of course, those who are outside of big cities feel even lonelier.  But reminding readers of that feeling is really just the motivation for reading on.

“Virtual Freedom” is essentially a practical handbook for managing a virtual global workforce.  It goes into some detail about hiring people, compensating them, managing them, etc.  It provides case studies and references to tools that the entrepreneur can use.

It’s interesting that the advice in much of the book applies to management in general, not just management of virtual workforces. 

Perhaps managing a virtual workforce forces you to think about management more clearly than when you manage in traditional offices.  In those offices, people seem to think they know the rules and patterns of behavior – even when they don’t really know.

Some of the advice is common sense, except we all know that common sense is not so common.  

For example, he gives examples of entrepreneurs who were frustrated by the poor quality of those they depended on, until the entrepreneurs realized the problem was, in large part, on their side – a failure to communicate clearly and specifically what they were asking for and a failure to verify this was understood by workers who often came from other cultures.  But in the diverse workforce in many countries today, this is an issue even in traditional offices.

Along with communicating clearly, he emphasizes that the entrepreneur needs to think clearly about the tasks that need to be accomplished.  After all, when you can’t really look over the shoulders of the people who work for you, the only measure of effectiveness you have is what results they deliver.

Of course, such an approach in a traditional office environment is also a good idea – rather than trying to see if “people are working hard”.  It’s easy to look busy.  Not so easy to get tasks done and deliver results.

Bottom line: if you want to get a quick course in management of virtual staff, read this book.

© 2015 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/109394419164/managing-a-global-virtual-workforce]

Does Innovation Destroy Or Create Jobs?

The Intelligent Community Forum just completed its annual summit, which celebrates the Top 7 most intelligent communities in the world.   These are the global leaders who have already made investments in broadband and in community building – and who are now looking to see how they can build on those advantages.

This year’s theme was innovation and employment, so I was asked to give the keynote presentation on the question of whether innovation destroys jobs and how sub-national governments should respond.  

This is a summary.  The video of the presentation will be available in a couple of weeks.  [Note: there was a foreshadowing of this presentation in my earlier blog post “Are Jobs Disappearing?”]

The current argument that technological innovation is killing jobs has a long tradition, going back to the Luddites.  But today we even have that herald of the Internet age, WIRED Magazine, portraying a near term future in which robots do all the work.    I pointed out that there is still a lot of work to be done whether or not robots are “on the job”, for example curing diseases.

More relevant to the question is whether the new kinds of work that innovation makes possible can be handled if people do not have the skills needed for that work.  The need for training is obvious, but my focus was on the need for life-long learning for the adults, rather than the usual investment in K-16 educational institutions.  In building a platform for lifelong learning, local governments can draw upon the numerous online resources for learning.  Indeed, the local public libraries should be given the task of organizing and making sense of all of these online learning opportunities.

Another, little discussed part of the employment picture is the relative inefficiency of the labor market itself.  I suggested that, at least for their own metro areas, these local leaders use or enhance some of the new software that better matches the talents and temperament of their residents to the needs of the economy.

Any discussion of innovation and jobs also needs to provide the big picture, the context of what is happening.  So I briefly summarized my work on the future-oriented economy, with its twin trends of (1) a more service-oriented and digital (intangible) work and (2) ever increasing high quality visual communication over the Internet that enhances collaboration among people across the globe.

Among the several implications of these trends is that the nature of work itself is changing.  People will still have lots to do, but they will not necessarily be making a living in a traditional 9-5 job at a fixed work location.

Innovation is one word with two forms.  One, that Clayton Christensen called “sustaining innovation” is the kind of innovation that does increase productivity so that fewer people are needed to do the work – in other words, jobs decrease.  The other is what he calls “disruptive innovation”, which can lead to the growth of new industries and companies providing greater income for everyone associated with that growth.  Clearly, it is this second kind of innovation that public officials need to encourage.

In an excerpt from Steven Johnson’s TED talk on “Where Good Ideas Come From”, the audience was reminded that “chance favors the connected mind” and innovation is really a network phenomenon.  This is reflected, as well, in the open innovation movement among many corporations and even the US Government.

To accelerate disruptive innovation and the economic opportunities it can generate, local governments need to connect their residents to the global economy, global flow of new ideas and new services.

Successful innovation also requires a supportive culture, including accepting the failures that are part of innovation and experiment.  Failure is something that many public officials feel comes with a high price, although the historic success of public sector innovators tells a different story.  And, of course, the best path for disruptive innovation is not huge projects that require huge investments, but many smaller experiments.  As the saying in Silicon Valley goes: “fail early and fast” to maximize learning from the experience. 

For their part, public officials can help build a local culture of innovation by using government itself as a model of innovation.  They can even use the experience of being in their city as a continual reminder and inspiration for innovation.  I gave some examples of simple, not very costly ways of taking even the less beautiful parts of a city and turning them into exciting, artistic lessons on innovation.

Finally, using the 19th century example of the reaction of different cities to the railroads, I noted that they should not just wait to see what happens with technological innovation.  Their decision to lead innovation or not to decide will have long-term consequences.

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/52788966705/does-innovation-destroy-or-create-jobs]

The Personalization Of Work?

Seven years ago, Chris Anderson, recently retired editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine, wrote a groundbreaking book, “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More”.  He contrasted the one-size-fits-all, mass media world in which he grew up with the new Internet-enabled economy that requires business to target increasingly smaller niche markets  – ultimately to a market of one unique person.  The phrase “long tail”, which has become a catchphrase in business, refers to the decreasing percentage of any market that is commanded by the best-sellers.

This book and others before and after it have influenced the strategy of increasing personalization of products and services.  In the industrial era, up to 1970 or so, one-size had to fit all because it was too costly and difficult to do otherwise.  Today, that is no longer true, so personalization is a major focus of consumer products corporations.

But the concept of personalization does not have to limited to the consumer realm.

Last week, I met with one of the most respected and innovative California state government agencies.  (Yes, there are some stellar public agencies even in a state government that has had more than its share of fiscal and management problems for quite some time.)

The focus of the four-hour meeting was the workforce of the future.   

During the course of the discussion, only partly in response to a mini-debate on teleworking, I was prompted to point out that technology today enables different styles of work to occur.  It is not like the factory of old where every task was monolithically prescribed.  

Instead, those who want to work in an office can do so.  Those who want to work at home can do so.  Those who want to work in some co-working space with others, who may or may not be in the same organization, can do so.

When we say that many people are now in jobs where they can work anywhere – that even means working where they have always worked.

The results oriented work environment (ROWE) that often accompanies telework program is the sort of program that makes it possible for this to happen.   (See my earlier post “Telework: Good For Productivity, Bad For Innovation?http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/44219104836/telework-good-for-productivity-bad-for-innovation .)

ROWE focuses on work outcomes, not work patterns.  While ROWE is neither an all purpose solution to all corporate problems nor yet fully developed, it is a useful way to think about work.  From a management viewpoint, it is the outcomes produced by an employee that we really want, even if we would not personally do things the way that employee does.  

So this story isn’t just about teleworking.  It is true for other aspects of work that we have always assumed required rigid patterns.

This is all not an earth-shaking insight, but just the application of a trend – personalization – that we all know about to an area of life we haven’t thought about in that way.  Yes, it is possible to personalize the nature of work. 

© 2013 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/46419983910/the-personalization-of-work]