Working virtually - a new era of work with no borders

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The new era of work

. . . we have moved decisively from what we called ‘globalization’ into a new era of global inter-connectedness [Global 2.0], where not just goods but information and ideas flow across borders constantly and (for the most part) freely as near universal access to Internet-enabled communications moves closer to reality.

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William J. Amelio, CEO Lenovo

Borderless working at the ground levelThe new era of work

if they can meet for lunch. Given his background in social media, David has taken the initiative to explore the use of crowdsourcing for developing project solutions.

Walking to the office from the station, her phone rings and she takes a call from Istanbul, Turkey. Azmi, the HR manager is worried about some local issues with the new performance management software.

This could be a long call, so she decides to call him back from a coffee shop that’s on her way. The issues are troubling, and could have an impact beyond Turkey. She is visiting the R&D facility in Bangalore, India, next week, and thinks it might be worthwhile breaking up her return trip with a visit to Azmi and some of his team. However, before using her smartphone to change flights, she posts a message on the internal social media system to see if anyone else has heard of other local issues with the software.

While on the social media site, she checks if anyone in the business has responded to her request for ideas on developing more effective collaboration

between her software developers and the mobile European sales teams. There is some good thinking, so she decides to set up an online meeting in which those ideas can be explored. During the program manager feedback session, she decides to find two freelance software developers who can help complete the XYZ project on schedule. Before leaving the office, she conducts a search on LinkedIn and sets up four interviews on Skype for the coming Wednesday and Thursday. On the train back home, she accesses a cultural information database and starts reading about the business cultures in India and Turkey. She has never visited either country before, and believes some background research would be useful, e.g. communication styles, negotiating tips, and what to expect in meetings.

The scientific writer, William Gibson, said that “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Elizabeth’s day may seem somewhat futuristic to some, but ‘business

as usual’ for others. If we really wanted to be futuristic we would have Elizabeth conjuring up workplaces – complete with 3D avatars of her colleagues – by touching an interactive surface covered with ‘smart paint’. That’s futuristic – for the moment!

One of the problems of writing about the borderless workplace is that the focus tends to be on the capabilities of the technology, not on the capabilities and needs of the people using the technologies to get work done.

In this book, we look at the borderless workplace challenge from the people perspective. It is guided by the question, “How can I help myself and my organization be successful in this new world of work?”

After an early morning teleconference at home with the virtual team she leads, Elizabeth is going into the London hub for a feedback meeting with one of her more experienced program managers. She could do it via Skype, but she prefers to have such a meeting face-to-face.

Elizabeth knows that in a highly competitive, rapidly changing, and uncertain environment, the business as a whole needs to be very agile, and so does she in order to get the best out of her diverse team members. Elizabeth has four generations on her team, as well as different national, organizational, and functional cultures. While having breakfast, she checks emails on her tablet computer, sends replies to the most urgent, and re-prioritizes some tasks. Following the teleconference with members of her team, she realizes she forgot to ask whether any of them were going into the London hub today. On the train, she checks the calendars of her virtual team on her smartphone. She notices David is going in and texts him to see

Elizabeth’s day

Business as usual?

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The borderless challengeThe new era of work

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The global stage is in astate ofperpetualmotion.

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Kenichi Omae

Visualize a game of soccer at kickoff. Two teams of 11 players are facing each other on a field whose outer boundaries are marked in white; a line across the field marks the half-way point. The players on each team are distributed in their half of the field depending on the position they play. At each end of the field are goal posts, and there are also white lines that mark penalty areas. It all looks very orderly.

The kickoff whistle is blown. Now imagine the scene if all the white boundary lines suddenly disappeared, and other teams with an unlimited number of players ran onto the field to compete; also imagine the scene if the goal posts were continually moving and numerous referees joined in – each one with a different set of rules.

The nature of change has changed.

You get the picture. This is today’s business environment.

ChangePast

Change Present/Future

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Gone are the days when globalization was simply multinationals from advanced economies spreading their power and influence across borders. Companies from emerging markets are wielding much more power. Think of:Lenovo (China) – now the world’s largest maker of PCs

Tata (India) – a conglomerate with a market capitalization of $90 billion that earns 58 percent of its revenues outside of India. The Reputation Institute ranked Tata as the 11th most reputable company in the world.

