Working from Home - Why Yahoo and all the old fashioned companies got it so wrong!

There has been a lot of news and comment recently about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's new policy of requiring all its workers to work from the office. People have commented that perhaps this is a way of "right-sizing"  the company. Apparently many of the workers are pretty much permanently working from home.

It is a subject close to my heart - I used to work at an organisation that was very much mission orientated - even junior managers applied large amounts of discretion when people needed to work from home. Indeed it was frequently a management tool - a solid day at home can accomplish quantities of work that take weeks in the office - for example in preparing a design document, strategy or any other thought intensive task that is frequently disturbed at work!

Talking to friends it seems sadly that many organisations are becoming more draconian in their outlook.

I do agree with the statements made by Yahoo that meeting colleagues known and unknown is a fruitful process that generates cooperation and ideas. But, let's be honest it also generates useless conversation about last night's sport, next weekend's plans or the state of snow on the ski slope. Clearly, these are important human interactions that make life and work more pleasant - but, they can be missed occasionally in the interests of concentrated work.

I also think that managers need to cleverly manage their workers wherever they are located to get the best return on their investment - this is probably "easier" in the perception of many weak managers if the worker is chained in their cubicle.

However, I am a firm believer in the value of working from home.

First and foremost, our workers are the key differentiator that we put into our products. In return for asking them for the extra commitment to make a real difference; this means being sensitive to their needs. If I need them to put in extra time to simply make it happen, then I should allow them to do so from home (assuming no security concerns and practical issues.) In addition, if the same worker needs to spend time at home a few days later with their kids, getting the washing machine fixed, or just to avoid rush hour commuting then I need to offer (within reason) the same flexibility that I asked of them when it was convenient for me. My employees will only go the extra mile if I understand that there is a two way process - or if I pay them so much that.... but this is not going to happen! (In fact it is almost impossible - we always want more.)

I need to trust my workers - their potential to do damage with poor product design, a mistake in front of t he customer is well above their hourly or even annual wage. I need to train, encourage and trust them as their manager - so if I trust them with a few millions of sales or company assets I can probably trust them not to fiddle a few hours of timesheets. Guess what - if they under perform then I need to correct and perhaps eventually fire them - independent of where they work. I need to give them clear productivity targets and KPIs and the tools and the guidance to achieve on time and with high quality.

As their manager I need to develop a greater skill set if they are not down the corridor, that is a challenge not a threat - I will be a better manager in a whole variety of ways and circumstances. In fact I need to show then my leadership and not my weakness.

We live in the twenty first century! This has many impacts. It wouldn't do any harm at all if companies reduced their carbon footprint by saving commuter travels. By the way it saves them quite a lot - if this is a company car then there is a direct saving in fuel and clever use of corporate space also cuts down on rentals, heat light etc. This can be serious money.

There are other elements of the 21st century that impact the debate. There are endless amounts of technology and products designed just to make it possible to work in teams even remotely. I know this, because all companies I have ever worked for expect us to use these technologies when we are traveling for business. Late at night, jet lagged and exhausted we try and keep up with the "day job" just so we don't get too behind and stop other projects because we are not around. On the other hand, sadly in the 21st century there are plenty of distractions in the office. Poor workers will waste their time and those of their fellow workers only too easily. Our job is always to challenge them to do better.

Working from home removes workspace distractions - no sport, no accidental team sessions by the water cooler, no pointless meetings where nobody is very clear why we are meeting and what we plan to achieve (apart from discussing current events). Most importantly it provides the space in time and place to really get some concentrated work done and hit my targets.

So in short - working from home can have tremendous upside in terms of worker respect and work achieved. It can also save the company substantial expenses and increase employee happiness. Sure it can be abused and sure their are distractions at home - but we need to judge each person by their results and not by corporate dogma. As managers we need to recognise that like most things there are pros and cons and that there are different people out there with their own needs and their own contribution - we need to work with our teams to make sure that we get the most from our policy; it isn't right for every person in every job function every day - but it works for many people in many situations.

We need to embrace working from home for our good, the company good and for the good of our fellow workers.

A New Way to Present

In a recent post I discussed some of the common mistakes that we all make from time to time when presenting. I described the experiences of Jim who spoke at a recent meeting. I recommended that when preparing and delivering presentations we need to focus on some core techniques - clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.

In this post I want to introduce you to a presentation concept known as Pecha Kucha - here you limit yourself to 20 slides - each slide can only be shown for 20 seconds - & here is the key - you are not in charge of the slides - either you put it on auto pilot or hand the control to somebody else.

