Making People and Technology Really Work

A while back when the internet was still fairly new, my colleague Tony Larcombe and I realized that electronic communications had made office location irrelevant to getting projects and work done. Not only did location not matter, physical boundaries and time differences didn’t matter either.

What mattered was that technology could be used to make sure that individuals and working teams could work on projects seamlessly regardless of where they were. We called our model the Electronic Umbrella and we set out our ideas in a white paper called The Electronic Umbrella: Fusing People and Technology so the Organization Really Works.

We were way ahead of our time. People thought the Umbrella Model was unrealistic.

In fact, our vision has begun to come true, in part, because of improved electronics and in part, because of the rising cost of travel both in terms of time and money. It’s more effective and cheaper to have the right team members whether or not they are in the same place. Moreover, easy communications can make re-location unnecessary. Some people call this using a distributed workforce.

Improved electronics, communications coupled with high travel costs all act in favor of a distributed workforce. Even so, the distributed workforce will not work well unless the entire staff has bought into some form of the Umbrella model and is not merely giving it lip-service in order to have a job. It will not work well unless a comfort zone is created so that people who are miles or even oceans apart are willing and able to work together on an on-going basis without thinking about or being affected by physical location or by any discomfort with the technology that makes this possible.

Getting that done takes some expertise. But it is possible, it is effective and it is likely the model for the future.