Wednesday May 04, 2005

The Future of work

Here is blog about Sun's Dave Desforges taking about iWork at the World Congress on the Future of Work. Interesting stuff!

Sunday April 17, 2005

The Importance of Metrics

One of my core beliefs about management is the importance of metrics and measuring what you do. You may have noticed in my last posting that we measure user satisfaction with their work environment before and after any office is converted to an iWork environment. We also do an annual iWork survey. I am absolutely convinced that having these metrics si a big part of why iwork has been successful at Sun. Anytime people start talking about why or how iWork works or doesn't work. We can provide them with data not just opinions. Data is so much more powerful than opinions when you are debating something.

Another reason metrics are important is that they help focus an organization on what is important. Bill Vass, our CIO, has published a Top 10 Rules for executives to Succeed with Technology rule number 8 is you manage what you measure. I've saw this work when I was on Bill's staff before he bacame the CIO and I've seen this work in my own organization. We once had an outsource vendor come in that was doing a horrible job. From the beginning we measured their performance and it the data gave us the ability to manage and improve their performance. When a customer support organization measures customer satisfaction then customer satisfaction gets better. The list of examples is endless. You manage what you measure.

We are talking about how we can improve the satisfaction with iWork next year. Something that I think we might do is create a iWork issues desk. It would be an escalation point for anyone is having a problem with iWork. People get problems resolved but we will also analyze and report on what the most common problems are what the root causes are. We can then work to fix the root causes. Many of us have opinions about what our biggest problems are but this will give us data to help us fix them.

Wednesday April 13, 2005

iWork in Tokyo

I'm a member of the iWork Solutions Group at Sun. As you know iWork is Sun's work from anywhere program. iWork enables Sun employees to focus more energy on work by allowing employees to determine where, when and how to work. As an iWorker I don't have an assigned office, instead when I need an office I reserve one where I need to be or I work from home when that makes sense. David Rush in my group puts together a monthly internal online newsletter called the iWork news. This month he had a very interesting article about transitioning almost 1000 employees in Tokyo to iWork.

I've condensed his article here.
Everyday, hundreds of employees travel from their homes throughout metropolitan Tokyo to engage in sales, marketing, engineering, and corporate activities at Sun. As one of the company's top revenue generating centers of business, Sun's Tokyo office is a lively place where both business and social aspects impact quality of life in the workplace. Like many Sun locations, the Tokyo office has developed its own sense of community and identity within the larger corporate culture, so when iWork was introduced there last year, employees were justifiably concerned about its impact. They needed to be convinced that this change was the right thing to do, and that required leadership.

Strong leadership - starting with Dan Miller, VP, Global Sales, and the local Senior Management team - was crucial in driving change and acceptance. The entire Senior Management team endorsed iWork in its communications with employees, helping not only to persuade the workforce, but to enable the iWork implementation team to be successful.

To start with, Sun leadership saw a strong value proposition for Sun in Japan. Some of the compelling reasons cited for promoting iWork solutions internally and externally are:

• for workers in Japan, commute times are extremely long, negatively impacting quality of life

• real estate is among the most expensive in the world, forcing companies to carefully control costs

• economic forces have caused Japan to focus strongly on all business & productivity issues that drive growth

• Japan is highly urbanized; customers, partners, and employees are widely geographically dispersed

• data security has become a national concern, driving legislation, and sparking interest in SunRays and Java technology

The last point has huge implications for Sun in Japan. From a Sun customer perspective, industry deregulation will have a big impact on data security. Businesses will be legally responsible for securely storing and transmitting data, especially the confidential data of their customers. As Dan Miller says, “the Japanese government is demanding data security, and big business is saying 'we can't do it with PC's anymore'. This means interest in SunRay, Java, and iWork concepts is running high ”.

So, what does iWork in Japan look like? For starters, all employees have open workspaces, including managers. In the new “iWorkplace”, Senior managers have open access to small Meeting Rooms that accommodate 3-4 people. These “private” spaces complement the overall openness of the environment, providing a quiet place for using a phone or SunRay. Also, each organization has its own “neighborhood” which provides a destination, or gathering place for employees when they are in the building. All workspaces are flexible, and available by reservation using SunReserve. In addition, casual “SunRay Counters” along the windows support mobile workers coming and going from the Flex Office areas.

