Virtual Work Place of the Now

Social media provides instant feedback.  If you struggle with that thought, toss something controversial on Twitter and see how quickly it gets re-tweeted.  The virtual workforce is more aligned with Social Media behaviors and requires and demands immediate feedback to advance the goals of the organization.  Performance appraisals that are now performed on a semi-annual or annual cycle are outdated.  You should be getting performance feedback every day in our ultra-connected virtual world.

When working virtually, most communication is work centric transactional without the emotional investment of social and non-verbal feedback.  The imperative of feedback is critical to keep progress towards objectives aligned.  It is equally critical to allow more prudent risk taking.  Consider the role of the waiter in a restaurant.  The server receives instantaneous feedback on their “performance” through customer interactions and the compensation feedback through the tip at the end of the meal.  Presentation style, fluency of the menu, and checking for feedback during the meal together provide a table by table appraisal for the server.  How does this fit into our virtual meeting and conference call process of today? Do you get regular and immediate feedback from virtual meetings or conference calls?  If not, what might not happen that can propel the team forward to meeting and exceeding their goals?

Virtual work can attenuate risk since the physical feedback of facial expression and body language can’t be assessed to determine whether the risk is additive or aggravating to the process.  For the majority of the less courageous and politically insecure workforce, risk will be averted in the virtual workplace.  Consider how much quicker and more creative a result can be achieved when risk inviting processes are part of the decision process.

There are ways to mitigate this challenge. One advantage of the virtual workplace is less time spent commuting.  In my case, my commute consists of descending a flight of stairs and crisscrossing a busy kitchen to get to my home office.  How best to spend this found time?  Set aside time each day to invest in the relationships with those you need to collaborate with.  Schedule time with someone you don’t know well or is new to the team and spend 10-15 minutes to get to know them as a person, not just a work colleague.  Learn about their backgrounds and experiences.  Ask them what they enjoy most about the work problem and what they find the most challenging or frustrating.  Share the same with them such that each of you understands better how to partner in the virtual work place.

Special attention should be directed to those that participate at a minimum level.  Are they not challenged in their role?  Are they bored?  Do they feel they are an outsider to the team?  Not knowing the answers puts their contribution at risk.  Spending 10-15 minutes understanding their concerns could provide many hours of positive ROI for that small time investment.

By now I hope you see my theme.  Virtual work places will become the norm.  If we do not invest in building the emotional cultural fabric that exists by default in the physical work place, the results will be pedestrian and the euphoria of celebrating as a team will be non-existent or disingenuous at best.  Virtual work is harder and challenging as it demands purposeful reaching out to build the pathways to relationships necessary for organizational success.

LinkedIn      http://www.linkedin.com/in/edbeckerprincetonnj

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Ed Becker Joins CSC Health Services 2011 – Update May 2012

Update – I joined CSC Health Services in 2011. Due to a major restructuring at CSC and the stated goal of driving $1B of cost out of the firm, my role was eliminated.  While others may delete the following post, I was thrilled to have the role in CSC’s Health Services group, so keeping the blog is respect for all those I had the chance to work with.  Best of luck to my CSC colleagues going forward! 

This blog post is available as a podcast – http://bit.ly/oNx1xC

I am thrilled to report that I have joined CSC’s Health Services group in the role of Resourcing Manager. I’ll be working alongside the brightest health care industry professionals in a leadership role. Around the world and across the healthcare spectrum, CSC is transforming healthcare with better information for better decisions. Our solutions revolutionize the way physicians deliver services, governments manage public health, experts conduct breakthrough medical research, and institutions provide coverage.

The time that I was in pursuit of a new career opportunity was an exciting and educational time that I made the most of while searching for that next perfect job.  I typically broke my “work” week into three main segments;

• Competency growth in technology, industry, and professional services best practices
• Networking to meet my next set of business partners and mentors
• Pursuit management for my own career

I’ve been privileged to have nurtured the many friendships at CSC, met many outstanding leaders in their respective fields, and have been provided the opportunity to assist others with their career choices and search techniques.   I’ve become an expert in using social media for career awareness, specifically mastering best practice techniques using LinkedIn to expand my circle of influence and partnerships.  I have many new valued contacts at companies that span the consulting, financial, pharmaceutical, telecom, insurance, and HR outsourcing, to name just a few.  I hope to be able to leverage some of these contacts into new business partners for CSC.

