Remote Aspect : The smart teams blog from CAL

Top Tips for making the most of external business resources

2012-01-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

All businesses are currently undergoing changes that redefine the very principals of operational excellence - the core values residing at the heart of stable and sustained quality service delivery and corporate growth.

These changes open the doors to opportunities available in the modern global marketplace – no longer constrained geographically and intensely inter-connected, the use of skilled contract resource and entire outsourced teams is now common-place and of growing importance.

Here are a few suggestions for consideration that will help improve the return on investment from these types of staff.

Contractors

Typically contractors are brought in either to supplement in-house expertise or staffing levels on individual projects.

Manage contract staff in the same way as you do other members of staff.

Our approach is to apply our ‘three C’s’ methodology (identify and then improve areas within communication, collaboration and delivery control). By supporting key elements of the engagement you will build a working environment boosting performance for all staff .

Do not leave these key building blocks to chance, even with short-term staff. Avoid an 'us and them' culture and encourage cross-pollination of skills and experience.

Agree clear targets and objectives - track results and performance. Look to provide opportunities for knowledge transfer – contractors are hired as experts
on a premium rate and you should involve them with employees so that the knowledge is shared and the long term staff know-how is extended.

Follow-up and regularly communicate with the contractors throughout the engagement. Ensure that all the result delivered by the contractor meet both yours and the contractor's expectations. Always provide honest feedback of both your expectations at the outset and the progress achieved against it.

Outsourced teams

Typically engaged to progress software development/design and support call-centre functions for cost benefit and operating hour reasons.

Allow extended team time to understand and contribute as peers with in-house staff.
Engage with them regularly and allow them to take pride from being part of your team.

Outsourcing an aspect of the business will not make the challenges is presents go-away. Before investing in outsourced team resource - ensure the suitability of the work being planned for delivery by them and ensure that as many bottlenecks within the supporting processes as possible are resolved.

Identify cultural, working hour and process differences as early as possible and allow contributions from both parties on equal terms. Success in meeting combined project goals will be a desired outcome shared by both you and your outsource partner.

Both hands back on the wheel !

2011-11-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

I found this recent news item from the BBC of interest and thought I would share it with you.

Recently the Police in the Arab Emirates were baffled by a sudden drop-off in the numbers of road accidents. It was only when the Blackberry service was restored that the accident statistics returned to their previously levels that the emergency services put two and two together and made the connection.

The spate of highly visible Blackberry service outages only goes to prove the reliance on mobile information access by today's workforce.

Flexible Working Technology Update 2011

2011-11-16T07:22:00.000-08:00

In this article we look at the latest developments in technology which help to enhance and improve both team morale and performance.

Cloud based solutions

What are "Cloud" based solutions - in general any solution provided by services running on computers owned by a third party and accessed via the internet can be described as 'cloud based' -- also known as "Software As A Service" or "SAAS".

SAAS is currently in-vogue, although the pros and cons of using them should be weighed before allowing use for "real business".

Advantages

By allowing someone else to take care of the headache of looking after infrastructure : Servers, routers, storage, backup etc. you allow your organisation to concentrate on it's core strengths and get on with the job.

SAAS is delivered via web browsers such as Chrome or Firefox which almost any computing device; laptop, tablet, smart-phone etc. will have.
This also reduces the hassle of "rolling out" software to users and means people can get up and running almost straight away with an interface they are used to with no technology-frustration.

Because the reputation of organisations offering these solutions are based on the quality and resilience of the solution being offered (Google, Amazon and Microsoft) are big players in this sphere; high levels of availability, hassle free usage and very secure access are the norm.

As these are now a well established alternative to in-house internally supported systems - information and reviews about the various services are readily available.

Considerations

For any cloud based solution, your information will be travelling over the Internet and hosted on third party servers. So your organisation needs to look carefully at the provider's Service Level Agreements and
the implications of any local (UK) data storage legislation and compliance policies.

Some useful cloud based solution include :

Dropbox - This is a cloud based file sharing service which is simple to use and allows you the benefit of an allocation of free storage that can be accessed anywhere with Internet access. For a team separated by
distance this can be very useful. Off-site, secure storage of important documents can make the difference between business closure or delays resulting from a disaster and means that continued working can be immediate as restoration of files come from this cloud based off site storage, making it a valuable part of your disaster recovery plan. http://www.dropbox.com/

Google Docs - Built by the makers of the Google search engine, these tools allow you to build Microsoft Office compatible documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any location on the Internet. When
teams are collaborating on projects from multiple locations - on-site, home based or traditional office accommodation - this service is extremely helpful in removing the problems associated with multiple
copies of working documents and allows more than one person to be editing these documents in real-time. https://docs.google.com/

Private Virtual Cloud
This is where your organisation owns and looks after the servers, where using external shared services is not an option due to policy compliance or other issues. There are SAAS solutions which can be deployed on
private clouds such as Microsoft Sharepoint and Adobe TeamWare. These systems allow you to share documents and collaborate on them in real time, overcoming of the drawbacks of traditional document based administration.

Teleconferencing

This is a very crowded and competitive market, great for a business in terms of keeping operating costs down and with the quality and functionality of these products becoming higher all the time the business case to adopt
this technology continuing to gain strength.

Teleconferencing has moved on a great deal in the last few years; with collaboration advances that bring all the points of information required to work well as a team into focus in a full on-line shared workspace.

It is no longer just sufficient to bring individuals face-2-face via webcams from different locations. Entire teams can now be involved on-line with the development of documents, the support of entire business processes and the sharing of complex calendars. Team events can be facilitated via presentations and shared artefacts can be
created and then subsequently modified as they are discussed.

Here is a link to a comparison web-site that describe the key features available in teleconferencing software today and provides a direct comparison between the features in each.

Top ten teleconferencing solution reviews - http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com/

Work is something you do - not somewhere you go !
The mobile workspace, regardless of your chosen flavour - be it Blackberry, Android or iPhone - provides location-independent access to many services, including email and document viewing wherever you are. It
is also platform independent; desktop, laptop, ipad or mobile device and extends where you can work to where work needs to be done as never before.

We hope you have found this article of interest and given you some areas for thought around how technology can support your team in a new and exciting way. If you would like to explore your own team requirements in
more detail, please just contact us and we would be happy to discuss how we can help.

You may also like to consider having a team tune-up, where we could cover your specific issues in more detail.
(See special offer in this months CAL newsletter )

A sustainability champion !

2011-10-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

In this post, I am going to share a story that shows that business success and sustainability objectives can be combined effectively. Mel's story has been a great example and encouragement for CAL during our growth stage and easit provide many of the 'best practice' attributes of a social enterprise that make them well worth knowing about and emulating.

6 years ago Dorking business man Mel Mehmet came up with an idea that he believed could help to reduce congestion on our roads by encouraging people to commute more sustainably, without costing the earth. And so under Mel's guidance, the Dorking Decongestion Forum and Reigate & Banstead Decongestion Forum joined forces to form easit the East Area of Surrey Initiative for Transport with the aim to address congestion and commuter transportation issues in and around the area.

Since then over 50 businesses employing over 180,000 staff across 3 counties have joined the easitNETWORK scheme, working together to encourage and support businesses adopt alternative and sustainable transport behaviours by introducing travel initiatives designed around the needs of the businesses themselves, with the ultimate goal of reducing pollution, easing congestion and increasing staff satisfaction. By generating strength in numbers and bringing together businesses with local Government, easitNETWORK is able to create new and cheaper travel options, lobby for changes to public transport provision and generate funding for new initiatives.

To date some 45,000 staff members have requested and been allocated an easitNETWORK public transport discount card, 4,500 weekly bus tickets are being sold to easitNETWORK members, over 600 additional car sharing spaces have been introduced at member car parks, 68 bicycles were loaned to easitMEMBERS in 2010 all pledging to cycle to and from work at least twice a week, shuttle buses introduced now carry an average of 2000 people to work each week from various railway stations, lunchtime shopper buses transporting staff to and from town centres and new privately funded transport routes introduced at easitNETWORK locations!

easitNETWORK has won a number of national & regional business awards including;

The Queens Award for Enterprise 2011, Sustainable development (pictured)

Gatwick Diamond Green Award for Travel & Transport 2009 & 2011

The City of London Business Award

Recognised by the Department for Transport & Highways Agency, being hailed as an example of best practise.

Future easit projects under development include the launch of new easit networks in the UK, introduction of electric charging posts and expanding easitNETWORK to encompass green energy solutions in the workplace.

For more information about easit, please call 01306 886677, email info@easit.org.uk

'Big Society' means big opportunity

2011-05-06T01:18:00.000-07:00

A 'Big Society', giving local communities the power to control their own environments, to run new schemes and make the community a buzzing centre, meeting needs of the people who live there.

