Is Teleworking Better for the World?

Talking to friends and family about their winter commutes makes me think about how tough it is for people who work in offices this time of year, many unnecessarily.

There are many jobs where you have to be physically present, but there are also many jobs where you could just as easily work from home given the right technical setup. I am wondering if more people had the opportunity to work from home, it might help the environment and the economy.

What are the advantages to teleworking?

Carbon Footprint – Think of all the greenhouse gasses put out into the world but daily commutes, flights to meetings, heating huge offices, and so on.
Costs – When I worked in an office I would spend over £100 a week on fuel alone, and that was before diesel was £1 a litre. There are costs to businesses to house and equip workers too, over and above the basics needed to do office work.
Productivity – Each morning I can be at my desk within seconds because my office is downstairs from my bedroom. When I worked in an office it would mean driving for an hour or more, getting more and more stressed, through roadworks and traffic jams. Many times I would get to the office only to have to hop back into transport to get to a meeting, so my entire day would be spent traveling all apart from a 30 minute catch up meeting with a client 300 miles away. Video Conference calls would just require those 30 minutes, without all the travel time.
Oil dependency – OK, I might overplay this one a little, but perhaps fewer unnecessary journeys would reduce dependency on oil?
Family flexibility – Many work days are lost through to having to leave work due to family commitments, but in many cases you could quite happily get work done if only you were available at home rather than stuck in an office.

Obviously many companies worry that if there employees are not watched 24/7 they will not do their job, but in fact many organizations in practice have found this is not the case providing obvious checks and balances are implemented. Working remotely doesn’t have to mean out of touch.

All this doesn’t take much in the way of expensive technology either, it’s the kind of stuff most families will either have or be getting in their house:

Decent spec computer – Doesn’t have to be top of the range, just enough to run Microsoft Office
Broadband – This can be a sticking point for people in rural areas, but I imagine if they are within commutable distance of an office the majority will have broadband capability
Webcam – Most computers come with these now but they are cheap if not
Headset – To make conversations clearer it is useful to have a Skype headset, prevents background noise and echo.
Software tools – Lots of virtual assistants now get by just with Google Docs, but of course it all depends on the work you will be doing. In terms of cost savings in IT, it helps if these applications work in the cloud or remotely so home IT visits are not required.

So there would be fewer gas-guzzlers crowding up the roads spewing out toxins, happier and more productive workers, and companies could save some money in a tough economy … Am I nuts or would more teleworking be better for the world?

The story behind Clever Tools – Tools for the freelance programmer

A couple of days ago I had the privilege of taking a sneak peek at Clever Tools. A web application that might become the productivity Swiss Army Knife for freelance programmers. I also had a very interesting conversation with Jason Jenning, CleverTool’s CEO. Jason was very candid, and gave a lot of insight and advice about developing web applications, raising funds and being an entrepreneur.

For those of you that are in the process of – or thinking of starting a web start-up, this should be an interesting read. Enjoy.

Q: What is Clever Tools?

Clever Tools is an online suite of web tools to help organize projects, manage your business, and collaborate with virtual teams and clients. It consists of 6 main tools- Project Management, Invoices/Estimates, Bug/Issue Tracking, Time Tracking/Time-sheets, Leads Management, and a Collaborative Whiteboard system. The beautiful thing about Clever Tools is you only select and use the tools you need and those tools work together. I hate bloated software and hate having features I will never use. So why make other people use features they will never use? How do they work together? For example, let’s say you have a list of time-sheets from a project you are working on for a client. If you also have the invoice tool, you can create a new invoice for that client with the click of a button and all pertinent information will be filled in for you. That is just one example.

Q: Who are you targeting as customers?

Clever Tools really can be used by a wide variety of people. Any contractor, consultant, students, etc can use specific tools. But, our target audience is web designers, developers, programmers, and project managers. It is specifically useful for virtual teams.

Q: How will CleverTools help those customers?

Clever Tools will help our target audience be more productive and help them manage and run their businesses better. So in essence, it will help them be more successful and profitable by eliminating the fragmentation of their data across multiple services which causes frustration and inefficiency.