While Lenovo and Tata are becoming well-known names, there are many other emerging market companies becoming ‘global challengers’. The Boston Consulting Group issued a study on 100 fast growing and fast globalizing companies from emerging markets [1]. The companies included Alibaba (the largest e-commerce company in China), Trina Solar (the world’s 4th largest solar panel manufacturer), Naspers (a South

African media giant). While China and India dominated the list, there were also companies from Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Chile.

While the digital revolution and globalization have been with us for some time, how are businesses doing in their response? According to research conducted by Accenture and the Economist Intelligence Unit:

Change has been driven by two powerful and interdependent forces in the business environment:

Digital technologies

Multi-polar globalization

New information can impact the rest of the globe at the speed of the Internet, and information is being created 24/7. As Eric Schmidt of Google said, “There is more content being created in 48 hours today than was created from the beginning of time ‘til 2003!” The digital age is not simply about the transfer of information in its many forms. As Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics says, “This is not an information age. It’s an age of networked intelligence.” This is an age in which we have access to the intelligence of not just a few, but multitudes; an age that makes mass collaboration possible. Such collaboration radically alters our capabilities to innovate, influence, and get things done.


Multi-polarglobalization

Strikingly, only 11 percent of business leaders surveyed believe that their companies are significantly advanced in their strategic response to the disruptive business environment brought about by the intersection of the multi-polar world and developments in IT.

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The borderless challenge: RealitiesThe new era of work

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Competition: Multi-polar globalization means competition is coming from here, there, and everywhere. This means there is a continuous need to be proactive, responsive, and agile. We experience rapid changes in the marketplace requiring continuous adaptation in strategy, decision-making, and action. It is increasingly more difficult to plan for change often leaving us feeling disoriented, overwhelmed and unprepared.

Complexity: Diverse – yet often interconnected and conflicting - business models, management systems, legal and regulatory systems, customers, suppliers, stakeholders, geographies, employees, and socio-political systems make up a complex business environment. Often, complex problems cannot be managed with existing knowledge and know-how; they require collaborative solutions and innovation.

Connectivity: Information technologies have long been used to create efficiencies and productivity. Advanced virtual communication and collaboration technologies are going further by enabling business transformations. The ‘connected’, ‘networked’, ‘matrixed’, ‘latticed’, and ‘borderless’ enterprise are names for organizational forms enabled by the digital revolution.

Cultures: Being more digitally connected doesn’t mean we are more culturally or psychologically connected. In a world of virtual and face-to-face interactions across borders we often experience difficulty in understanding what is happening or in identifying what is significant. There is an increased chance for misreading situations because the reality might be interpreted in more than one way.



Competition

Complexity

Connectivity

Cultures

Agile

Innovative

Tech smart

Adaptable

Matrix working

Borderless collaboration

Digital fluency

Cultural Intelligence

Environmental forces Realities Organizational Capabilities People Capabilities

These are some of the specific business realities triggered by the powerful environmental forces.

The new era of work

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The borderless challenge: Organizational CapabilitiesThe new era of work

Agile: The ability of an organization to change rapidly in response to changes in the environment, e.g. the emergence of new competitors, disruptive technologies, and sudden changes in market conditions. Based on research by both McKinsey and The Economist Intelligence Unit, 90 percent of executives rank organizational agility as critical to business success [3]. Research at MIT shows that agile firms grow revenue 37 percent faster and generate 30 percent higher profits than non-agile companies. [4] Innovative: The willingness and ability of networks of people and teams to innovate their way through complex problems, by working together across internal and external boundaries. The story of Procter & Gamble (P&G) is telling [5]. In early 2000, the company’s share price had fallen nearly 50 percent, resulting in the loss of $85 billion in market capitalization. Despite huge spending on R&D, only 35 percent of new products reached their financial objectives. The new CEO, A.G. Lafley, was confident that

collaboration was the key to the company’s future value. He wanted to make P&G the company that “collaborates inside and out, better than any company in the world.” A study showed that P&G’s most profitable innovations came from internal collaborations across business units or from external collaboration with researchers on the outside. Twenty cross-functional ‘communities of practice’ were established within P&G, and Lafley determined that 50 percent of P&G’s products, ideas and technologies would be developed externally.