It all sounds wonderful, but is this a reality or just a pipe dream?

In this article we look at the main drivers and barriers then ask what can be done to get 'The Big Society' really working. Firstly we must ask ourselves why is this initiative being driven from central government; is it just a way to replace paid roles with volunteers?

The answer has to be, even for a sceptic, lowering costs is very attractive, but the reality is that services to the community are and will change, no matter what, and the success or failure of 'The Big Society' initiative will not change these facts.

The idea of volunteers is fundamentally part of the British way; the scouting and guide movement have been based on this model for over one hundred years. So this is a good model to look at and ask what changes they have seen in this model. The answer is that it has been in decline with less people willing to be volunteers for some years now.

This has been backed by the Hansard Society survey: One in ten plan voluntary work(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12900961) and points to the fact that the reality is that most people do not volunteer.

This is due to a number of factors, which are very relevant to 'The Big Society'. One factor is the traditional elements of society that will volunteer are those with a professional background and lifestyle, which again is backed by the Hansard report "Those most likely to put themselves forward were parents aged under 45 and from a high-income group". Therefore we need to look at the barriers faced by this element of society and how modern life has impacted on the availability and willingness to volunteer.

It has been well documented that working mothers are now the norm with professional couples balancing home life, work and childcare. (The UK has the third highest rate of female employment in Europe with a record 70% of women at work.- HRMGuide.co.uk).

Although we hear many a dissenting voice saying this must change, the hard facts are that it is almost impossible to change society and would we really want to remove opportunities from any working parent?

Another factor is that running a voluntary organisation or public sector initiative is just like running a company; you need skills, opportunity, enthusiasm and leadership. In fact you need to be entrepreneurial, a team player and committed to success. In fact I think this explains why the elements of society that have traditionally volunteered are the professionals and leaders.

The last factor to consider is that anyone who is likely to volunteer or more importantly create services around community needs, is going to be very busy so we must consider how we can change or influence this.

So what have we established so far?

In order for the Big Society to work we must focus on the people most likely to volunteer.
To ensure that community services are aligned around needs we need professional entrepreneurs.
The people we are looking for will be busy and time available will an issue.

The dilemma here is how do we free up these people without having an impact on their income? This is where we can apply the element of lean processing, by looking at elements of their lives that add little or no value to anything. The biggest waste is travel to and from a place of work, usually at peak time wasting hours in a car, train or bus. I have not included walking or cycling in this assessment as both have health benefits and allow time to unwind. Some would argue that sitting in a car or train allows you to unwind, but in my experience this is untrue and while driving down a county lane can be pleasant, stuck in traffic is not! A recent study from INRIX UK found that motorway journeys during peak hours take an average of twenty two percent longer than the same journey would take in non-peak times. (http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/analysis/general-analysis/121603-uk-is-ranked-europes-most-traffic-clogged-nation.html)

The next is the use of an office, while it can be a good environment to get work done it is also very inefficient and most people waste time during the day making a day in the office approximately 45% efficient. Using the latest figures available for office space a typical cost per square meter is £500 and typical desk space is 15 square meters per desk, which means each desk costs £7,500 pa.

(source:www.rics.org/site/download_feed.aspx?fileID=209...PDF)

I am sure that by applying lean processing in greater detail will reveal many other areas where efficiency could be gained, but I am sure you will agree that these two represent a common theme through most people lives and so will be the focus of my thoughts here.

Home or flexible working has been around for some time now and most organisations have schemes to promote or encourage staff to work in this way, but why am I not seeing less traffic on the road at 7.00am in the morning? Why am I not seeing empty trains going to London? Why am I not seeing community working centres?

In conclusion if we want the big society to be a success and provide a model of how local community can be empowered by central government, then we must create a space for the key volunteers to come forward. This needs change in the way we work and for businesses to embrace smarter working.

Working remotely to boost the UK economy

2011-02-18T00:51:00.000-08:00

I have to thank Peter Bird from www.primarybs.co.uk for introducing me to this local company serving the needs of remote workers here in the UK. Based in Hampshire, with a background in PR and structural engineering, Cheryl and Trevor are working hard to create a unique brand in the virtual and home based staffing arenas.

Here is their story:

Remote Team Network (RTN) is a new internet company, set up in 2010, specialising in connecting UK freelancers with projects that can be done remotely online, usually working from home.

Through our secure website www.remoteworkersonline.com, companies post projects and freelancers can respond to them to bid on a job. This is a transparent and easy way for freelancers across many sectors, to find new, self employed remote-working projects at UK rates of pay.

The Directors of RTN are experienced business people who have worked internationally as freelance contractors, so they know what freelancers need.

Trevor Bettell is a structural engineer with experience in all forms of construction and Cheryl Dowler Bettell has worked in marketing and PR across all business sectors.

Cheryl and Trevor state: “We started the company to make it easy for UK freelance contractors to compete for UK outsourced jobs on a level playing field and for companies to keep jobs in the UK.

We are building a community of people who are ready to work remotely on jobs. Many people are seeking more flexible jobs, so they can enjoy a much better work-life balance. Working from home they gain a more relaxed lifestyle and can spend more time with their family, or on leisure activities, rather than spending time and money on commuting. Not having to fill the car up every couple of days to drive to work also means less outlay, which is good news.

A great boost for RTN has been winning a major export contract in Uganda. The entire project is a multi-million pound tourist development at Jinja, alongside the Source of the Nile and Lake Victoria. We have won the first stage to provide the conceptual design, in association with PWP Architects of Havant, and have high hopes of taking the project through to full implementation. RTN is inviting freelance construction specialists in the UK to lodge their interest in providing remote work on the project – specialists such as quantity surveyors, contract and project managers, civil and structural engineers and draughtsman.

The trend to home-based jobs is predicted to continue rising steadily from today’s estimate of 4 million to a likely 6 million in 2012. By helping create new jobs in the UK, RTN is playing its part in helping the UK economy to climb out of recession.

Aiming to make remote working easy for both businesses and freelancers, Trevor or Cheryl would be happy to chat about it on 0845 2000 750.

E: info@remoteworkersonline.com

W: remoteworkersonline.com.

Forming productive teams

2010-12-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

The creation of any team is a lengthy and demanding time for any manager - one that can be both simplified and better controlled through a little knowledge of common team formation behaviour patterns.

As well as taking and active and involved role in the development of each member of staff as an individual (see MASLOW's pyramid of needs diagram), an effective manager must also be aware of and look to nautre and guide teams through the essential formation stages that all teams need to travel through to become productive.

Any team tends to go through the following four stages on its way to becoming productive.
Forming:
A new team - probably a new grouping of people who have not known each other before or at the very best shared a high level but not a low level objective.
The team will initially go through a honeymoon period where all relationships and roles within the team are new, and need to be supported, educate with robust processes, lots of face2face interaction from you.
The formation of a team may be a difficult time - as you need to delegate authority into it and train the teams members to be self sufficient - which may take a great deal of time and effort on your (the creator of the team) time.
Within any new team a hierarchy will usually appear during this period - based in knowledge and assigned role.

Storming:
The courtship period is now officially over and this stage finds teams needing to settle down and start learning to work together. As team members gain confidence in the team and the role they will seek personal team identity and conflicts often arise which will need to be addressed before the team can move beyond this stage.

Ensuring that team members understand what they each contribute to it's performance - what they and the other team members uniquely bring to the delivery of the objectives is very important. Anticipate that personality clashes will occur and then work to overcome them - as resolving the challenges at this stage and not allowing them to continue will subsequently be very beneficial for the productivity of the team.
One approach to consider to reduce this stage in duration is to consider a 'results based rewards method' - measuring the team on its delivery of the service it was created for. By making it clear that the overall output of the team is what is being measured and rewarded - a team will be more inclined to overcome it's internal challenges itself and get on with the job in hand.

Be prepared to accept that some combinations of staff just do not work and seek to understand why issues have occurred and why, taking action to reform teams or take disciplinary action only as a last measure.

Norming:
The thrill of creation and the internal squabbles settled in and the team finally gets down to the job in hand. There is a temptation at this stage for the novelty of the function of the team to wear off and the members to become disaffected and demotivated. Some level of staff churn can be anticipated at this stage - as here the team is almost fully formed and its members will either feel valued, involved and appreciated in their roles or they will be clearly unsuitable for that team role and they and the team may benefit from a switch to another team.

Performing:
Although these stages can take anything from weeks to months, it has been shown that attention to the operation of the team and focused mentoring with anticipation of these different transitions can speed the process and allow the team to reach optimum performance much more quickly.