Q: When do you expect the beta to be released?

Thatâ€™s a good question. To be honest, there are currently only two of us working on it. There is Andrew, who has done a phenomenal job doing all the design work and all current programming. And then there is myself who came up with the vision. I am more of the project manager and business development- I do not do any programming and only modest design work. We are in the process of hiring 1-2 more programmers, so I hope to have a beta ready in July.

Q: What made you start working on Clever Tools?

I started working on Clever Tools because I was getting very frustrated with the current tools I was using to help run my consulting company. I run a small consulting company who specializes in mobile and web technology. We have clients such as Marie Callenders, Sprint, and San Diego State University. Being as how my team is virtual (I’m in San Diego, Andrew in South Dakota, and 4 programmers in Iowa), I use web based tools to run my business. Well, there are 6 different web applications I use. It got frustrating for me, my team, and even my clients to remember 6 different URLs, logins, interfaces, etc. So I asked myself, why couldn’t all these core tools be in one place? The answer? They could and I wanted to do it.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself

I just turned 25 and have been running my consulting business for 4 years. Technically remnants of it started when I was a junior in high school and started my first company with my youth pastor doing computer tech work and networking in schools under the E-rate program. I was making $15/hour in high school and was happy. I moved to San Diego to attend college and focused on school. I realized I enjoyed working better and started my consulting business back up and built it all over again in a new city.

I’m recently engaged and also will be graduating from San Diego State with a BS in Business with an emphasis in Information Technology in a few days. I love TV- I mean I am absolute fanatic. I love soccer, computers, video games, and reading. Oh, and scuba diving. I love Working. I love having ideas and bringing them to life. I love helping clients and helping them
reach goals.

Q: Are you VC funded/Self funded/Other?

Clever Tools is self funded and has a small silent investor.

Q: What was the initial investment?

The small silent investor, my fiance’s dad, invested $10,000 to get started. I put in another $10,000 and took out a SBA (Small Business Administration) loan to help finish the project. Total investment to date: ~$45,000.

Q: How much do you expect the overall investment to be?

Well, currently all money will be spent on development. That means we have no money for marketing and are counting on the blogsphere and users to help spread the word- hint hint . However, we do understand the importance of marketing. So, we are possibly looking for another $50,000-$100,000 to go towards marketing and also to develop an Adobe Apollo desktop application for Clever Tools. So, that would put total investment between
$100,000-$150,000.

Q: Are you looking for investors? if so, what kind?

We are currently entertaining the idea of looking for a real investor. We are open to different types of investment.

Q: As a web 2.0/on-line entrepreneur, what are the top three tips you can give other entrepreneurs?

1) The hardest thing about a start-up, is actually starting. I read that quote somewhere and it is true! It takes a lot to risk it all for an idea. But, you need to do it! Just plan it out and set your mind to figuring out a way to do it.

2) Be passionate about what you start. I’m passionate about Clever Tools because I truly need it and I believe it can help tons of people and companies like me. There is nothing worse than doing something just because you think there is profit in it. More than likely, you will fail if you got at it for that reason alone.

3) Know your strengths and weaknesses and do not be afraid to find people to fill those gaps. No one can wear every hat! It’s okay to bring other people in who can do things better than you. That is why I don’t program or do graphic design- I just do the business development side of things.

Q: What should entrepreneurs be weary off?

Be weary of taking money too quick or taking too much of it. I believe the barriers to entry and cost factors have been significantly lowered over the years. If you’re willing to pour your heart and soul into something, you can get it started with much less money than in the past. Be smart about the money and take it only when you need it. Don’t get stuck in a bad situation because you took too much money and gave away too much of your company.

P.S.

Jason is looking for beta testers. So if you are interested in using Clever Tools, sign up for the beta.

What was so valuable “Best Buy” completely changed its corporate culture to get?

A Corporate Blogging Case Study

A 35% increase in productivity!!!

According to CNN Money (via Kodus), Best Buy currently lets 60% of its HQ employees come and go whenever they please as long as they achieve their goals. This is a huge cultural change, but it seems that Best Buy is happy with this change since they plan to expand it to their entire HQ staff and their stores.