Because of iWork impact on space saving, SE's and Engineers are able, for the first time, to work directly adjacent to one another, in the same building. The same is true for the Partner and Industry teams. Proximity for these groups is reported as one highly desirable aspect of iWork.

In addition to working in a Flexible Office, employees in Japan now have the option to work from home. The " WFH" program was piloted in 2004, and is now fully operational, with about 400 employees working from home some of the time, with support from Sun. As familiarity with the program grows, more employees are likely to take advantage of the opportunity to work from home.

But what about employees' acceptance of iWork? Dan Miller admits that some cultural issues are big. But, as Dan Miller claims from first-hand experience, “people are adaptable!”. Whether learning to work using less space, or sharing resources, or using new technology, or working together from a distance, people will adapt once the value proposition has been made clear.

Dan Miller also believes strongly in the importance of change management and project delivery. He says unequivocally, “quality implementation is the most important aspect of change. We had a great iWork implementation team in Tokyo, and I'm very proud of them!”

Has iWork been a good thing for the workforce in Tokyo? Most people you talk to will say “yes”, though, based on existing survey data, overall satisfaction with iWork is somewhat lower than in other locations. Many people, including Senior Management and the local iWork implementation team, think this is probably the result of too much change happening at once, including reorganization, RIFs, and real estate consolidation. Although these activities were not directly related to iWork, they more than likely had a temporary negative affect on perceptions, which was reflected back in the survey. iWork Survey data is always used to devise local action plans for improving iWork conditions, and efforts are underway to do so in Tokyo.

Dan Miller is determined when he says, “I know we can do better with iWork, and get our scores up”. Having Work From Home as an employee option will help, as will availability of training and best practices, and the commitment of the local Sustaining Management Team. Dan goes on to say “change is really no different for the Japanese than for anyone else. If the technology is there, and the people and implementation issues are handled well, Japanese workers will embrace the change”. No one should be surprised to see this happen, given the well-known ability of the Japanese to hone and perfect a good idea!

Monday April 04, 2005

Cnet article about iWork

Last Friday Cnet published an article by Ed Frauenheim titled Home sweet home office. He gave a different slant on some of the discussion we had last week about the impact of working from home.

Saturday April 02, 2005

Work From Home availability

Sun's iWork program includes a Work from Home component which we continue to expand around the world. Rolling out WFH in so many diverse countries, with cultural, legal, tax, and logistics issues worked through, is a major accomplishment. Congratulations to the great team who made this happen. So far the program is available in the folowing countries:
Canada
United States
Belgium
Denmark
Egypt
Finland
France
Greece
Ireland
Israel
Kazakhstan
Netherlands
Norway
Saudi Arabia
Scotland
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Wales
Northern Ireland
England
Japan
Singapore
South Korea
Hong Kong

Friday April 01, 2005

Reversing the move to the city

Stephen O'Grady of Red Monk wrote a great post Thursday titled Home is where the Work is. I'm not just saying that because he had nice things to say about my Work from Home post last Thursday. He posed what is to me a very interesting question; "what impact might widespread mobile workers have on the current population distribution patterns. Meaning, is there the possibility for a slight reversal of the the Industrial Revolution pattern of "move to the city? " "

My initial answer to his question was absolutely yes, but although I believe people will move to where they want to live I am not sure it will be away from the city. Anecdotally I can think of several people I work with who have moved out of the San Francisco Bay area. My boss moved to the central coast, (His house was in the background of one of the scenes in the movie Sideways) Another co-worker bought a house outside of Sacramento, one of the best iWork IT people I know lives outside of Washington DC, and the person who runs our work from home program lives in Atlanta. The interesting point about all these people is that although they don't choose to live in the San Francisco bay area I am not sure they have given up the city. I know my husband and I have discussed the possibility. I think I'll do an informal poll and let you know what I learn. What do other people who work from home think? Have you moved away from the city?

By the way, I really enjoy the discussion aspect of blogging. Thanks for the link Stephen.