Further Reading and information
The notion of phases occurring in team formation is not in itself unique or new - and a great deal of research has been done in this area by both ourselves and other professional and academic bodies. The idea of these stages being 'forming, storming, norming and performing' was originally suggested by Bruce Tuck in 1965 and is now widely accepted.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3954/is_200104/ai_n8943663

If this article proves helpful and you would like to discuss the specific challenges facing your new or established teams - feel free to contact us on 07780-500287 or read more on our website www.teamr-cal.co.uk - We will be glad to assist you further

'Universally Speaking'

2010-07-07T06:16:00.001-07:00

CAL collaborates with Solent University for new MSC

CAL have been working with Bernard Griffin, senior lecturer at the University on the course development for some months now, working with other contributors from Hewlett Packard, AVIVA and Ericsson, contributing client case studies which will form a key element of the new course.
The Digital Enterprise Programme is a rolling development of short-duration, 5-credit topical learning units, spread across four core themes, each devised to address aspects of change within the business environment due to digitisation. Increased global competition, automation and cost savings continue to transform the workplace and the skills demanded of employees.

This programme is designed to enable workplace and University campus-based learners to access state-of-the-art materials, and gain accreditation for
prior learning. A combination of professional multi-media online learning delivery and industry expert workshops are blended to enhance learner
engagement, provide higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills, spark innovation and improve employability.

Don Cooke, Technical Director said 'This is a brilliant opportunity for CAL to make a real difference for students both already in and planning to soon enter the workplace'.

For more details about the course - or to book your places, contact Bernard directly at Bernard.Griffin@solent.ac.uk

Why should we…..

2010-04-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

We very often get asked, but why should we consider smarter team working, why change? Of course this depends on who is asking but it is important that everyone gets the answer that shows what is in it for them. This short paper looks at each stakeholder and where the advantages are for each.

Management team
The management team are interested in driving down operational cost while maintaining or improving the service. Very often smart working initiatives or projects only have vague savings targets or little understanding of how they will be delivered. Don’t forget if a management team cannot see how savings will be achieved their backing will be difficult to maintain. So do your home work, understand what operational costs will be reduced, what clear targets will be set and a realistic plan to deliver them. If you have already completed other smarter working projects then use the information to underpin project savings. If not look to similar organisations where clear parallels can be drawn and any targets justified.
Make sure the management team are kept up to date on progress and as soon as savings are being achieved they are told.

Team leader
A team leader is a pivotal role to get on board. Their concerns will be around team productivity and retention of skills. If you can address these fears and show how their teams will really benefit from smarter working then they in turn will address the concerns of their team members.

I need an office – Do not underestimate the impact of a manager losing an office, as firstly it is a status symbol and needs to be replaced with other benefits. Start by asking how often they use the office, most team managers are actually at their desk only for short periods, although most will say ‘all the time’ when asked. So ask about attending meetings, talking to other teams or managers, holiday.. etc. and you will find that most managers are in their office for less then 50% of the time. So now start to look for the benefits, ask; is you office space right for you, would a more project focused space be a good idea?. So the team leader starts to see how space can be used more effectively for the whole team. Another factor that must be catered for is when quiet or private space is needed. Again show this has been considered by having a designated office area that can be booked by a number of managers or team leaders.

Trusting staff to work smarter – because staff will no longer be tied to the restrictions of travelling to an office everyday, management style will need to change. Often you will hear people say ‘I am the kind of manager who needs to see my staff everyday’. But in reality what are they managing? Praising those who rush around and are always staying late? No, it is a different way of working and managing teams. So again give the manager time to see the advantages, becoming task focused and not time focused. This approach consistently results in encouraging a more dynamic and rewarding team structure.

Managing projects – Many team leaders have to deliver projects and this is where significant benefits can be found from running a smart team. Traditional team structures are very silo in nature, for example ‘accounts’ ‘customer services’, but now the team can work ‘smarter’ pulling in skills from staff no matter what the location or job title, what skills are needed to deliver the project or service at the right time and on budget. So now the team leader has a bigger pool of resources to use in a flexible way.

Change – No one likes change and team leaders will be seeing smart working as another change being imposed on them and so will try and avoid this happening by putting off the implementation. Make sure that after they have seen the benefits as you support them in the change. This means giving the team manager time to make it work through training, support and encouragement. Don’t expect the team to continue delivering the service and embrace the change to smarter team working, without additional resources or time. Have a plan that will deliver the above benefits early and build upon success. Make sure the management team support and back the movement from the top, otherwise the message is being given is this is not really important.

Team member
Most teams and therefore team members are dedicated to the service they provide and the customers they help.

Just another management bright idea – This is where the change has been poorly communicated and left staff unsure of what is happening and more importantly why. Or it could be that the benefits and commitment have not been sold down the management structure, so the team leader just says ‘I don’t really know why but I am being told we have to do this?’. The way round this is to communicate and get those fears out on the table! Make sure Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) around adoption of smarter working are used to measure results and ensure staff see team work as a core skill.

On their own – People worry that ‘working from home’ will mean being left out of the loop, never seeing anyone from work and becoming isolated. In fact this should never happen, because most organisations do provide office space, but use it smartly i.e smart desk share. And working from home is just one of the options a team member has to complete a task. Make sure that team meetings are held regularly and give time for team member who do not see each other everyday to catch up and feel part of the team.

Losing team identity – Make sure you communicate as a team everyday, via internet services, phone or sub-team meetings. Work hard to keep identity and allow this to strengthen the team spirit around flexible smarter service delivery.

Working hours – The fear that smarter working will mean more hours, working evenings in the home or answering e-mails at ridiculous hours of the night. This needs to be clearly controlled as enthusiastic team members can make a living hell for others by working late, because ‘I am not travelling to the office today!’ Make sure team members decide how they want to work and talk about what is best for the service being provided.

Office space - I am losing my desk! It is not about losing a desk it is about better use of facilities, as previously stated a one-to-one desk is very wasteful and not efficient. Emphasise the benefits of a better team space, a closer working relationship with others teams and flexibility around better service delivery with good work life balance.

Additional information: The following sources of information and help are available:

The savings calculator – Visiting the free to use toolkit will help you understand the key benefits of smarter working. You can request your own report to show how savings would be achieved for you.
http://www.savings.teamr-cal.co.uk/matisse/

E-Hampshire resources – CAL are knowledge partners with Hampshire County Council economic development office. The e-Hampshire website has a number of resources and events that you may find useful.
http://www.ehampshire.org/

About CAL
CAL is a specialist provider of services in area of smarter working Teams. Providing innovative and effective solutions for clients wishing to adopt or improve smarter working teams, through our services.

• Team health checks
• Interactive workshop programmes
• Team development
• Support and mentoring

We always welcome any questions or feedback on our papers, so please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to discuss any specific needs you may have.

CALculator becomes Worklife Tracker for new regional partner

2010-04-14T04:34:00.001-07:00

For several years we have supported a programme in the Hampshire region promoting the benefits of smarter working methods adoption within the county and the surrounding SE region. See MATISSE @ http://www.ehampshire/matisse

I am very pleased to say that Coventry University Enterprises (CUE) had decided to involve CAL in a similar programme within the West Midlands area.

This is a terrific step forward as both programmes are making best-practice knowledge available to all sizes of organisations within the respective regions - very much accelarating adoption of these cost-saving practices and helping to boost the country out of its recent recession.

CAL will be supporting the initiative, in part through the development of a new Worklife Tracker web based toolkit. This toolkit allowing companies to see the financial (and soon carbon usage) advantages possible through smarter transport usage, business travel planning, home-based, mobile and desk sharing work environments.

For many companies - a lack of information and measureable benefits arising from smart working methods can slow down decision making - these new on-line tools fill that gap.

You can use the tool by following this link :
The CALculator Smart Working Toolkit

We are hoping to extend coverage of these free-to-use tools still further via the involvement of additional regional partner organisations.

Home office of the future

2010-01-30T03:30:00.000-08:00

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Tanner, Ops Director of OfficePOD, creators of the innovative self contained home office environment (pictured below).

Stephen had this to say about the officePOD environment:
“We believe that OfficePOD is an incredible business tool, as it empowers employers with the ability to improve sustainability and bring flexibility to businesses that has hitherto been impossible to contemplate. Technological advances have been a significant factor in the growth of the dispersed workforce; with OfficePOD, employers will soon learn that this is the only type of workforce that has credence in the modern world.”

With growing advance orders and firm business relationships with several very large and well known firms, Stephen is involved in a real success story.