But how does it relate to corporate blogging, you ask?

How to “Sell” Corporate Blogging

The Best Buy case shows that a company can change its culture if the benefits are big enough. A company doesn’t need to completely change its corporate culture to gain the benefits of blogging. It only needs to find some way to acknowledge and reward behind-the-firewall bloggers for their efforts. We (Enterprise 2.0 experts/evangelists/advocates) can use the benefits that blogging and other Enterprise 2.0 technologies bring to “Sell” the required cultural change to the company.

The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 and Corporate Blogging

This is where we (so called experts/evangelists/advocates) fail miserably. Once we are faced with the simple and mandatory question that comes before every project – What are the clear benefits this project will bring? we start to babble.

The truth is – we don’t have good answer. We can show wonderful things blogging has done for individuals on the Internet. Some companies have even successfully used blogs to create a relationship with their customers. But there is no solid collection of benefits for corporate (behind-the-firewall) blogging.

If you know of such an example, where an internal blog provided real benefits, I’d love to hear about it. And though the Enterprise 2.0/Corporate Blogging gurus probably won’t admit to it, they’ll probably be very happy to hear about it as well.

3 Simple and Powerful Techniques Management Can Use to Encourage Enterprise Blogging

Web 2.0 technologies are surprisingly slow in penetrating businesses. It is becoming clear that knowledge sharing (blogging for example) can be effectively introduced within a company only with the active support of management.

Management needs to do the right things–primarily because management has limited time. Wasting managementâ€™s time on low-yielding activities will cause them to lose interest. Doing the wrong things can also harm the goal of knowledge sharing. To use the words of the renowned business author, Peter Drucker, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

The following are practical, down-to-earth techniques that management can use to promote enterprise blogging:

Comment on employeesâ€™ blogs. Imagine the reaction of a lowly copywriter when the VP of marketing writes “I love this idea; keep working on it” in the blog’s comments. The excitement will keep him ferociously blogging about new ideas for at least a couple of months.
Comment on comments. The dialogue in the comments section of a blog helps refine ideas, create new ones, and disseminate knowledge. By participating in that dialogue, management endorses the process. Management should be careful not to promote its own ideas, because their ideas have much more weight and will dominate the conversation.
Keep a link blog. Linking to an employee blogger will accomplish the same goals as leaving comments on his blog (i.e., show support and recognition). A link blog is even more effective than commenting because the acknowledgement of the blogger is public. Keeping a link blog will help spread information throughout the company (since senior managementâ€™s blogs will be widely read). It will also help employees understand what interests the senior management (help guide the corporate blogging conversation).

Management can use these techniques to actively promote and show support for enterprise blogging–and in so doing, lead the company toward knowledge sharing.

Making Effective Enterprise Blogging Evolve

Evolution is one of the most powerful phenomena known to man. Through evolution (adapting to their environment), single-celled organisms have turned into birds (flyers), fish (swimmers), and human beings (thinkers!).

The cheapest, quickest, and easiest way for a company to promote blogging and other knowledge-sharing practices is to transform itself into an environment that induces an evolutionary process of knowledge sharing.

Now letâ€™s see what an environment that induces evolution is.

Evolution rewards small changes

The single-celled organism didn’t just wake up one morning as a bird. It began by dividing into two cells.

Multicellular organisms proved to be better adapted to certain environments than single-celled ones. Multicellular organisms, therefore, got a better chance to evolve.

Similarly, an employee won’t become a master blogger overnight.

To create effective employee bloggers (information sharers), a company should notice every small step an employee makes toward knowledge sharing. The company should reward the employee while taking into account all those steps. If an employee starts blogging, notice it. If he blogs a lot, notice it. If he blogs on subjects that are important to the company, notice it. If a lot of other employees read his blog, notice it. If he helps spread ideas created by other employees, notice it.

But noticing isn’t enough. The company must let the employee know that his actions have been noticed. It must reward him. Without feedback and reward, there is no evolution.

