Monday, January 30, 2012

just a little out of focus

 “Tell us about the culture of distraction in your company”.  This is one of the things we like to ask our clients when they think about having people work remotely; and it usually perplexes them.  The intent of our question is to uncover how focused people can be when they come into the office, because then we can demonstrate the least appreciated aspect of the virtual model.  Predictably, the answer is normally something like “oh, our team is very focused, you have no idea”.  But are they really?  Are you? 

 

If you work in a traditional office environment, think about your workplace for moment.  What interrupts your ability to focus on accomplishing things?  How often do people interrupt your work by dropping by for “a real quick question”?  How likely are you to be summoned to someone else’s office “for a moment”?  How many meetings must you attend?  Do they start on time?  Are they really necessary?  And thinking about your personal habits: Do you keep e-mail open all the time?  If so, how often do you react when the new mail notification window pops-in, taking you away from the task you were on?  Does your office use chat or IM?  How frequently does it go off?  How rapidly are you expected to respond to notes, texts, or chats?  These are cultural factors of being in an office environment that most businesses turn a blind eye toward in the name of “responsiveness”, but they really diminish the focus. 

 

They are also conditions mitigated by working from home or working remotely.  Studies abound that show people working remotely are more productive than in an office environment.  Strangely enough, they usually cite things like time spent getting ready for work, time spent commuting, or other obvious things to make the case.  What they don’t typically discuss is focus; or the culture of distraction.  Therefore, we like to talk about it.  While managing e-mail notifications, internet peeks, chat sessions and text messages are up to the individual, we find that there is more than ample time each day for those things when the worker doesn’t have to contend with the time lost to the many pop-ins, the meeting assembly time, the hovering outside the boss’s office waiting, the phone ringing, the fire drills, or countless other things that ruin productive focus.  So think about your company’s culture of distraction.  Tell us about it on our sister company’s forum page: http://myvirtualwirks.com/community/viewthread/22/.  And focus on fixing it through virtual work.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

roamin’ holiday

Over the recent holiday season, I got to catch up on a good bit of reading.  Amidst the pieces I read, it was clear that there are several ways that people who work remotely are referred to.  Articles have called them the mobile workforce, teleworkers, telecommuters, at-home workers, homers (with a nod to The Simpsons perhaps) or a range of other titles.  One of the latest entries is “digital nomad”; and that one really got me thinking.  As a history fan, it made me wonder about the characteristics of nomads.  So I did a little research.  Nomads are known to be people who roam, pursue their basic needs from a variety of sources, and seek their long term growth by foraging and creating what they need.  Nomads are defined by their ability to respond to their environment, and move to places where it is optimal for their success.  One source said nomadic people are those that travel to practice their trade where it is best needed or best provided.  And the last one was what I was looking for.  That was the one that made me think that the term “digital nomad” is EXACTLY what a virtual worker is.

 

Responding to their environment?  Correct.  Foraging for what they need to be successful?  Right.  Practicing their trade where it is best provided?  Bingo!  And all of this is encouraging because as much as popular media may talk about virtual work being new, it is as old as the migratory civilizations of prior centuries.  As much as people may think it is a recent trait, it has roots in the human desire to explore, and make another path.  As much as virtual workers are thought of as being stand-alone or soloists, they really are finding ways to pursue what they need and practice it best. 

 

At virtualwirks, we’re all about those things and particularly that last part.  How to make the digital nomadic spirit best suit the worker, the business, the customer, and the culture.  To us it’s fun, it’s tapping into another frontier, and fulfilling the spirit and possibilities that lie within us.  And we have lots of ways to practice it best.  So let’s roam…together.

Monday, December 26, 2011

if we’re so different, why do we have so much in common?

Christmas always get me thinking about how people around the world do so many things differently, but also how many things we have in common. Across the globe, traditions are similar but may come with differing concepts or adaptations.  For example, in America Santa Claus is large, jolly, round, and flies through the air led by a team of reindeer.  In the UK and commonwealth countries, he is Father Christmas; and not so round, so jolly, nor as airborne.  In Scandinavia, there is yet another adaptation of St. Nick.  Same goes for trees, ornaments, foods, and timing of celebrations.  Other cultures celebrate a range of holidays, all with a common theme but differing approaches.

 So what does this have to do with working virtually?  Well, there are some important parallels with the flatness of the world of information, custom, celebration and observation to that of being able to work anywhere.  This year, I received Christmas greetings from people of 6 continents, all via a direct connection made instantly and all representing some differing aspect of celebrating the holiday.  In the end, we are all recognizing the same ideal, albeit differently, and in contact instantly, virtually, and powerfully.  Being connected makes the world smaller, our understanding of each other more coherent, and the appreciation of our differences and commonalities greater. And as a result, we work better as individuals, as workers, and as people.