You can find out much more about the officePOD environment by visiting the product web site http://www.officePOD.co.uk

For me this sounds like a brilliant move forward, as it addresses the old chestnut regarding home workers having to keep the whole domestic premises warm - clearly with an OfficePOD unit in your garden this is no longer the case.

The north wind doth blow….

2010-01-11T02:31:00.000-08:00

There's an old nursery rhyme about snow and ice coming in with a North Wind.

The rhyme may be a little old fashioned but we have most defiantly seen the biggest freeze in decades in both the UK and Europe.

The question is, why have there been so many stories of people trapped in cars, long queues of traffic and businesses closing early or managing on a skeleton staff when the area of remote and home working has been growing for more than a decade?

Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people opted to work at home and internet-based access to office resources was key to making this possible, but I have to ask how many people ended up balancing a laptop on their kitchen table, while the kids were running around all excited about the snow and time off of school!
Was this a nightmare that people faced, and so opted to risk the trip into work with the old chestnut ‘I NEED to be in the office?’ ?

Now call me a cynic, but did that many people really need to be in the office?

What was the business cost of wasted time, lost hours and the general misery of being stuck in traffic. If, like me, you think that they did not make sense, what could have been done and how can businesses be better prepared for emergencies and disasters in the future ?

Organisations that have embraced smarter working as a fundamental element of business have really gain this winter with lower costs and high productivity. So that two inches of snow, a fallen tree or just traffic jams don’t pose a problem because the member of staff can use a smarter working alternative, such as working from home, using a flexible office facility near to their home or another suitable location. This then gives you a perfect platform from which to have a disaster recovery plan that suits both your operational needs and those of your staff.

So what should you do?

Well don’t ignore the situation or say 'smart working is not for me', make the decision to see what a smart working solution could do for you.

Don’t just go out and buy laptops and other technology without a strategy, you will probably be wasting your time and money; it’s not about technology it’s about how your team work.

Talk to your team and get their thoughts and ideas and then form a plan that is simple and achievable.

Then the next time disaster strikes you will be in a great position to protect your services and ensure your customers see the same great service or products you provide in the best light.

CAL featured on business showcase

2009-10-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Last week I was asked to do an interview about my background, the services CAL offers and our plans for the future of the company.

Using the brilliant AudioBoo! application for the IPhone our friend Doug Jenner put together this 5 minute recording

Listen!

Rewiring for Lean Teams

2009-10-19T00:55:00.000-07:00

In many organisations, technology has liberated distributed teams with members working from regional offices, on the road or train, at home or office. Unreliable mobile connections have given way to web enabled devices, 3G internet connection on the move, high-speed home broadband connection and e-mail allowing contact almost anywhere anytime!

But when was the last time you looked at the processes you run as a team and asked if they are more efficient?

Sure they are faster and in many cases can now involve more people, but is this saving your organisation money or have processes become more complex, involving extended decision making just because senior managers are now contactable. At CAL we work with clients in establishing a set of guidelines that can be applied to any processes your team are running to keep them lean, effective and raising productivity.

1. Assess the stage - Each stage of the process and ensure each has a recognised input or action to initiate the process. (This will remove random actions starting a process with little control).

2. Look at the output - Is this fed directly into the next stage or is this held up or delayed in some way (This prevents stages being completed before it is necessary, ensuring value is delivered, if not then the team member should be working on another process which is needed).

3. Does the stage require decisions or approval? - If it does ensure that these are taken locally and do not involve contacting anyone outside of the team. If this is the case ensure that the decision is adding value and not comfort to a senior manager (This is to ensure decisions are made quickly and not strung out waiting for a senior manager to note approval).

4. What value does the stage add? - The team members involved must be adding value to the process, product or service. (Very often stages are a legacy of office based processes that are no longer relevant, but add a comfort factor).

5. Could the process be reduced or speeded up? - Look at the actions and ask could this be changed to improve the stage, be creative and open to ideas. (Consider if this could be a smarter process, removing any actions that are not adding value or using technology improve them).

By taking a little time to invest in the processes driving business as well as the staff supporting them, real measurable efficiencies are achievable within any organisation.

Social Housing Seminar - October 20th 2009

2009-09-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

Things are really hotting up for us in the housing sector after a year of working with associations, carrying out market research and forming business partnerships.

We are co-hosting a seminar in Southampton on the 20th October at the offices of LangdownsDFK looking at challenging teams in social housing. The seminar will feature distributed working best practice guidance couples with a road-map for developing 2 and 3 star service accreditation for registered social landlords from Peter Bird of Primary Business Support (http://www.primarybs.co.uk/)

You can find information about the event as well as booking details in this flyer

I am more present on twitter these days - as it seems to be the rule rather than the exception among my business contacts these days and is a great way to promote events as well as articles and blog updates. You can find me there by following enhanced_teams
. The very attractive background was designed and created by my very good friend Ces Loftus from Creatively Minded

Smart working centres – Making a difference to the way people work

2009-09-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

We have all read the headlines about ‘Flexible Working’.

The fact that many people now get the change to work from home or work flexible hours around family or community commitment, but what is the real truth behind the headlines?

In reality many people find the logistics difficult if not impossible, with finding a dedicated space within their homes, children’s holidays all adding to make the experience unrealistic. But that is all about to change across Hampshire with the creation of a network of Smart Working Centres (SWC) in key locations across the county. Each centre allows the members to book a desk, room or use the drop in open area when required for as little as an hour. The aim is to meet the needs of the community; working parents linked with play schools and child minding facilities, Commuters looking to stagger the journey and travel at quieter and cheaper times, community projects wanting to complete administration tasks in an office environment.

Hampshire has already commissioned four centres and is looking to establish twenty centres by the end of 2010.

Project manager Tony Corbin said ‘Hampshire CC are committed to encouraging business development and smart working across the county, which the initiative is key to meeting these targets’.

If you would like more information on the centres http://www.ehampshire.org/matisse_smarter_working/s-69.html

5 ways to win with virtual teams:

2009-06-23T04:30:00.000-07:00

Commerce these days is increasingly becoming resourced by distributed teams of smaller highly specialised providers. This relatively new model of doing business can, if properly utilised, provide high quality services at affordable prices to even the smallest company and also allow the growth of leaner - more robust and recession-resilient businesses.

Here is a checklist of areas that should be considered when starting project work with external providers as 'virtual' team members. By following these simple guidelines you will ensure the highest chances of hassle-free relationships and timely deliver of contracted work and therefore progress of your business objectives.

1. Use social media to identify and then hire 'the best' - then insist on both a quote and references before progressing
One terrific business development of recent years is the advent of the internet - and this should not be missed when aiming to resource project work for your venture. It is said that 40% of internet traffic currently is driven from 'social media' sites like LinkedIn or Twitter - which many thousands of suppliers use to offer their wares and grow reputation and awareness. As a business owner looking for resources to supply your projects - this is a great place to start looking - and as these platforms are global in nature - you have the advantage of global competitiveness built in.
So: why should this be of interest ?
These platforms are full of small business service and product providers offering almost every conceivable thing any business requires.
Take the time to search for the services that you require on the internet and you will soon have numerous choices of supplier - offering themselves for you to do business with.

2. Work to projects - agree scope, fee and timescale for any work up front
Be wary about not following conventional thinking and engaging on retainers of for that matter in house employees. Instead start small and allow trust based relationships to grow around the delivery of a number of small-tightly defined projects - do not commit to critical larger projects initially.

3. Ensure that processes and platform are in place before recruiting
Any supplier must have a crystal clear understanding of what is required in a particular piece of work in order to deliver both on time and to your requirements. The use of collaborative platforms accessible by both you and the supplier together with a robust virtual team infrastructure will give you the confidence to delegate and then track and result any issues arising - before they impact on the delivery of your objectives.

4. Agree defined time frames and then measure performance and progress often
Take the time to agree upfront a definition for the piece of work and address all issues arising from it before the work commences - the resultant project may include a design or analysis phase - but these should also have both clear scope and clear timescales - mutually agreed deliverables. By using a virtual team support platform - projects can be resourced by multiple-collaborating suppliers as team members where progress can be seen at any times and collaborative assistance can be requested and applied when it is needed.

5. Do not tolerate under-performance by suppliers - seek to enhance and profit from healthy competition between supplier teams.
Relationships with 'virtual team' suppliers need to be created on the understanding that they have been competitively awarded and that in the eventuality of failed deliver of project deliverables - penalties will apply and that you may take your business elsewhere.

Virtual teaming - 3 reasons why it works

2009-05-11T02:19:00.000-07:00

As a company, CAL often uses external partner firms on projects to leverage skills areas that our core team do not have. The use of social media platforms (in our case LinkedIn, Ecademy and Twitter) has, for us, as well as allowing us to grow the awareness of our brand (our original objective) also allowed us to solve one of the biggest challenges in this area - where to find the right partner organisations in the first place.