Evolution handsomely rewards â€˜good changesâ€™

Not all changes are of equal value. The prehistoric bird that developed wings that were strong enough to propel it through the air was much better rewarded than the bird that grew a fourth toe on its feet. The benefits that birds got from flying were powerful enough to make flying birds dominate the class. Eventually we were left mostly with flying birds.

Similarly, when an enterprise blogger comes up with great ideas, finds a way to make or save the company money, or acts as a channel to spread knowledge throughout the company, he should be handsomely rewarded.

Handsomely rewarding effective bloggers will greatly speed up the evolution of effective blogging and knowledge sharing in the enterprise.

The problem with the evolutionary approach

The biggest problem with using an evolutionary approach to induce effective enterprise blogging is defining the reward structure. If the company counts and rewards the wrong things, strange and unexpected blogging behavior will occur. For instance, if the company puts too much weight on the number of posts a blogger writes, bloggers will blog a lot about unimportant (and potentially distracting) matters.

Rewarding the right actions, setting the correct reward for each action, and determining when and how to reward corporate bloggers are crucial to creating the right environment in which knowledge sharing will emerge.

If creating the reward structure is so tough, then why do it?

Why you should use the evolutionary approach

When the reward structure is exactly right, effective enterprise blogging and information sharing will emerge quickly, and with amazing results.

This is the third article in the Enterprise 2.0 series.

Want to read the rest of the series? Subscribe to this blog!

Wiki adoption in the enterprise

It seems that adoption is the biggest problem of Enterprise 2.0 applications. Jerry Bowles, an Enterprise Irregular, writes about the difficulties in getting employees to use wikis.

As I already wrote, I believe it boils down to this:

Enterprise 2.0 apps like blogs and wikis make people give the company something that was previously their own – their knowledge, expertise and ideas (by forcing the employees to document them). It is only natural that they resist.

For this to be a fair deal, the company needs to give something in return. More specifically – Pay.

How to ignite behind-the-firewall blogging

Is it possible to take the most powerful and productive force on the Internet today and apply it to the enterprise?

Can behind-the-firewall blogging be as effective as the Blogosphere?

Knowledge sharing and collaboration can create amazing results in the enterprise. They can dramatically increase sales, improve productivity, boost morale and much more. If you disagree with me or doubt this, go ahead and read the previous article in this series (but come back).

Igniting knowledge sharing in the enterprise

Igniting knowledge sharing and turning it to a full blown fire is possible by …

having the company “advertise” on corporate blogs. Here is a short recipe:

Management should prepare a list of topics that are important for company (the company will see real benefits if employees share their knowledge of and collaborate on these topics).

Management should then define how much it is willing to pay for blogging on the subject, in the same way that advertising is done in the Internet today–by determining how many dollars they are willing to pay for a thousand page views of an article on the subject.

It should than expose this new incentive model to the employees and . . .

step back.

For example:

If the company wants employees to share sales knowledge and insights, it can define a price tag of $75 for a thousand views of an article about sales. This will result in employeesâ€™ writing articles about sales and making sure that everyone reads them. Presto: You have knowledge sharing in the sales department.

Why use the Internet’s advertising model on internal blogs?

Because it gives a employees a powerful financial incentive to do the following:

Work hard on spreading their knowledge (marketing their blogs): Itâ€™s a simple equation: the more people read the employee’s tips, ideas, and insights, the more money he or she gets. Employees will send e-mails to their co-workers, talk about their blog at lunch, and beg other company bloggers to link to them.
Write about the most useful/interesting stuff they know: Writing an article about drinking coffee is boring and no one will read it–thereâ€™s no payday. Writing a tip that can help you triple your sales is extremely interesting. Everyone will read it! In fact, it will go viral. Some of the employees will send e-mails about it to their friends, effectively doing the marketing for the blogger. In advertising, thatâ€™s a gold mine.

Ignoring the Internet advertising model and paying employee bloggers an extra $1,000 a month will turn every employee into a blogger–but will turn none of them into an effective blogger.

A must-read tip about paying corporate bloggers

The company has to be generous! Especially at the beginning. The first bloggers are the company’s blogging poster girls/boys. They will spread the idea of knowledge sharing and collaboration throughout the company. If they are financially successful, others will quickly follow and knowledge sharing and collaboration will spread like wildfire.

