I am on-again, off-again subscriber to Time Magazine. I use it as a way to spend (waste) less time surfing the web for news and stay informed–except when I decide not to.
The on-again off-again nature of my subscription is that I read it consistently for weeks at a time and then I get tired of it or don’t have time to read it. Then I put it on vacation hold for 4 months and when it starts coming again it feels new.
There was an interesting section in the May 25, 2009, issue called The Future of Work. A lot of the future described in the article reflects a lot of my current work environment, which not surprisingly, is influenced by the company I work for.
In a sub-article called When Gen X Runs the Show, author Anne Fisher talks about the skills good managers will need to have:
One of those is collaborative decision-making that might involve team members scattered around the world, from Beijing to Barcelona to Boston, whom the nominal leader of a given project may never have met in person.
No surprises there. The Fedora Project is a clear illustration.
The article also points out the different dynamics in generational work styles. This is often an unrealized source of frustration. I recently heard somewhere that for the first time in history we have four generations of people in the work place. Considering how fast the world and technology is changing it is no surprise that these generations value different things and work in different ways. I wonder if this unknowingly comes into play in the Fedora Project too.
The article mentions a couple of books that look interesting if you want to explore this topic more: Not Everyone Gets a Trophy by Brue Tulgan which is about Generation Y (born 1979 to 2000) and Keeping the Millenials by Joanne Sujansky.
Seth Godin’s contributing article, The Last Days of Cubicle Life, is also thought provoking and a good prelude to his new book called Linchpin–highly recommend if you are looking for ways to stay relevant in today’s workplace.
March 19, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I think one of the first things workplaces like Red Hat would teach others is that the little clause on the end of Ms. Fisher’s sentence – “whom the nominal leader of a given project may never have met in person” – is a really bad idea. In all the cases I’m aware of, remote workers greatly appreciate meeting the other people they work with at least once, and I’ve never seen a situation where this didn’t improve the work of the group in the future.