Wednesday March 30, 2005

Is iWork dangerous?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the dichotomy between the value of people being able to live and work wherever they want and the idea that teams need to be co-located to be most effective and creative. I was in a presentation yesterday where the lady presenting talked about things that work to make teams effective. Among other points she emphasized the need to keep people working on the same thing together, minimize time zone differences, and budget for travel because face to face interaction is particularly important.

On the other hand the success of Sun's iWork program and the evidence before us says that work is becoming more distributed. More and more people are working from home or from where they choose to live. We get feedback all the time that Sun's policy about employee work environment choice is a big incentive for people to come to Sun and stay at Sun. But there are still managers at Sun who believe that their people need to come into the office every day. Are they wrong or are the people who push for choice naïve in thinking that innovation and collaboration can still thrive when workers are geographically distributed?

It seems clear that connectedness, trust and transparency are key. There are certainly lots of ways to foster these characteristics in a team. But what struck me as I was writing this is that what is perhaps most important is the desire to be connected, to build trust, and to be transparent. It really doesn't matter if your co-worker is in the office next to you or half way around the globe. If you don't value and seek out others to connect with, to have conversations with and to build relationships with you aren't going to build an effective, creative team.

But isn't that what managers are for? It is normal to have brilliant people on a team who aren't great communicators or who find relationship building just plain hard work. Isn't a team going to be more effective when these people run into co-workers in the hall and when they have serendipitous conversations while making coffee? Isn't it up to the manager to make sure people are talking to each other? Is it really a trade off based on communication and relationship skills when you make the decision whether to hire a brilliant but not locally available engineer?

So what tools and skills do I need to work more effectively in my highly distributed team? And what can managers do to foster transparency, connectedness and trust in order to create highly effective, creative teams?

Recently, there was a conversation on an internal Sun alias about using group blogs and wikis to keep teams connected. The concept of using a group blog almost like a lab book was suggested. A blog like this could then be read by all members of the team and everyone would know what everyone else on the team was doing. This would work if everyone would keep the group blog current and if everyone would read it. I am some what skeptical. It all comes back to whether team members think it is important.

A lot of people also see personal blogging as a key enabling technology. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a very powerful tool. But it only works for those who use it. What about all the people on my team or on your team who don't read blogs. I bet that for every connection you have made as a blogger or as a blog reader there is someone who you wish would read your blog, someone who you would like to connect with but who doesn't have time or feel that there is value in reading blogs. So we have to be careful to not measure the value of blogs by asking a self selecting sample of people about that value.

Other enablers I have seen used include team meetings, regularly scheduled 1 on 1s, and even managers urging their staff to consciously take the time necessary to stay connected. But so often those kinds of activities are just not high enough on the priority list. As an individual I believe making the time to build the trust, have the conversations and be transparent are almost a secret sauce for being more successful in my job. The most effective and valuable team members I know are often the remote / work from home people who seem to do this naturally. Even knowing this I don't always make the time. I wonder if others do it consciously or if it just comes naturally.

This leads me to transparency. It seems that if I want to be connected and improve my value to my team I need to be transparent about my work and ideas. I have to be transparent not just about my successes but especially about what I don't know and where I am having problems. That is hard. But I think it is key and it may be one of the things that managers can foster.

So are the managers that want everyone to come in to the office every day wrong or right? How do you encourage the behaviors that are key? How do you develop these skills in managers? How do you get people to value them? Are there things that a program like iWork can do to insure that we are increasing Sun's ability to be connected, transparent and creative across distance and time? If you are part of a distributed team has it hurt your ability to collaborate? Has it hurt your team's ability to be effective. How do you encourage people to value the important skills?

Wednesday March 09, 2005

Sun wins an Optimas Award

Sun just won an Optimas award from Workforce Management Magazine. To quote their web site "The Optimas Awards recognize workforce management initiatives that create positive business results." Sun won for Global Outlook. Again, to quote "In an era when companies increasingly battle for talented employees, Sun Microsystems has a powerful and portable weapon: its innovative and highly evolved iWork program, which institutionalizes the virtual office and flextime." It makes me proud to be a part of the iWork Solutions Group at Sun

Monday January 24, 2005

What is having your own office worth to you?