Where to begin

Just do it! Setting up a blog and counting page views are extremely easy. Getting a small budget for the experiment is even easier. Paying only for page views on topics that are beneficial to the company is a bit more complex, but it can be done manually at first (I’ll discuss this in another article).

A friend of mine once told me, “Working with cutting-edge technologies and cutting-edge ideas means that sometimes, you get cut.” Your company should be aware that it might suffer some paper (blogging) cuts. But reaping the benefits of knowledge sharing and collaboration can supercharge even the largest company. Don’t delay!

This is the second installment in a series of articles about Enterprise 2.0.

Don’t miss the rest of this series! Subscribe to this blog.

Knowledge Socialism: The Personal Risk and the Organizational Bonanza of Enterprise 2.0

In this article I will describe a problem that may be the biggest barrier to the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 applications among companies. I will try to offer a solution.

The two things every rich businessman knows

My boss, a very experienced and savvy businessman, once asked me a question:

“Do you know what are the two most important things every rich businessman knows?”

After confessing that I didnâ€™t know, he said, “The first thing is, if you know of a way to make money, keep it to yourself!”

“And what is the second thing?” I asked eagerly.

At that he just smiled!

It took me a couple of minutes to understand that he had just pulled one over my head. By not answering the second question (and by his being much wealthier than I) he had demonstrated the importance of keeping oneâ€™s knowledge to oneself.

How to keep your knowledge to yourself and become rich and famous

Imagine that you are a salesperson and that you have just found a secret benefit of your company’s product. It is such a huge benefit that customers can’t open their wallet fast enough when they hear about it. It has tripled your sales in the last month. But the best thing about this benefit is this: None of your fellow salespeople know about it.

What would you do?

Schedule a meeting and tell everyone about it, or
Keep it to yourself

Telling everyone about it might make you the company hero for a month; you might even get a bonus.

Keeping it to yourself will

Make you the leading sales person
Triple your salary
Make you a prime candidate for the position of sales manager

The average corporate employee will undoubtedly keep this “tip” a secret. This is the peak of knowledge capitalism. However . . .

Knowledge socialism (Enterprise 2.0): the most profitable thing your company can do

The flip side is that the best thing for your company is that you tell all the salespeople about the hidden benefit. It is ironic, but when it comes to knowledge, the best way to make a company profitable is to act like a socialist. Itâ€™s better for the company if everyone share their knowledge freely (within the company).

It is in the best interest of your company that you blog about the product benefit and/or open a Wiki page to explore the benefit and think of ways to incorporate it into the company’s marketing and sales effort. The sales of your company could triple!

And herein lays the rub. Sharing knowledge (Knowledge Socialism/Enterprise 2.0) is overwhelmingly important for the company and is very much against the employee’s personal financial interest.

How to align an employeeâ€™s gain with knowledge socialism

To successfully integrate knowledge socialism/Enterprise 2.0 into the enterprise, management must find a way to make it in the employee’s best (financial) interest to share his knowledge with the company. This might be very difficult. A “tip”, after all, can triple the employee’s salary and make him next in line for his bossâ€™s position. A â€œtipâ€ is worth a lot, but the company can’t afford (in more ways than one) to pay out huge bonuses to people with ideas. But . . .

Companies can create a reward structure for thinkersâ€”a structure that benefits thinkers by paying them more, improving their position in the company and increasing their reputation both inside and outside the company.

The person or company that will fully understand how to do this will become immensely successful. Let’s hope they don’t keep this knowledge to themselves.

This is the first installment from a series of articles about the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 in organizations.

Discover Enterprise 2.0 Ideas and News

The Enterprise Irregulars are a group of smart people that discuss Office 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 ideas and news.

I read some of their blogs, but reading all of them was too much (they blog about other things beside enterprise 2.0 and the reading-load was beyond my capabilities).

Being the smart group that they are, they understood the problem and created a central blog to aggregate their Enterprise 2.0 related posts.

I subscribed to the feed and if you want to discover cool Web 2.0 ideas and breaking Enterprise 2.0 news, I suggest you do the same.