By 2008, P&G had improved its R&D productivity by 60 percent, and more than doubled its innovation success rate.

Technologies facilitate collaborative innovation, but they are by no means sufficient. As Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat said, “. . . collaboration is a culture, not a set of tools.”



Competition

Complexity

Connectivity

Cultures

Agile

Innovative

Tech smart

Adaptable

Matrix working


Digital fluency



Four organizational capabilities stand out as being of highest priority at this time

The new era of work

Tech Smart: The traditional view has always associated information technology with efficiency and productivity. That is certainly a valid perspective. Work networks (based on social media technologies) will become a common feature in organizations seeking greater agility, and according to McKinsey, “…by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers – high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals – by 20 to 25 percent.” That includes:

25-30% productivity improvement in reading and answering e-mail30-35% productivity improvement in search and gathering information25-35% productivity improvement in communicating and collaborating internally [6]Productivity is only part of the story. According to IBM:

“The view that technology is primarily a driver of efficiency is outdated; CEOs now see technology as an enabler of collaboration and relationships – those essential connections that fuel creativity and innovation.” [7]

Adaptable: The ability of people in an organization to handle the uncertainties and ambiguities that are inevitable when vertical, horizontal, regional, national, professional, functional, and linguistic boundaries are crossed.

Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit points to cultural and language differences as being particularly challenging:

“The single most common challenge, selected by 56% of executives polled, relates to the misunderstandings that emerge as a result of cultural and language differences from teams operating globally.”

The borderless challenge: Organizational Capabilities



Competition

Complexity

Connectivity

Cultures

Agile

Innovative

Tech smart

Adaptable

Matrix working


Digital fluency



Four organizational capabilities stand out as being of highest priority at this timeFour organizational capabilities stand out as being of highest priority at this time

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The new era of work

The borderless challenge: People Capabilities



Competition

Complexity

Connectivity

Cultures

Agile

Innovative

Tech smart

Adaptable

Matrix working


Digital fluency



Based on these critical organizational capabilities, four specific capabilities emerge for people development – The Critical4

Matrix WorkingPeople with the thinking and behavioral agility to produce high levels of performance in complex environments.

Digital Fluency People with the ability to make the most effective use of new communications and collaboration technologies.

Borderless CollaborationPeople with the mindsets and skills to work together across borders to innovate and create value.

Cultural IntelligencePeople with the adaptability to bridge and leverage differences between individuals and groups.

The new era of work

The borderless challenge: Summary



Competition

Complexity

Connectivity

Cultures

Agile

Innovative

Tech smart

Adaptable

Matrix working


Digital fluency



Organizations that can acquire these capabilities stand to benefit in a number of ways:

Faster responsiveness in pursuing growth opportunities and managing risks

Increased organizational cohesion and integration

Deeper and more value-added collaborations with customers and other stakeholders

Faster and better quality decision making through increased sharing of knowledge, skills, and experience

Faster workplace learning and application of best practices

More efficient and effective face-to-face and virtual project collaborations across the organization

Increased innovation through the cross-pollination of diverse perspectives and styles

Increased productivity through more seamless cross-border communication

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Key messagesThe new era of work

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Connectivity of people on a global scale; and multiple Cultures needing to communicate and work together.

Faced with these realities, businesses must actively work on capabilities for the organization as a whole, and capabilities for people in the organization.

The borderless organizational capabilities are: Agile; Innovative; Tech smart; and Adaptable.

The borderless people capabilities are: Matrix Working; Borderless Collaboration; Digital Fluency; and Cultural Intelligence (The Critical4)

The borderless work ‘place’ is often just a screen and an ear piece

Borderless working is about working with anyone, anywhere, at any time and from any device – across a city, a country, or across continents

Managing in a borderless workplace is more about orchestrating people and resources rather than establishing command and control

Organizational and personal agility are critical to success

The nature of change has changed

Two forces have been transforming the business environment and driving the borderless workplace: Digital Technologies and Multi-Polar Globalization

These two forces have put the spotlight on four realities for businesses to contend with: Competition from everywhere; Complexity in the environment and inside the organization;