The same co-worker who I described yesterday also told me that although he is a flexible status worker he would much prefer to have an assigned office. At Sun being flexible means you don't have an assigned office. Instead you reserve an office in advance in the building where you need to work on a given day. My co-worker is skeptical about the impact of Sun's internal work infrastructure program on ability to collaborate. He worries as I have heard others worry about how having to clean up every night might make him lose his train of thought and thus be less productive.

What most people don't realize is that the flexible office program is what has enabled Sun to develop all the other very popular aspects of the internal work infrastructure program we call iWork. If you read very many Sun blogs you realize that a lot of Sun people work from home. It is a big reason that people like working at Sun. We also have drop in locations close to where people live and iWork cafes on many campuses. These programs are all funded by flexible office savings which we have calculated are in the neighborhood of $70M per year.

I guarantee you that the Work from Home program, the mobility technology support, and the other aspects of Sun's internal work infrastructure program would never have happened if they were not seen as enabling Sun to save money, support the way we work and make employees happy at the same time.

One of the best things about being a member of the iWork group at Sun is that we have a very clear vision that we support the way people work. We understand that to some degree 70% of all employees at Sun are mobile (travel frequently from place to place to do their jobs) or distributed (choose to work in locations sometimes that area apart from their main work groups). These figures continue to grow, reflecting a phenomenon that is common for knowledge workers.

This is not to say that we don't continue to study how to support the mobile workforce while nurturing creativity, enabling collaboration and allowing people to work in an environment that is most productive to them. We continue to look at how to address the kinds of concerns my co-worker mentioned. But there is no way I would want an assigned corner office with a view of San Francisco if I had to give up all that Sun provides to allow me to work where I am most effective. I'd be interested to hear what others have learned about how to enable distributed work and support the mobile workforce.

Thursday January 13, 2005

The iWork Name

In a comment to my last post Geoff asked a very good question about the iWork name and the fact that Apple just announced their iWork product. Here is an email my boss just sent out that explains.

“By now, you may have heard about the pending launch of Apple's new “iWork Productivity Suite”. In order to avoid confusion around the use of the term “iWork”, I'd like to provide you with some background, and let you know where we at Sun stand today.

1) We understand that this month Apple may, in fact, have trademarked the term “iWork” as the name of a new office productivity suite.

2) We explored trademarking “iWork” several times within the last 5 years, but found that the term had already been trademarked. We also learned that the cost to purchase the trademark would likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to significant annual cost to maintain it. Therefore, we decided not to pursue that option.

3) Upon advice from Sun's attorneys, however, we determined that we could continue to use “iWork” for our internal program.

4) 18 months ago we began to develop a new name to describe our planned external sales solution, which is based on our internal iWork program offering. We are in the final stage, working with Corp. Marketing, of finalizing the name of our external offering.

5) We intend to continue to use the term “iWork” in reference to our internal program. When talking to customers and the press, we must continue to emphasize that “iWork is Sun's internal work infrastructure program ”.”

Tuesday October 26, 2004

iWork, Data and the Survey

The JDS Preview Testing status review meeting is this afternoon. Assuming that I don't have to report for jury duty this afternoon I'll be there when we make the go/no go decision.

On the iWork front, we have just kicked off the annual iWork survey. Of course iWork is Sun's internal program to provide a work environment that supports the way people work. This is the seventh year we have done the survey. It allows us to understand employee satisfaction with iWork and how we can improve it. Anyone at Sun can look at the results and we can identify what factors are working and what needs improvement. It also allows us to review satisfaction by site and by job classification and then select initiatives that address any problem areas.

An example of improvements that have come out of the survey is printing. For several years the survey has said that people were unsatisfied with the ability to print when they were not in their anchor location. As a result this year we developed a tool called LPSelect. It is a graphical user interface tool that assists users in editing their Solaris printer configuration file ($HOME/.printers). This tool allows you to add an existing LDAP printer to your printer configuration file, change your default printer (no log out/in required), or add a printer not currently in the LDAP database. We are anxiously awaiting this years results to see if our printing score goes up.

Last year overall results suggested that employees who feel that they can exercise their personal choice tend to be significantly more satisfied and employees who use other iWork locations over a threshold level (at least 10% of the time) also tend to be significantly more satisfied. As a result of these findings we continue to build more choice into the program while still addressing managers concerns.

