A New Year and a new promise of freedom from the shackles of industrial age working practices. Today the on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, workers stand to gain whole new freedoms of when, where, what and how they work with the surge of Dynamic Work in the world.

In a similar way to which technology like the cotton gin contributed to the emancipation of the American slaves, digital technology today is emancipating the wage slaves of present day. It all sounds like goodness, but history holds valuable lessons that despite the moral rectitude of emancipation, the transition in the aftermath held repercussions that in some respects are still being felt today. Most notably, a major segment of the population was displaced from one economic activity without clear support for transitioning into a new economic role. This displacement led to poverty, disillusionment, confusion and an on-going cycle of a new form of economic oppression.

Today we celebrate the emancipation of the ‘wage slaves’, but already that very same group rightfully is getting uneasy feelings about the new liberated environment they face. Despite the Faustian pact of giving up so much of your life and control to a corporate existence, people have made peace with that trade-off and justifiably fear that an imposed liberation could leave them worse off. One of the most prominent protests against abolition was that the slaves were ‘better off’ than their subsistence existence in Africa (possibly for some) and ‘better off’ than they would be scraping an existence ‘on their own’ in a foreign land (possibly). Despite the utilitarian arguments for the benefits of slavery, above all it is a moral issue the rectification of which is deemed to trump any cost or inconvenience even to those being emancipated.

Still, sometimes Faustian pacts, giving up freedoms and dignities, are preferred paths for individuals. Whether it is Asian labourers aspiring to work in sweat shops, impoverished women plying sex trade or investment bankers working insane hours and stresses (the parallels between the latter two prominently highlighted in the film ‘Pretty Woman’), many people opt in to these painful professions for the rewards and escape at the other end.

The freedoms that new technologies and work practice innovations proclaim must not be lead to a lost generation of workers thrust into new modes of working for which they are not adequately prepared. Despite the critical mass of the Dynamic Work movement, the progress needs to continue being evolutionary and careful in order to avoid painful displacement and costly disillusionment.

Flexible means stripping away fixed alignment and ownership. All resources are flexible. To be pooled and applied to the work load needed. The concept is central to the architecture of Virtualisation technology. But the approach does impose a new requirement for managing the resources and demands on them. Collaboration software like Microsoft Exchange can be a very useful tool to manage this vital resource with the Calendaring function.

In day-to-day office routine one of the most critical and often contentiously shared resources is the ‘Conference Room’. While I maintain that most companies are over-invested in fixed infrastructure like offices, for the office space that they do have, there is one primary and bona fide use for it…getting people together. If it is not about getting people together, then by definition the work content can most likely be done distributed. And the conventional resource for ’getting together’ is the conference room. While the whole notion of a conference room, with its classic big table in the centre a fluorescent-lit four walls, tends to be unimaginative and dated, it remains a vital tool. And one of the first challenges is simply getting one’s hands on one.

But a tool is only as good as its users. Even when properly structured, bad behaviour like the common syndrome that Dilbert illustrates above derails the whole system. When people talk about ‘change management’ starting with executive sponsorship, they don’t mean the top guy sending out a cheerleading memo, but rather the leaders leading the way with role model behaviour. That’s why one of my first recommendations for companies that truly want to promote aggressive adoption of flexible working is for the CEO/MD to be the first person to get rid of their office/desk. And to abide by the Conference Room booking protocols.  72AJWHBNJW56

You can count on Scott Adams, and his Dilbert strip, to have his finger on the pulse of the most current trends, as well as the curious frustrations and ironies they present. Here’s a recent strip touching on the topic of ‘home working’ with insightful commentary on key (and sometime illogical) obstacles (perceptions, jealousy, status, ego).

The irony of the strip is that the group apparently precluded from ‘working at home’ are the ‘admins’. The perception of the ‘office bound’ nature of this worker group is quite common. When I speak to companies about the potential in their organisation for flexible working, I will ask for the most difficult role to take away from the desk and out of the office. It doesn’t really prove much to show how road warrior roles like sales people can work remotely, but people are more interested when you tackle the toughest cases. If the toughest ones can be cracked, then by implication just about any role seems up for consideration.

One of the most frequently proposed ‘tough case’ are the admins. And yet when you dissect exactly what they do on a daily basis, one sees that a lion’s share of their responsibilities have little location basis, Fielding calls, organising appointments, chasing administrative tasks, screening email can all be done just about anywhere just as effectively. The two key tasks that appear desk bound are (a) pseudo-receptionist (ie. physically guarding the gate to respond to people who physically stop by the office), and (b) finding stuff (‘hey, I left a piece of paper on my desk…can you see if you can find it and read it to me’). The thing is that these tasks seem urgent and critical at the time, but under consideration are rather low priority, low business value, low frequency activities.

Still, when egos and emotions get involved, lots of illogic develops. And I think Adams perfectly captures the all too prevalent resignation and passivity of timid managers: “When you find a big kettle of crazy, it’s best not to stir it.”