Here are the top reasons why, for us, this model works so well.

1 Ongoing 'Lean' operation
During the high growth phase of small businesses - there is a huge on-going demand for a diverse set of professional skills to ensure the successful maturity. Issues in cost-control and funding inevitably arise when companies try and do it all themselves - take on too much too quickly and over stretch themselves. By identifying external skills required to complete projects on a case-by-case basis and them seeking those skills externally - the ongoing operating overhead of the firm can be kept to a minimum while the skills of expensive, specialists are deployed exactly as and when required - not as an ongoing overhead with you having to find things for them to do between times of real need.

2. Support and Information
Running a business often seems a walk from one set of challenges you are ill equipped to solve - stragith to another. Engagement with virtual teams and use of social media really helps in this area. The level of knowledge and advice offered by contacts and past,present and future commercial partners never fails to amaze me - there is, I doubt, any subject that a contact could either advise and help with directly or introduce you to someone who can help. As the anecdote says - it really is who you know - not what you know that counts.

3. Enable the growth a strong brand
By careful selection of the best partners for your projects - you are also creating advocates - external companies that understand your values and what you are hoping to achieve. These in turn become strong advocates for you in due course once a working relationship based on trust has developed. The two key elements of creating a strong brand are - I would suggest - firstly by having a very good quality product/service and secondly by ensuring that it becomes well known by you target audiance.

While these benefits are fairly obvious - getting this sort of working realationship in place and successful takes ongoing commitment and effort from both sides.

Heart and soul - share and show passion - and engage !

2009-05-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

The key to productivity in any team lies in the perceived relationships between the team's peer-group members and the lines of responsibility and control through to the people with team management responsibilities.

When a team is distributed - this can become a huge challenge - as the members of the team may feel isolated from the guiding hand of leadership, fearful of a lack of real participation and worth and as a result insecure, unvalued and unsupported.

This is where software tools that allow shared knowledge management really come into their own. Ongoing operation of these solutions provides the whole team with all the evidence they need; not only access to see documents in real time and work as a team on all the artifacts relating to a given project - but also by providing a cradle of knowledge, increased peer-level sharing and collaboration and therefore giving an increased sense of belonging to each team member as part of the 'whole' team.

A vital element to effective leadership is the passion that is evident in the leader for the completion of the tasks in hand - any lack of energy and enthusiasm at the top is a guaranteed way of demotivating and limiting the commitment and output of the team members themselves. By adopting the tools described above, this passion is clear from day to day - project by project, even if a team member is a lone-worker by nature - the reassurance that trusted support and encouragement from the team leader as well as other peer group members of the team is there whenever needed, and very easy to obtain on a day to day basis - boosts morale tremendously.

Using these technologies also gives the team leader an opportunity to really support individual and sub-group efforts as and when required and for this support to be seen and valued by not only the people involved but by the whole team.

The future of distributed teams

2009-04-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

For this months CAL newsletter I interviewed Anne Marie McEwan, and expert in the evolution of working practices and leaders of the Global Mobility Forum.

Here is an extract from the interview

The current economic slowdown is causing many employers to reduce workforce numbers - what advice would you to prepare for recovery?

Employers are understandably looking to minimise costs and often taking hasty action in reducing head count when in fact a calm cool stepping back and looking at where value lies is what is needed.

Fourteen years ago when entering this field, I worked with traditional manufacturers as they made the transition to Lean Manufacturing. This was the BIG change in industry. Not only is there nothing new, change happens constantly, there is a lot that we can learn from that time. Of major importance right now is the need for employee talents to be properly leveraged in the workplace. Take the opportunity to take a good look at the talents and skills of others in your workplace – this is where untapped potential lies. This is what I used to do with shop floor operators, with startling results for the bottom line. The current climate gives us a golden opportunity to consider new ways of working.

How do you feel the workplace will change over the next five years?
We need to be realistic here. We are unlikely to see huge changes overnight. I am quite pessimistic about the rate of change of working practices. Work will undoubtedly change over time. Consider this change as a bit like an iceberg moving a millimetre at a time. It is not apparent to the naked eye but it is unstoppable and inevitable in its ability to gouge out the landscape.

Times really have changed, for example nowadays a typing pool is a thing of the past. Thirty five years ago when I first started work as a youngster, I was given a dress code for woman, written into my employment contract, different from that given to male employees (that sort of discrimination just would not happen today).

To read the interview in full visit our web site here

Recovery : will you be ready ?

2009-03-23T06:08:00.000-07:00

The current economic environment we find ourselves in at best can be described as 'tough' - as many organisations struggle to survive while clinging to expensive outdated operational models thus missing out on the opportunities offered by smarter ideas.

All to often organisations make the mistake of thinking reducing team size by shedding staff is the easier option. In fact, by embracing new leaner models, such as distributed teams not only will they save money, but still maintain successful, motivated teams. This will become even more telling when the economic condition improves and we see new growth appearing.

Those organisations that have made the right choices will find themselves 'match fit' and ready to take new opportunities , whereas those that are slow to change or have shed staff needlessly will suffer the penalty of both knowledge and capital asset erosion.

So - what can be done in our organisations to be ready for recovery ?

1. Invest in 'smart' teams
Focus on identifying and encouraging team skills , so you teams will be effective ready for new opportunities as the economy recovers. Leave it too late and you could regret it! Understand the strengths that your existing staff have - spend time with them ... look for opportunities to collaborate within and between teams that are not being leveraged by your organisation - taking the time to understand and work to develop your teams will not only improve efficiency but will also motivate your staff - as you are taking time to actually listen to them.

2. Stream-line operations
Are you wasting money? What return are you as a organisation seeing from your staff ? are there 'bigger things' in your teams than the things those teams are currently deployed to do. Are you keeping operational running costs to a minimum - and extending you delivery ability to include supplier chains, such as freelance specialists that can help you scale quickly and flexibly when an opportunity arises?

3. Why not make a good team a great team!
Explore new ideas for team working - Look at new options for smart working, such as flexible, mobile and home based working - all have a positive impact on the environment and can bring dynamic improvements in the performance of your teams. To see just how much you could save - see our free savings calculator tool

4. Align with tools that build on the 3Cs
With the adoption of the internet as a business necessity there are numerous technology tools available which, if correctly aligned to your needs can reduce the need for business accommodation and commuting. Teams require three factors for success:- Communication, Collaboration and management Control, in order to align for maximum effectiveness.

5 Consider Virtual Teams
Using independent freelancers to supplement your internal teams is nothing new. Social media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Ecademy allow you, as a organisation to easily find and then work with professionals in almost any commercial discipline quickly and efficiently - this sort of commercial arrangement has never been easier to establish or manage than it is today.

In summary - be ready for recovery, it’s on the way! - Your competitors will be and those not taking advantage of the opportunities will find themselves at a real disadvantage - or even out of business altogether.

Eagles, Ants and Elephants

2009-03-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

In preparation for my second Toastmasters speech - presented this Thursday, I posed the following question on LinkedIn - a business orientated networking site.

In the natural world we see several kinds of 'team' behaviour:

Eagles
These majestic birds flourish in isolated environments, specialists in hunting and survival as individuals. Where setting up a territory adjacent to another eagle - the birds will compete for space and position.

Ants
These animals form armies of co-ordinated groups, each type of ant taking a role and doing it consistantly - with quality precision. Individuality and creativity are not known in the ant world - each ant lives it's live with a single purpose - unquestioning.

Elephants
Communal animals be nature, elephants are supportive of one another , taking multiple roles in order to create value within the community they live and work in.

What sort of animals do your teams resemble and why ?

The follow-up postings from HR and recruiter contacts make very interesting reading .. well worth taking a visit if you are interested in team dynamics.

LinkedIn Questions and Answers discussion

Nothing new here ! - marketing basics that work - Consistency and Coverage

2009-03-04T01:23:00.000-08:00

When marketing your personal or corporate brand - two things are really important - Consistency and Coverage

Consistency - the whole point of marketing is to inform your 'target audiance' of the value of your services to the point where they decide that they cannot do without them. This then complemented with a 'soft sell' approach is normally enough to bring in business - coming in with an aggressive in your face assault without any fore-warming marketing work is seldom successful - let's face it .. would it work for anyone looking to sell you anything - exactly !