Another advantage of the survey that might not be self evident is how important it is to have data to prove the value of a program like iWork. Over the years there have been lots of skeptics about the value of iWork. Instead of having heated discussions about people's opinions of whether iWork works for Sun we are able to point to data about the program and its impact on Sun and on employees. Data is valuable.

Thursday October 21, 2004

iWork and Birthdays

Today is my youngest daughter's 20th birthday!! Happy Birthday Shan!! How time flies.

It was ten years ago that Sun's Workplace Resources organization began to develop our iWork program. The team recognized that rather than supporting the way people work, traditional workplace, management and technology offerings were ineffective for many employees. The nature of knowledge work, which relies on thought and information rather than muscle and machinery, allows for greater freedom for individuals to choose where and when to work, but only if the work infrastructure accommodates such a choice.

We've come a long way since the first flexible offices 10 years ago. Currently there are over 90 flexible office locations around the world and the flexibility that iWork provides is consistently listed as one of the reasons that employees like working at Sun.

We still have room to improve iWork though. We have to make sure that the technology to support iWork is easy to use and readily available. SunRay at home and JDS on laptops will do that. We just have to get them out there with absolutely awesome ease of use, quality and support. We have to expand the flexible infrastructure and continue to enhance and evolve it so it truly reflects the way everyone works, especially people who are doing the innovation, collaboration and creative work that is key to Sun's future. And we have to provide managers with the skills, tools and support required to excel at "remote management". We need to continue to build management acceptance of and support for iWork.

I really believe in this stuff. I don't know what I'll be doing in ten years when Shan turns 30 and iWork turns 20 but I am very confident that iWork will be thriving. We are creating the future of Work!

Thanks to David Rush for allowing me to plagiarize a great white paper he recently wrote on iWork

Wednesday September 29, 2004

iWork and Affiliation

I can't believe it! I just about had my blog entry finished and then I hit the wrong key and lost it. You would think that after as long as I have been working with computers I would have learned to save my drafts by now!!

In earlier posts I talked about teleworking and the virtual nature of work but I didn't mean to imply that iWork is all about never seeing the people you work with. We had an iWork Solutions Group staff meeting yesterday and we were talking about how iWork is not about working virtually. The internal program we call iWork is about allowing people to work more effectively. Most groups feel the need to come together. Face to face time counts. On Tuesdays everyone in our group who is in the Bay Area works in the same area in a building in Newark. We schedule face to face meetings and spend time affiliating :-) People who are effective know how important face to face time is and as a result make it happen.

iWork is about providing the services (space. technology and processes) that make any where any time affordable. It is a manifestation of Sun's corporate vision. I truly believe that what we are doing is the future of work!

Out of the mouths of children.....
My oldest daughter is a Teach For America teacher in San Jose. She teaches fourth grade. More than half of the kids in her class don't speak English at home. The other day one of her students was proudly telling her about how his Dad fought in the Gulf War. Then with a puzzled look on his face he paused and ask her " But, why is it called the Gulf War? Were there a lot of golf balls?" (2004-09-29 18:17:55.0) Permalink

Wednesday September 22, 2004

An iWork blog

One of my colleagues has started a blog to talk about iWork. He chooses to remain anonymous. I know he will have a lot of interesting things to say about iWork. I recommend his blog to you.

Monday September 20, 2004

Productivity impact of Teleworking I recently read an interesting paper on Teleworking that reports the results of a 2002-4 research project on teleworking financed by the European Commission. The whole paper is worth reading but two things stuck in my mind.

One has to do with productivity. Often when I am in a meeting where we are discussing iWork someone will ask about its impact on productivity. Our group has lots of really good data from 8 years of iWork experience but productivity impact is very hard to measure. However, two of the cases in the paper show that exact productivity comparisons can be made if work is monitored electronically. In both cases teleworkers were significantly more productive.

The other had to do with safety. The paper said that occupational health and safety differences between office and home were minor. "The main points were back problems from carrying laptops and joint problems from computer keyboards. Someone also noted that " my office is under the stairs (just like Harry Potter) and I keep bumping my head!" "