Working from Home

This morning I sat at a cafe in Tokyo eating breakfast and looking out the window at all of the people coming from trains and heading to work. On Monday evening I got to visit one of my work colleagues that lives here in Tokyo for dinner. This morning I realized that most everyone here lives in a tall building, takes a train to another tall building, works in the tall building, takes a train home at the end of the day, only to repeat the process the next day.

Think of the infrastructure required to move everyone around and how much smaller it could be if we didn't require so many people to work in an office every day. Furthermore, think of how much cost savings there would be if you didn't require office space for everyone.

I work from home on Friday's. I chose that day of the week as it allows me to spend more consecutive time at home. Remember that I fly to work on Monday mornings and don't return home until Thursday evenings. Let's assume I have 5 people on my team and we all decide that each of us will work from home one day per week. Someone works from home on Monday, someone else on Tuesday, etc. My team no longer needs 5 work spaces at the office, we now only need 4. Of course this does have the problem that we never have the entire team in the office at any given time. However that is a problem that can be easily solved. A number of companies don't assign permanent work spaces and just provide the technology so people can move around at will.

As I sat at breakfast this morning, I wondered how many of these people really need to go to an office anyways. There are a number of jobs where people only go to an office because of tradition. There are some forward thinking companies that allow people to do their jobs from home. I have a neighbor that used to work in JetBlue's call center. She woke up every morning, logged into the system to say she was working, and took phone calls all day long from the comfort of her home. At the end of the day, she logged out of the system and stopped receiving phone calls. If a manager felt the need to monitor her work, a number of key indicators exist: number of calls answered, average length of calls, average time between calls, etc. Even then if the manager felt my neighbor wasn't doing a good job, the manager could listen in on the calls.

Call centers should be small and everyone should follow the telecommuting principle. My daughter used to work for one and she was required to go in every day. She hated it. Eventually she quit and took a different job. Now the company needs to retrain someone else and while it probably doesn't cost very much, it isn't free.

There are a number of other jobs that could offer telecommuting as an option. Technology is advancing to the point where simulated face-to-face meetings are getting better and less expensive. WebEx and GotoMeeting are a step in the right direction but they could be greatly improved simply by improving their interface for allowing multiple cameras and screens to be used. That would allow for people's faces to be viewed along with whiteboards and presentation materials.

I am a manager and feel like I need to be in the office to monitor what is happening with my team. Perhaps I am the one that needs to take a step back and figure out how my job responsibilities can be streamlined through telecommuting. I have figured out how to make 1 day per week work. My next step may be as simple as figuring out how to make it 2.

Don't Sell Yourself Short

This morning I had to get up at the crack of dawn for a conference call that involved people from around the world. For the past couple of years I have been involved with a company that created software to quantify how salespeople are successful. Once you know why, you can then coach your other salespeople to be more like them. This morning's call was with our management and the management of another large company interested in buying us.

I sat in my office watching a Webex demo of our software thinking how glad I was that it was someone else giving the demo. I have watched plenty of software demos using Webex or GotoMeeting but have never had the pleasure of starting the demo. I'm sure I could figure it out, I just have never done it.

The whole experience made me think back to a spreadsheet I once saw at a friend's house. I thought I was a big Microsoft Excel user until I saw what my buddy was using to keep track of his daily bicycle rides. The spreadsheet was a work of art. There were lots of different colors with graphs showing day-over-day performance increases. I knew Excel could do all of that but had never seen anyone use all of those features.

Amazingly the person giving this morning's demo and my friend with the elaborate spreadsheet don't consider themselves as knowledgable computer users. Given the choice of rating themselves as novice, intermediate, or expert, they would both choose novice. I think they deserve better.

Anyone that uses a computer daily deserves more than a novice self score for computer proficiency. You may only use your computer for e-mail or writing a BLOG, but that gives you some experience. So if you see yourself as a computer novice but are a frequent user, then don't sell yourself short. The next time someone asks you about your computer skills, confidently reply, "I'm a BLOG reading expert."

High-tech Software Demos

This morning I participated in a demo of some software I have written over the last year. The demo was to a very large company based on the East coast. The meeting went extremely well and I was glad the software worked as designed. There are one or two flaws that I recognized but I doubt anyone else would see them.

The demo was really kind of amazing. Nobody had to get on a plane to fly to the demo location. Furthermore nobody had to even get in a car to be a part of the demo. Instead we used a product called "GoToMeeting" which is very similar to WebEx. Both products allow you to share the information on your computer screen with those whom you invite to your meeting. Your invitees can then log onto the party from their computers in their offices or homes.

This morning one of my partners on the project brought his Mac computer to my house. We plugged it into the wall, turned it on, and connected it to my wireless network. A couple minutes later we started the meeting and waited for the participants to join. There was no need to use a phone to dial into a conference call because we could use the computer's built-in microphone and speakers. If your computer didn't have a microphone and speakers, you could revert to using your phone. I had a phone ready just-in-case but was glad I didn't need it.

There were a total of six participants in the meeting. A third partner made the drive to my house while another decided to join from the comfort of his home office. Then there were two participants joining us from the East coast in two different locations. If necessary, we could have added many more participants.

The meeting lasted a total of 90 minutes and was a huge success. If we had tried to do the demo in person, it would have required two days of travel, an overnight hotel stay, a rental car, several expensive meals, and a huge amount of worrying. Things went well enough that we will be having another meeting in a couple of weeks. However that one will have to be in person. It's a good thing I have a lot of frequent flyer miles I can use.