Coverage - when you identify and start marketing to a specific demographic of prospects - whether sector, geographical or based on another attribute, it is really important that you ensure all the collateral you have as assets - the depth of knowledge about your chosen field - the benefits of the products you have to sell, are showed with your prospects, regardless of where they enter your marketing envelope (networking, seminars, blogs, articles, books - whatever). For this reason - think about your supported channels to market as a whole - with the difference methods of communication you make to your prospects just as outlets for the same information.

Referring one channel to another is a good way of allowing your prospects to 'swim with you' - blog visit - to meeting - to web site - to twitter - to blog ... If you can carefully manage all the channels available to you and remain consistent regarding what you are saying - you will find you are much more successful in ensuring that your contacts know what your messages are - making them much more likely to both advocate you and also buy from you.

Project management in a distributed team environment

2009-01-30T08:06:00.000-08:00

This article is intended to supplement good project management methods for teams and suggest factors that should be considered when the team are not centrally located.

Project Objectives – Make sure the objectives are clear and goals both achievable and inspiring. Team members need to be driven by the project and the deliverables. If these are clear at the beginning, success is much more likely.

Project stakeholders – Make sure your stakeholders are on board and backing the project. This is particularly important when the project needs channels unblocking or political influence being applied.

Planning a project team – The advantage you will have over centrally located teams is that your available ‘skills set’ is much bigger. So before you select your team make sure you know what skills and skill level you need for each set of tasks or stages. This will ensure that you don’t have a team that is available but not the right skills to deliver. Of course in most cases you will be short in one or more areas. You can overcome these issues by thinking about some of the following ideas:

• Obtaining skills – Has the person closely related skills? Is the person looking to obtain these skills? If so then you maybe able to organise training during the project or allow them to work alongside a more experienced person during the project?
• Sharing a role - Splitting tasks may allow two people to work half the time and achieve completion of the task on time.
• Outside of your team – By looking to other departments of even externally you maybe able to identify sources you never knew existed.

Team member profiles: It is important that you understand the types of people you have in the teams and which type of person works well with which. (Note: this paper does not cover this subject in detail and more information can be found from: www.myersbriggs.org or have a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/whatamilike/index.shtml )

Project tasks – Always ensure you have an owner of any project tasks, even if the task is given to more than one person as this ensures tasks are seen as important and not sitting in the air with everyone thinking it is someone else’s responsibility. Don’t allow your tasks to be too long as team members cannot see delivery and will leave the task as more urgent matters will take their focus. If the delivery date is more than two months away you probably need split the task into smaller tasks, allowing team members to see progress and reduce the risk of slipping project completion dates.

Decision making - You must understand where the decisions required in the project exist. For example a task to design an artwork needs the ability to approve it and sign off the design. You may not have the seniority within the project to approve the task, but you can then ensure that the task is split and the decision task is allocated to the right person. (Note: always avoid decisions being outside of the team, but if not then the decision maker just needs to commit to an approval when date as a target).

Managing tasks – If a team member has a task which is due it is important that the manager can see the progress of the task, don’t leave the question ‘how is it going’ to the day before it is due. Some people try and hide bad news, so if a person is quiet it maybe they are getting on with the task or it maybe they are struggling.

Team Meetings – Don’t forget to use the full spectrum of mediums, phone, on-line and face to face. Always look hold team meetings at convenient times for the members. Remember some team members may have home commitments and need to work around school pickups or child care. Do not worry that cannot get everyone together a seventy five percent attendance is fine, but do give them the option of asking a question or having an update read at the meeting. Always remember to get the actions and notes out to those not attending as soon as possible after the meeting.

Project updates – When a team are working in one location project updates happen all the time and the team see all the elements of a project coming together. When you are distributed this is not always possible, so always send regular updates on general progress, critical target dates and news to the full team. Also remember to include team members line managers if they are not involved in the team, this will prevent the team member being pulled away on to a ‘more important’ project as the line manager is unaware of project issues or success.

Time management – An effective tool and companion to project management skills is time management as the project manage must ensure the team structure, updating and meetings are structured efficiently and with minimal time wasting. Poorly run project meetings or infrequent project updates will reduce the team commitment and jeopardise the success of the project.

Review - Any methods should be reviewed in the light of experience and honed to meet the individual needs of the organisation.

Team lifecycle phases

2009-01-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

Just shipped our 2009 newsletter this morning and thought I would share the leading article in it so that my blog followers can benefit from this work as well.

Getting new teams right first time

The creation of any team is a lengthy and demanding time for any manager - one that can be both simplified and better controlled through a little knowledge of common team formation behaviour patterns.

As well as being pro-actively involved in the development of each member of staff, you must be able to nurture and guide your teams through those essential formation stages.

This process becomes even more important when teams are of a distributed nature involving a number of offices or mobile and home workers.

Click here to read the rest of this article

Getting distributed teams right - from the start

2008-09-10T03:10:00.000-07:00

This article looks at the basic considerations for any team leader/manager implementing the switch to flexible/remote working teams.

Staff Suitability
Teams which tend to fit easily into the remote worker/team mould have the following common characteristics

- They are either knowledge workers or back office admin staff

- They approach their work in a mature, disciplined and self motivated way.

- Their work is task/project focused in nature. This is important so that you as a manager can you measure actual against expected performance reliably.

The thing you need to be aware of is that not everyone is capable of adapting to
remote working. Where commercial constraints require a retail focus or a client side sales focus home working can be used as a staging point/temporary base for admin purposes – but cannot be even considered as a full time place of employment for staff.

Remember: Providing the wrong facilities to employees can be very costly to your business. Staff resources are, and will continue to be your most important and most expensive asset – use them wisely.

Here are several team organisational structures which we have found to be particularly successful:

o Where a collaboration framework is institutionalised within the business process – for example a group of sales staff accessing the same central CRM data, or a team of claims processors accessing a knowledge base of historical claims information, or a team of customer representatives working a call centre operation. In these environments – each remote worker becomes responsible for the carrying out of specific actions relating to individual ‘incidents’ that occur in real time – following a known and clearly documented process.

o Where each member of the team has an array of specialist skills and team objectives are geared so as to assemble teams to do individual projects which are then disassembled and rebuild for the next project. This approach can be considered ‘themes not teams’ in organisational composition and lends itself to groups who do not focus on a specific recurring business process, but instead on support of innovation centred work.

Organising the work

For a remote team to be effective needs all the key components which make successful team working environments in traditional offices – but getting them in place and then subsequently supporting them does require more effort from you – the team leader...

From our experience, these boil down to the following

Communication

Members of the team need to be able to contact each other and communicate freely with their peer throughout the day. This aspect is available without effort in a traditional office based environment but requires technology investment and infrastructure expertise to get right in a remote team setting. With the advent of VOIP (internet based phone services), the cost to the company of providing these services to remote workers is reduced to as little as providing an internet connection to them.

Human beings are – by their very nature, sociable pack animals, requiring social contact in order to remain motivated and creative. Physical contact between team members should take a high priority in the way that the team is organised. As well as addressing these basic needs, regular focused meetings are key to the growth of an interdependant, supportive team. From experience – meeting as a team once a month provides a successful convention and at least a day a week should be set aside for impromptu of official meetings between team members as/when they are required.

Collaboration

It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.

Control

As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.

Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (what we call email-blindness), delegation of low level task detail to individual resources is a necessity. I would also urge that a project planning tool is deployed by you and the team members are given a chance to buy-in and determine action plans with you. As well as making your workload as team leader more manageable – this technique also empowers team members – promoting the growth of skills and fusing the team with mutual appreciation of other team member’s strengths and abilities.

In reality you are running with two views of the project plan at all times - a strategic plan used by you for medium/long term planning and to provide high level information on progress vs. a more tactical task oriented view which has been drawn up in conjunction with team members and which – to a large extent you have given them responsibility for managing)

In Summary:

Much research has been placed recently into demonstrating the clear improvements in team efficiency and productivity which can be achieved through effective use of remote team working practices, and our organisation CAL has running in this way very successfully since its start in this manner and is a great example. However the decision to provide flexible and remote working facilities to staff should not be taken lightly and the operational changes require careful planning and operational commitment in order to be successful.

Ouch - I have been tagged

2008-09-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

OK What I gather I have to do here is tell you 6 random things about me and then tag six other folks.

I have been tagged by several people as this wave passed through Ecademy (which I am a member of) among them:

Sarah Arrow of Arrow Light Haulage
George Montgomery
Dan Stuchbery
Richard Derwent Cooke
Nigel Grainger

- thank you all my dear friends.