I am grateful to my good friend Larry Lester for drawing my attention to this concept. Larry writes in his blog

"I discovered an interesting method for the delivery of presentations, totally different from anything that I have previously encountered. It is called Pecha Kucha - within 400 seconds you must make your point. This is very intriguing stuff. Just think how different it is from the prevailing norms of presentations. And Pecha Kucha has real added value – it is an excellent way to start discussions and business relationships."

I am personally fascinated by this technique & plan to try it out. I think that there is a real challenge here - remember that one of the hardest things to do when speaking is to PAUSE - people need time to absorb what you have to say - so in just over 6 minutes you have to get the audience's attention, develop your ideas and communicate your message and allow the listeners to understand your message.

Write in with your comments on the idea and if you try it out for yourself let us know how you get on.

Larry Lester is a highly-experienced marketing writer who has been involved in the sales support process in Israeli high-tech companies for many years, participating in the development of customer-directed documents and responses to RFPs. You can read the full blog article here

Be A Good Speaker

Recently, I attended a sales conference trying to promote interest in a relatively new technology trend. This was a large production – I am guessing over 1000 technologists enjoying the hospitality of 3 of the very largest international technology companies (together their market cap is just short of $200B.) –The companies flew in some of their best sales stars from abroad, so we assumed that we were in for a real treat. Unfortunately one of my main take away messages was that the skills of being an effective presenter are in short supply.

I want to focus on one unfortunate presenter let’s call him Jim (not his real name) who had flown through 10 time zones to be given the middle slot in a 3 person breakout session – just before a late lunch. So Jim has my every sympathy – he got a really rotten deal – I just hope that he was really in country for some excellent one on one meetings, to at least justify the time it took him to get here and return home.

However, Jim made pretty much every possible presentation error known to the PMM world – no small feat in only around 15-20 minutes. Let me state at the outset that I and at least several others only managed to figure out what the presentation was about in the last slide or so. It was very informative seeing Jim up there - here are a few of his mistakes – I hope it gets you cringing with shared embarrassment, find some sympathy for Jim who sacrificed himself for the greater good, and please firmly resolve not to make these mistakes next time you are up there.

Know your Audience & Speak to Them – Jim assumed that everybody in the room knew about his company, its product and the reasons why it had just been acquired by one of these huge companies hosting our lunch. WRONG – most of us had never heard of them; and were either passively learning or intrigued by title on the agenda. This is a really common problem that happens in webinars, at sales meetings and at internal briefings. Unless the session is very clearly understood to be at an advanced level you probably need to assume a much less savvy audience than you would like or intuitively expect – you need to find a way of getting them interested without insulting the people who have the background.

Never, never start a presentation with the Competition – Its negative, very negative and completely pointless until I understand who you are – tell me what you do, why you are good and why you are what I need – at the end maybe tell me about the other guys – but generally why give them free advertising?

Get me Interested at the Beginning– Jim’s last slide was a case study & it was wow! If only that had been the first slide he would have captured our attention & to be honest he would have got 90% of his message over whilst people were still in the room and still listening.

Timings – So we all do it – we need to share our knowledge and passion and give a complete picture. We need to share everything right now. I don’t know what Jim expected and what he really got in terms of timings, but he was literally panting from slide one, in a desperate rush to get through the slides. He wanted to get through the slides – what he should have been doing is focusing on his message. In any meeting like this you need to be ruthless in trimming the presentation and ideally you should have an emergency plan in mind about how to cut it even further if you are left racing the clock. Less is really more in these situations.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – So we all know this one too – but for most of us it is so much easier to throw down 1000’s of words. The problem that Jim had was that it was a large room, a huge projection and he had a small font so for most of the room it was like trying to read the newspaper of the guy 20 rows in front of you on the plane – it was just not happening. We all like having the info on the slides – it reminds us and lets the audience read and learn for themselves. WRONG – you need to know your message and the audience should be listening to you – that’s why you travelled half way around the world! For further information on this I recommend http://www.presentationzen.com that has many interesting tips and refreshing ideas on skills and approaches to presentation. Explore the ideas of the naked presenter. Guy Kawaski (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#axzz1637iAUyr) who has a rule that the smallest font should be no smaller than half the age of oldest person in the room (and ideally 30 points).

Bob spoke after Jim – he was the session that should have been lunch and he was a techie and clearly also not a gifted public speaker, but, he was really engaging – he had some pictures, in the first couple of slides we understood the main messages and he used humour – not the stand-up variety, not vulgar, but just basically dumb engineer jokes. But most of the audience were there in their capacity as engineers and so he vey successfully connected with the audience, he got their attention and made an impact.

So Jim – thanks for being such a good sport (if it is any consolation you were not the only lousy presenter) and for giving us this opportunity to remember the principles of good presentations – it’s all about clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.