Few words are more terrifying to enterprise organizations than disruption.The reasons are obvious. Uber disrupted transportation and left traditional providers in shambles. In lodging and hospitality, Airbnb did much the same. And for on premise technology, the cloud has given way to a virtual onslaught of software-as-service (SaaS) products that continue to devour the bottom line.In short, disruption kills.Or does it?Late last month, Polycom announced a partnership with video and web conferencing service Zoom. The response has been almost universal shock. Industry observers, in particular, have called into question the sanity of partnering with a business that — at least on the surface — seems bent on taking over the very space Polycom depends on to survive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“Move in or get out.”That was the injunction handed down to IBM’s marketing team just two months ago. Admittedly, the news wasn’t delivered in quite such austere terms. But the result was the same.Forcing employees who work remotely to move their families and lives onsite is a bold move. Three weeks ago, I dove into the rationale behind hardline no-remote-working policies and made a data-driven defense based on responses from 25,234 workers found in The Changing World of Work: A Global Survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Traditionalists are notoriously hard sells. I don’t mean politically; I mean technologically.While remote working might not sound controversial, the ideological divides are clearly drawn.Over the past few years, Google, Yahoo and Best Buy have all made headlines with their “no remote working” policies. The most recent entry into this hardline approach is IBM. Just last month, CMO Michelle Peluso announced in a private video to marketing staff: Move on site, or move out.After 19 straight quarters of declining revenue, the decision to relocate their dispersed teams to one of six “strategic” offices is driven not just by the bottom line, but by an underlying assumption about what makes great teams great. As Peluso explained:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AI, big data and bots! Oh my! You don’t need to be a troglodyte or tech-wary prognosticator to fear the future of work. Everywhere we look, the same trend is making headlines: less human, more artificial.
But is the future of work really inhuman? To answer that question, it is vital to understand the rise of tech at both the popular and professional level. While it’s certainly given us the ability to defy distance, only recent innovations have cracked the code, allowing us to truly relate. Many lament the perceived shallowness of this tide, but communication and collaboration are primitive desires.
We are, after all, tribal creatures who rally around shared purposes and common goals. Dangers exist, but the good news is technology is finally catching up with human nature.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Michael Frendo