First - 6 Random things

1. Liver - I love it and my wife Sandra cannot abide the smell - so never on the family menu

2. My young daughter's favourite meal right now is mushed banana

3. The last good business book I read is the Maverick - confessions of an unrepentant capitalist by Luke Johnson

4. We keep fish - which must include a breeding pair - as we now have loads of small, dark unspecified fish in our pond.

5. My favourite wine is Rioja .. though in moderation as it gives me gout (uber painfull)

6 Rome is my favourite city and Peru my most exciting travel destination so far.

Then - My tags are some good friends a little further afield

Heather Dobby (ne Cooper) - currently India

Irene Warner - Currently Japan

Mike Feshler - Florida

Sue Ashby - Also Florida

Dr Allan Phang - Phillipines

Garth Oatley - Isle of Wright

Increasing remote staff security

2008-07-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

A client of ours has recently deployed digital pens from Destiny in order to allow services client-facing social workers to benefit from added security.

The pens allow data to be captured directly on-site and then this data to be transmitted directly via blue-toothed mobile device back to central systems. This allows the workers to be carrying out form based administration with a pen and pencil - as opposed to the traditional laptop or hand-held computer.

An added benefit of the solution deployed - making it ideal where staff may be placed at risk from th public is that a 'panic box' can be easily added to the form - meaning that on one pen stroke the process of calling assistance and opening up a telephone channel with the situation can be achieved... bringing a great reassurance to the field worker without introducing any additional difficulty to service provision.

OK .. Lets talk about saving money !

2008-05-20T01:57:00.000-07:00

As a project for our client Hampshire County Council we have put together a savings calculator.. designed to allow any company regardless of size to see the amount of money they can save through the adoption of smart/home office/mobile working tools and methods.

The results are quite shocking as most business owners still working under a traditional office-based accommodation strategy.

To use the savings calculator .. visit this link
http://www.savings.computer-assets.co.uk/

A baby girl..

2008-03-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

I am really pleased to be able to announce the birth of our baby daughter, Elizabeth Hope, born on Saturday 15th March weighting 8 lb 9 ounces.

Mother and daughter are both doing really well - you can expect me to be posting numerous cute pics here in the next few months.

Matrix Decoded

2008-03-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

Oh.. how things change..

5 years ago the vogue was away from traditional line management regimes and towards peer based management steering groups dubbed 'matrix management' by supporters.

As with every change in management style of this kind .. the problem is that the adoption trades one set of challenges (poor communication between individual leaders) for another (a group of peers of equal status supposedly supporting each other but in reality remaining in competition with one another).

Before we all give up on this new and very effective form of style of management and seek 'pastures new' - or worse still adopt the traditional management practice again out of desperation, I would suggest that we should give this peer-based strategy a fresh think .. along with the right toolset to make it happen.

Effective planning at programme level - enabling each manager to understand and be supportive of the agenda of peers.

All to often managers will hide objectives or team challenges from peers who are tasked to support and assist them - for sake of having a lack of self-confidence and the courage to share information.

Another common challenge is the ability to share information which is useful to the peer group of managers in a timely manner - and allow discussion an it.

We are currently developing course-ware within CAL which seeks to address this subject and provide organisations with more effective ways to enable matrix style peer-groups of managers the tools and methodologies to succeed.

A degree in THIS ?

2008-03-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

We are now working with the University of Portsmouth, providing a number of students on the Enterprise degree course the opportunity to work on a number of our projects.

From our perspective it is a great opportunity, as we have long benefited from a relationship with the University and this is an excellent opportunity to 'Pay it forward' and give something back to tomorrows business leaders.

The pen is mightier than the sword..

2008-02-27T02:38:00.000-08:00

Yes. I finally did it - I finally got my eBook published.

The strategy I used was to write a number of articles on the same subject over a period of around 2 years and then combine them, top and tail them and put them into a combined book form.

I am pretty pleased with the final result, though getting the tome reviewing and edited for accuracy proved to be a huge struggle.

You can find the eBook, providing specialist advice, guidance and hits and tips on forming and managing distributed teams by clicking on this link.

CAL increases regional coverage

2008-01-10T06:11:00.000-08:00

Some time since I last posted here.. due to a very busy Christmas and hectic start to the new year... Wishing all my frequent visitors a very happy and prosperous 2008

The spring is seeing a big influx in new projects here at CAL.. both public and private sector .. I am guessing 'new year/new budget !'

In March, CAL will be extending our County Council level seminar programme for SME owners so that is covers the Sussex Area as well as Hampshire.

Taa Dahh ! - Feel the cringe factor

2007-11-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

Just found a great blog article that I wanted to share with my team - then thought .. hey ! that's one for the blog , one for the world !

Coding Horror: Escaping From Gilligan's Island

I know it's a bit geekie -but it is a really great article on the 'delightful pastime' called 'commercial software development'. This is the stuff that great blogs are made of .. and TDH .. that's why I am linking across from here - just in case you had not read it.

Getting into the mobile buzz

2007-09-21T08:49:00.001-07:00

Several days ago I attended an event hosted by NESTA, looking at B2B collaborative resources in both a programme run by them, NESTA/Connect and a project for multi-disciplinary resource pooling from the Institute of creative Technologies at De Montford University

After the meeting I was introduced to Ken Thompson, the collaboration guru from Belfast, behind the swarmit! SMS/Web based group messaging toolset. Two very interesting sites of his which are well worth a look are and Ken's blog which you can find at

Work with Hampshire County Council and MATISSE

2007-07-09T02:03:00.001-07:00

CAL have been selected as a programme partner for the second phase of the Matisse project, educating companies in the Hamphire County on the best methodologies and technologies for flexible and remote team working.

This work, done in conjunction with the eHampshire organisation has so far seen us contributing to public sector awareness in the county as a focused Local Authority seminar and during the summer to a series of similar SME orientated events.

The Matisse programme shows commitment from this Local Authority to adopt these practices and took the form of a year-long study into adoption practices within the council and also within SME's in the county..

The findings from this study showed consistent cost savings and productivity improvements .. and can be found on the eHampshire website which can be found at http://www.ehampshire.org/

Dancing the Jive

2007-06-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Two interesting pieces of related information about the development of the maturing US market for distributed team collaboration. A key player in this market are jive software .. the company behind the WildFire XMPP messaging protocol which we use extensibly in our product TeamR.

JiveSoft have produced a 'shared workspace' platform which delivers Web 2.0 blog like collaborative authoring, contaent management and virtul blue-sky concept areas... dovetailing perfectly into our product offering for team collaboration.

Also of interest was a post today on the Jive software blog site (http://www.jivesoftware.com/blog/) covering the collaboration 2.0 movement.

Work Smart .. Work from Home

2007-05-18T04:48:00.000-07:00

The second annual work from home day event was held in the UK today.

This event backed by the DTI, CBI, Transport for London has generated significant public sector involvement, as well as attracting private sector support by BT and others. The event aims to raise awareness in UK companies of the benefits of offering staff remote working opportunities.

For more information
http://www.workwiseuk.org/events/index.html

Adding a new voice to speech recognition

2007-03-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

I have not been posting recently due to the associated volume of work in support of a new role.

as well as my role within Computer Assets Ltd, I am now interim Technical Director of voxIQ, a high wycombe based specialist provider in intelligent voice recognition solutions. Despite them being a fairly small team currently, they are a dynamic and very focused bunch and have a great product.

Open For Business on Technorati

2007-02-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

Got round to promoting this blog through this blog search/cateloging service

All on fire about Fire Island

2007-02-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Just a quick posting about a relatively new site 'Fire Island', a web design shop operating from the isle of wight. http://www.fire-island.co.uk

While still a relatively new service, Fire Island is backed by Garth Oatley - a seriously hot web and java and .net developer.

These guys are defineatly one to watch.

A blog worth watching

2006-11-21T02:40:00.000-08:00

A contact of ours Moritz Stefaner has just entered the blog arena.

Moritz flash ui skills are really brilliant .. we use one of his components for the remote team visualisation UI in TeamR. Your can find his blog at http://well-formed-data.net and his projects/work site at http://der-mo.net

Here is how we use Moritz's component tool within our TeamR web based administration tool:

You would be right in spotting that this is not really my picture .. that's test data for you (Sigh !)

All change at Computer Assets

2006-11-20T08:01:00.000-08:00

We have just switched our internal focus from TeamR vr 2.1 to two new products.

A workshop version of our remote team training courseware is being finalised and we have two early adopter clients taking it within the next 4 weeks.

Within the company .. the pace is picking up now on the testing sign-off for version 2.2 of our product TeamR - a tool for remote team collaboration. It is a perfomance tweak on the 2.1 product we released last month.