 As 2012 begins, virtualwirks is preparing to move from only supporting businesses in their quest for virtual work success to helping the workers themselves.  We will be launching a suite of resources and tools for people who work virtually, enabling all of us to be even better connected and share our common ideals more readily.  We hope you’ll come along.  And like Santa (or whatever you call him), be made jolly in the process.  Happy holiday season, and cheers for a new year ahead.

Friday, October 7, 2011

the virtual risk-benefit equilibrium

How many usernames and passwords do you have to remember and manage on a regular basis? Well, if you are anything like me, you probably have more than you even want to attempt to count.  Also – if you are like me – you probably can’t keep all of the combinations of alpha-numeric, special characters, and varying lengths straight. Between personal web accounts, work systems, and mobile applications, you practically need to keep a personal library of usernames, passwords, security question answers, just to keep track and remember what places you have signed up for and how to access them. In today’s virtual world, security is king. There are simply just too many threats and risks out there. It seems that you can’t pick up a newspaper these days without reading something about the threats of information theft or fraud. However, even with the existence of these risks, the benefits and value of the remote and digital world are too large to forego all together to keep our information safe. Therefore, we do what we can to mitigate those risks and we carry on with reaping the benefits of all of our different domains.

 

The same is true for business in the virtual word – information security is critical, but the benefits of a virtual presence are paramount. Organizations are right to have concerns over the safety of their own and their client’s information – after-all, the impact of one incident can be catastrophic enough to bring a company to its knees. The quagmire that many businesses wrestle with is how to balance the risk-benefit factors, and minimize threats while gaining the benefits of a virtual model. This is especially true of organizations that want to benefit from all of the positive factors that come through having a dispersed work force. One of the biggest challenges for such companies is to relinquish the myth that the only answer to keeping information safe is keeping employees on site. Additionally, one of the common pitfalls that management fall into is thinking that information security is only solved through technology or restrictive access. It is true that those practices have a strong impact; however, business processes, people, and culture have just as much impact on information security as the technological solutions that are established to safeguard against the risks. Process controls with appropriate levels of checks and balances need to be in place to complement the efforts of the technological solutions, and having the right people with a business culture of trust and integrity is crucial.

 

But how do you implement process controls and how do you cultivate a desired culture in the remote word where virtually everyone physically sits apart from one another? We created virtualwirks to help organizations align around these fundamentals, and to help them deploy these strategies across their remote business models, and we have been doing just that for our clients over the past two years. With so many questions and concerns about information security in today’s world, and with all of the positive attributes of having a dispersed workforce, it is a challenge to find the right balance between the risks and the rewards of a virtual business model. The good news that the risks can be minimized and the model can be successful – provided the right approach is used.
 

Saturday, January 1, 2011

baby, it’s a brand new year

The cartoon metaphor of a rollover from one year to another has a baby in it to represent the new year.  The message is that the change in calendar means we all have some more growing up to do.  There is a spirit of energy that seems to come along with the end of one year and the beginning of another.  Part of that is the recollection of the year just past, the changes we have experienced and the optimism, curiosity and eagerness for what lies ahead.  The virtualwirks team is no different from others in this regard and we have spent a few days looking back at what was 2010 as we also move forward.  These are exciting times for us, and for the virtual work model as a whole.  In addition to our business expanding into new geography, new markets  and new customers, our young company continued to grow up some more as we added and Advisory Board and even committed to a HQ office; proving that even those who work remotely need a place to call home. 

 Our mission to help people thrive working virtually got a boost from the continuing growth of the remote work model itself.  A range of tools, from the heralded iPad to the less well known Dropbox make it easier than ever before to work anywhere.  The US government joined the party by passing Telework legislation and incentives to make it a reality.  And most endearing to us is the continuing erosion of reluctance among businesses to the model as they become more familiar with its security, stability and success.  Our blog has often written that virtual work is personal and about people above all.  Over the last year, we’ve worked with people whose lives were changed by the continuing virtualization of work, some for the health benefit, some for the wealth benefit and some for whom the benefit is yet unknown.  As we look to launch a series of products and services that aim toward those people in 2011, I can’t help but be excited about who we’ll meet in the months ahead, and how we’ll change each other a little.   That means we’ll grow up a little more.

 A friend of mine made a comment that any year that starts out with 1/1/11 has to be good.  I like that line of thinking, and can feel the energy.  Her excitement makes me feel a bit like a little kid for all the things we have planned to do.   Happy 2011, can you come outside and play in it?

– Jim