Do we preach “Virtual Officing” but abstain from the practice?
There has recently been so much blogging about ‘virtual officing’ and about our connectedness that I just felt compelled to write this.
Imagine my surprise. Driving down William Nicol on Sunday on my way back from church, I see these reappearing ‘adobt-a-pole-posters’ on behalf of a leading IT company to advertise their new Virtual office product.
Very interesting, I think, and decide to go into their website and read up a bit more.
Hmmm, quite a few benefits listed, travel less, increase productivity, reduce costs, etc etc.
So, what’s new?? These were exactly the benefits they experienced while employing a full time pioneer who was busy successfully proving that their products actually worked virtually and that their corporate message was in practice. Oh, I forgot to mention, from whom they then revoked this privilege – if one can call it that at all.
I continue to read. There is an article on seven ways to help make a Virtual Office work.
Check, check, check…
Here’s an interesting one: “And train yourself to trust”. Was this not in essence the issue, the lack of trust? Definitely not in the pioneer but in their own systems & management styles.
As I continue to read once more, the answer strikes out at me. Definitely a new way of looking at trust. Can one really talk about trust if you feel compelled to “stay on their backs because you rarely seem them”.
Virtual Office success cannot be measured in terms of ‘micro management’ and its success – this is part of the old school. OUTPUT becomes the measure.
It’s as easy as that, PERFORMANCE!!!
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May I add this word as a replacement for ‘performance’ = VALUE. Maybe it means the same, maybe it’s easier to get your mind around or even measure. You can perform but add no value, and you can add value, but not necesarily ‘perform’. At the end of the day I’d rather have value than performance.
Value can also be subjective and objective. So can performance. But value is closer to output thinking than performance. Performance still has some input baggage attached, or can be, far easier than ‘value’.
Nuf sed