We also have begun work on the release cycle for TeamR version 3.0 - scheduled for release Q1 2007 .. which, as you would guess, I am very excited about.

eHampshire eventing - buffets, arcades and virtual worlds

2006-11-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday of this week I was up in Winchester - eventing for the company and chin-wagging with various public sector prospects about what we do as a company and various public sector flexible /remote working projects. Although this area is still very early market and advice /education are still the main requirements from the delegates - I was very pleased to hear an great tech presentation on virtual worlds from Roo Reynolds, the IBM guru 'MetaVerse Evangelist' - that's his job title .. I kid you not. Stay tuned for some more postings on the 3d rendering of virtual environments from me in the future.

MS Collaboration toolset gets in the groove

2006-10-02T00:49:00.000-07:00

Defineatly one to watch:

It is always encouraging to see the big players catching onto the exciting market for collaborative technologies.

Last year Microsoft made the move to consolidate their position in the collaborative solutions market space through the acquisition of Groove Networks.

Groove - the companies product will become a flagship MS product in conjunction with the VISTA windows range. It offers full virtual-sharing spaces of both documents other project collateral it either a hosted or enterprise version.

Time to get connected

2006-09-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

After arriving late on the scene , I weakened my resolve to be isolated this week and signed up for LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), which is a referral only online community.

What I like about this is that as well as better understanding the relationships people that you know have - you get a chance to get endorsements regarding jobs that you have done.. posted publically - so it works as a collective skills resource as well.

Very impressive !

Using a diagnostic tool to leverage your sales

2006-09-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

We got this strategy from an external marketing guru (http://www.marketing-guild.com/)
which has really helped us in focusing our approach to marketing our products and services.

Basically what you do is carry out a benefits analysis exercise on your service or product and there develop a FREE consultancy session providing analysis around the benefits you have obtained..

The benefits of using this appraoch are two fold..
If you have not got a serious grip on why your prospects will buiy your service.. this project will force you down that path (a very important one if you want to sell anything)

Secondly: It works.. we find that a high yield of tendering opportunities come out of this exercise and having the tool in place means that you can roll it out to any new engagement s as a value add - perfect in that it adds value to them - provides you with referenced services and creates a perfect vehicle for followup chargeable work opportunities.

Words of the wise

2006-09-07T04:43:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I got this mailing from a colleague . and I thought It so helpful that I thought it deserved a posting here:

A very wise copywriter with whom I have worked for quite
> a long time gave me a long lecture once. I've summarised the gist of
> it below. It might help.
>
> We have to look at everything we offer from the point of view of the
> customer -- what is their pain, and what can we do to help them?
>
> Nobody wakes in the morning and thinks "Hmmm, I sure would like to buy
> some consultancy today." They *might* think, "God, my remote workers'
> productivity has dropped through the floor over the last few weeks and
> three of them are threatening to leave. I can't make my targets and my
> job is on the line ... help!" -- and then they go looking for a
> service that can help them.
>
> In all our sales copy we have got to make sure that we understand our
> clients problems and offer solutions. And we've got to be very
> up-front with our offer and explain exactly what we can do with
> otherwise they'll give us 10 secs and be off. To be frank, they
> couldn't give two hoots about us - only what we can do for them.
> Therefore our sales letters, web sites, etc have got to demonstrate
> this immediately ... The 'About Us' page is the least read page on any
> website!
>
> This friend of mine spoke in terms of Picture, Promise, Proof...
> (caveat: throwaway examples just to make a point!)
>
> Picture - show the client that we understand his problem and paint a
> clear mental picture of what things /could/ be like, if he took
> advantage of our service.
>
> /"Are you struggling to keep your remote workers happy and productive?
> Did you latch on to the concept of remote working in order to save
> money and attract high calibre staff? Only to find that poor
> performance is eating into your bottom line? And that key people are
> leaving the company because of low morale? Well, it's not too late to
> reverse the trend. As specialists in remote team working, we can help
> you fine tune your remote working strategy. We'll get your remote
> teams back on track and working at /least /as productively as their
> office-based counterparts."/
>
> Promise - make a firm guarantee that we can deliver a solution to his
> problem
>
> /"Our FREE remote team health check will show you EXACTLY what's going
> wrong and more importantly, how to stop it. We'll also make you aware
> of other potential issues which could cost your dearly if you do not
> act quickly to prevent them from happening. If you will give us just
> 90 minutes of your time, one of our highly-trained and experienced
> consultants will visit you and ...."
>
> /Proof - back it up with testimonials, case studies, etc
>
> /"With over 25 years of remote working experience, Computer Assets
> have been privileged to help some of the UK's leading blue chip
> companies and public sector organisations implement an effective and
> profitable remote working strategy. Don't take our word for it, see
> what our clients have to say....
>
> "When Andy Harris first came to see us, our company was in a mess. We
> had outgrown our office premises and therefore by default, all new
> members of staff had to work from home. Within very little time,
> clients speaking to our home workers were complaining that they could
> hear 'Richard and Judy' in the background and our annual widget sales
> dropped from 210,000 to 23 in the space of six months. We were on the
> verge of bankruptcy. Andy told us all about the 'Three C's' of
> successful remote working, and gave us a clear plan of action to
> follow. One year further on we have doubled our headcount and our
> widget sales have exceeded the one million mark. We could not have
> done it without Andy Harris and Computer Assets." -- Simon Speckle,
> Widgets 'R Us/
>
> Then close with a call to action and a sense of urgency:
> /
> "If you want to realise all the benefits of remote working without
> falling prey to the many pitfalls, book your remote health check now.
> This service would normally cost £750, but if you book within the next
> 48 hours it's yours FREE!"/
>
> OK, it's a bit tongue in cheek, but I still think the formula applies.
> People don't want 'clever' or 'arty', and they don't want to be bored
> to death with all the 'biz speak' ('leverage', 'one stop shop',
> 'exceed the customers' expectations', etc are now so cliched as to be
> meaningless).
>
> Anyway, I've ranted a bit here - sorry! My main message is put far
> more succinctly by Joel Spolsky:
>
> "Don’t start a business if you can’t explain what pain it solves, for
> whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain, and how the
> customer will pay to solve this pain."
>
> If we can get that across in our copy, I'm sure we are onto a winner!


Thanks to Mark Lewin for this posting

How many of these are now boxes in my attic

2006-09-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

Just Found this top 100 poll of games which being a closet gamer (yup Oblivian Rocks !) I found of interest in a geekie gamey kind of way.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3695&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=0

Loads of Rubbish - Volunteers wanted

2006-09-07T03:59:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is just setting up a very eco-sensitive project on the web

The site is going to be called http://www.carbonpayload.co.uk/

Here's what he has to say about the project:

The gist of this site is an attempt to gain any information on the buying
patterns of individuals so that I can then work out the complete eco-usage profile footpring of a given (average) individual.
Obviously there will be holes in tht logic, an average fits on-one properly
etc. Bu at least I can fell that I am "doing my bit" towards making people
more aware of the hole we are in.

End of the waffle, what do I want?

1) IF (say) 25 people buy , on average, 2 tins of tomatoes per week
then I can tentatively surmise that 60.5 million people wil buy x tins
requiring x shipments via sea from Italy, Spain etc. I can get the split
from various other web sites so that I can pro-rata the info

2) I am contacting the local council, for me Arun, to find out how many
trucks are used to move the rubbish generated by x people in the area. How
much fuel do they use?

3) How many people are needed to put that tin in your cupboard?

4) How much fuel is used to move that tin here?

5) How much energy is used to produce that tin?

The current Government sites only talk about useage of Electricity, gas and
mileage. What about the whole view?

ANY help is appreciated. If you want to take part then I am asking for
either a filled in questionnaire, yet to be written, or (a) till receipt(s)
which if itemised is all I need.

I DO NOT WANT ANY CARD DETAILS ETC, THEY CAN BE CUT OFF.

I DO NOT WANT ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

If this is something that you feel you could help with then please feel free
to let me know and I will take in on to the next step.

Adding a link here and a link there

2006-08-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

Just added a link back to our company (www.computer-assets.co.uk) w, for those interested in all things 'remote working' related and a link to a personal site (www.remoteisland.co.uk) by an ex-collegue of mine Garth Oatley - a hot java coder working remotely on the isle of wight.

Later..
Added a link to the site of a good friend of our company.. a regular speaker on all things business change and remote/flexible working in particular , Dr. Anne Marie McEwan (www.bizintel.co.uk)

Some previous ramblings

2006-08-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

Just to bring this blog up to date quickly.. here are a bunch of articles that might prove interesting to visitors who are interesed in remote and distributed working

http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Don_Cooke

got to start somewhere

2006-08-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Well.. today I have decided to join the great unwashed blogging generation. I hope that views, comments and articles I add here over the next few months/years will prove an enjoyable and informative read.