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Notes about the Future

Meet The Associates

We've recently formed a virtual community of experts who, like us, are committed to helping create the future of work. These firms and folks are independent, but are joining with us to produce new ideas and perspectives on the changing nature of work, the workplace, and the workforce. You can read more about the Future of Work Collaborative and meet all of the Associates on our website, at this link:

http://www.thefutureofwork.net/about_associates.html

Each month for the foreseeable future we're going to feature one or more of the Associates here, in the belief that the more you get to know them the more you'll want to engage with us and them as you create your own future.

This month, two Kates and a Cory:

Kate Lister is the principal researcher at the Telework Research Network, where she has created a free web-based Telework Savings Calculator to quantify the impact of telecommuting on local areas. Kate's popular press book, Undress For Success—The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home (Wiley, 2009), has won the praise of top work-life experts. She is also a member of TechCast, a 100-member virtual think tank based at George Washington University, where she contributes to the telework forecast. Some of her webinars and speeches about telecommuting can be viewed on slideshare.com.

Kate North is the Vice President of Global Development for e-Work.com Inc., a leader in interactive e-learning that prepares managers and employees so they can "thrive" in the virtual workplace. With over 25 years of global experience in workplace strategy, research, design, and transformational change, Kate offers her clients a holistic approach to mobilizing their workforce. She has also served as the Operational Chair for CoreNet, helping build and launch the global Workplace Community of Practice. She is now focused on expanding the community globally while residing in beautiful Durango, Colorado.

Cory Williamson is a writer whose recent (ghost) work includes books on Value-Added Economics, Risk Management, The History of Business Coaching, Local Economic Development, and Sustainable Architecture. He is also, along with Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham, the co-author of Corporate Agility (2007). After earning a B.A. in Political Philosophy at Harvard Cory worked as a writer/editor for several small magazines in Boston, then veered off onto the path worn smooth by so many writers before him—i.e., producing two unpublished novels while working as a roughneck, carpenter, cab driver, musician, painter, and cabinetmaker—until a desk job finally started to look pretty good again. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, with his wife of 20 years and their two children.

The Future of Technology

Yes, People Still Read, But Now It's Social

When you read a book on Amazon's Kindle, you can now discover which passages and phrases other readers particularly liked. This is an intriguing article from the New York Times exploring the impact that hyperlinks in books and articles are having on what people read, and—more importantly—how they learn about what other people are reading, and liking.

Looking for the right collaborative technology tool?

Here's a great place to start. Robin Good's catalog includes just about every decent tool out there—with links to each one's website.

This is an incredible tool; it's a mind map laying out all the various document repositories, instant messaging systems, videoconferencing tools, VOIP systems, web conferencing sites, and just about every other kind of tool you can think. Mr. Good hasn't publicly reviewed them all, or ranked them, but he's certainly made it easy for you to find what you are looking for.

Apple, Google, Facebook: The Big Three

The San Francisco Chronicle recently carried a series of status reports on Silicon Valley's "Big Three" tech firms. The link above takes you to the overview/introduction. The three individual stories are at the following links:

• Apple
• Google
• Facebook

These are not just stories about the companies and their products; they are also full of important insights and predictions about the future of the Internet and how we'll all be using it in the years to come (depending, of course, on the outcomes of the battles among these three firms and that other west coast behemoth up in Redmond, Washington).

The Future of Place and Space

The Growing Strategic Importance of Real Estate

This is a short article from Tririga, a firm that specializes in software and data that supports corporate real estate and facilities management. The article includes some useful data about total costs of occupancy, move cost per employee, and other critical factors central to CRE's emerging strategic role.

The Dollars and Sense of Workshifting: The Bottom Line

This free report (a downloadable .pdf file) was recently commissioned by Citrix Online; it was produced by The Telework Research Network, led by none other than our Future of Work Associate and friend, Kate Lister. You can read her bio in the Meet the Associates section (above) of this newsletter.

Kate's analysis quantifies the benefits that workshifting—specifically, working from home—produce for employers, employees, and the community. For example, it shows that U.S. businesses could save over $400 billion a year in higher productivity, cheaper office costs, less absenteeism, and lower staff turnover.

The Future of People and Organizations

How Millennials are Shaping the Future of Work

There are so many studies and articles about millennials and their impact on organizations and workplaces that yet one more almost seems silly. But this note on the Workshifting blog by Jessica Eastman of Citrix Online has a very different feel to it. It's essentially a first-person, informal look at how an actual millennial thinks about organizational life. It's a very useful supplement to all those data-heavy research reports you've been wading through.

And, by the way, the Workshifting blog is a great source of ideas, tips, and insights into the changing nature of work, with a particular focus on how mobile we've all become.

The Five Eras of the Social Web

This article at CRM.com summarizes a recent report on the evolution of the social web, prepared by Jeremiah Owyang for Forrester Research (the full report is available to Forrester clients or for one-time purchase).

We found the five-era framework an exceptionally useful way to think about how social media are affecting the workplace, and—more importantly—the way people learn, collaborate, and communicate.

What's Happened/Happening?

Future of Work Private Client Network

We previously announced the formation of a new Future of Work Private Client Network (see the December 2009 newsletter at this link for the full announcement)

In brief, we have launched a new, private network of clients and expert resources whose mission is to make practical sense of the future. We'd love to talk to you about becoming part of this new community. If you are interested, please contact us directly for a detailed prospectus and research agenda.

Getting Out and About

We're currently spending time with clients in southern California several times almost every month.

If we're in your area and have a few minutes, we'd love to see you for breakfast, lunch, dinner (depending on our other commitments), or "refreshments" any time after 5 PM local time (and you know what that means).

We're doing our best to publish our travel schedule, including both public appearances and private client work, on our new online calendar that's embedded in our website on our Events page

And please follow us on Twitter for more current updates on the future of work and our travel plans.

Give us a shout or send us a note, and if we can squeeze out some time, we'd love to say hello and share some good ideas the old-fashioned way: face-to-face, glass in hand.

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