Re: More Blathering

From: Walter Roberson (roberson_at_ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca)
Date: 09/26/03 

Date: 26 Sep 2003 01:39:28 GMT

In article <1hk6nv09hdt7qsu1c45ud9e0l7h8688smb@4ax.com>,
CyberDroog <CyberDroog@starfleet.gov> wrote:
|On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 00:02:08 GMT, "J. Random User"
|<nospam@nospamnosiree.com> wrote:

|>"CyberDroog" <CyberDroog@starfleet.gov> wrote in message
|>news:2h94nv4kr2k75avvooqorbks4iamfh0jmr@4ax.com...
|>> Perfect! That leaves you free to start your own business where nothing
|>> gets done since the employees are free to spend their day surfing the web
|>> and chatting.

|>Nope, but they'd definitely be allowed to do whatever they like as regards
|>dress, hours, and surfing, *so long as they get their work done well and
|>on time*. I never said I spent my days surfing the web and chatting.

|Then you are doomed from the start. Paying people who aren't productive is
|a losing proposition.

|Yeah, yeah, you're going to say you get your work done and done well...
|Fine, then you can go home and not be paid for the remainder of the day.
|It's not your time, it belongs to your employer.

And now for a different point of view.

The organization I work for has a computer usage policy. That policy
outlines some kinds of sites that are considered inappropriate to visit,
and then *encourages* people to learn to use the computers and explore
the 'net. If people aren't getting their work done because they are
on the 'net, then it is treated just as if they aren't getting their
work done for other reasons: their supervisor takes it up with them
and they work something out, just as would be the case if the person
were spending too much time gossiping in the hallway.

Upper management encourages exploration of the 'net:
A) because it increases employee technical skills (which feeds back to
improvements and innovations in performing their work); and
B) because you never know what's going to spark a good idea.

It's not uncommon to see our employees sitting around in big
groups in the common area taking 1/2 hour or 3/4 hour coffee breaks.
Their managers aren't hovering around with a stop-watch: the managers
are sitting right there with them. The higher level managers are
amongst the people who tend to sit around the longest. My manager
(35+ years of job experience) is one of the people who goes around
knocking on peoples' doors, calling them down for coffee.

With all of this sitting around chatting, and all this surfing, we
must be a pretty ineffecient lot, eh? On the contrary: we're
the cheapest branch to run per-person, we have amongst the highest
per-person external revenue, we have one of the highest rates
of professional recognition for our work, and our people are in demand
to work on committees and boards. Oh yes, and every year we have
a problem finding enough money to pay-out for vacation time people
haven't taken because they'd rather be at work.

*You* look and you see people "chatting" and getting "nothing done".
Our management looks and it sees active cross-fertilization of ideas.
Did you stop and *listen* to what they were talking about??

M. is talking about his vacation. Wool-gathering and time-wasting, no
doubt. Except that on his vacation, he stopped in on his own time and
chatted with people he met online, who work at 3 different
internationally- reknown locations, and one of them ended up inviting
us to send someone on work exchange, and one of them is probably going
to speak about us favourably on a grant review committee about two
years from now, and the third came up with this really -great- project
idea after a few shared drinks.

S. is playing chess again. Over a series of games with T. from another
subgroup, S. and T. came up with a way to apply gaming theory to a
tough analysis problem T. had. Led to a major topic of investigation,
and now we're the world leaders in that kind of analysis.

Quite simply, our employees are the kind of people who can't NOT talk
about work. Get a group of them together in a relaxed setting,
and even if they do completely different kinds of work, within a short time
they will be sharing ideas, information, techniques, contacts, leads,
and so on. Solving problems and inventing important new problems.
Not unproductive chaos but self-organizing systems.

So, next time your company needs a few good new ideas, instead of worrying
so much about what is or is not "company time", lay in some chips and
cheese and delicacies, and bring in a diverse set of people and just
let them *talk* to each other, "party style" without any agenda.
Chances are excellent that they'll end up talking about work, and
the workplace will end up a better place for it. 

-- 
   I was very young in those days, but I was also rather dim.
   -- Christopher Priest

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