I started to list all those that provided guidance, support, and creative ideas, but this blog has a finite length and candidly, I fear most that I might omit someone’s name.  So I’ll list a few organizations that have been a great source of creative leadership for me while in transition. 

• CSC – my many friends at CSC were always close, and I am now delighted to be back as a colleague. 100′s to thank.  I’ll get to each of you over the next few weeks!
• Rutgers Career Services, Rutgers Alumni, and Rutgers Club Success Club – what a great set of people to have been around most every week. Len Garrison, you’re the best!
• Princeton Public Library – Janie Hermann makes the PPL a destination spot with 100’s of programs that bring together a diverse set of people in a multitude of venues.
• The Whine and Dine organization.  Not any whining but tons of great supportive people. Keith Bogen, thanks!
• IEEE for their many technology programs and networking opportunities

I’ll close with this gratitude for now, but please understand that this blog could have run on for many more screens.  It has been a special opportunity to meet so many new people, learn so much, and now be back with my dream company, CSC.

For my many LinkedIn connections and others, I’ll be a bit less present on the social media sites as I dig into my new role and get the chance to meet many new CSC Health Services colleagues.  Trust that once I get some traction on this, I’ll return to the blogging posts, Twitter, Google+, and whatever comes next on the social media horizon.

If you are not familiar with CSC, click on the “We Do Amazing Things” link.  Then take a look at the attached link for CSC Health Services.  Finally, glance at the web page I tossed together for my introduction to CSC Health Services.

In closing – many thanks to everyone, both at CSC and everywhere else, that has been a contributor to my growth and spirits.

CSC – We Do Amazing Things  http://www.csc.com/careersus/fre/36086-we_do_amazing_things_video

CSC Health Services http://www.csc.com/health_services/

My CSC Health Services Introduction   http://www.wix.com/edbeckerprincetonnj/becker-csc-healthcare

LinkedIn      http://www.linkedin.com/in/edbeckerprincetonnj

Ed’s Blog     http://edbeckerprincetonnj.wordpress.com/

Twitter         http://twitter.com/#!/ebecker

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Oversimplifying and Under Thinking – Is Social Media the Cause or the Cure?

(This blog is available as a podcast – http://bit.ly/kRCvdE)

When exactly did it become fashionable to Oversimplify and Under-Think important political, industry, financial, or education decisions?  More importantly, when did we as consumers of these poorly constructed solutions accept this as the new norm from what are alleged to be leaders in their respective fields? Whether your interests are the current political climate, corporate decisions on products and social responsibility, Wall Street’s influence on our economic health, or government policies on education, there are ample examples of decisions that don’t meet the standards of being well thought through or deal with the complexity of the problem.

As I’ve started to explore Social Media in greater depth the past few months, I’m trying to discern whether these new communication forums are adding to our collective knowledge base or eroding the discipline necessary for focused research and critical thinking.  Traditional academic or vocational training requires a laser focus and a lengthy time commitment to instill and remember the key points and lessons.  Social media can be as simple as a Retweet or a Like button. 

Social Media has enormous potential to bring many people together for group think on an important topic, but all too often it seems to have been to Oversimplify the topic and Under-Think the communication.  If you are active on Twitter, count the number of non-annotated Retweets you receive from someone you follow versus how many are original thoughts or media references.  The ones I value most are those that are original thought or make an introductory remark about a referenced URL they include.  This implies they have read and understand the material and believe their followers would find it valuable.  Blindly retweeting something tends to Oversimplify the communication. 

I know that some of you reading this blog are thinking that I have Over-Thought this Social Media issue. The prevailing belief is that Social Media is meant to be a stream of thoughts, and let the reader triage through all the Smart Phone hits or TweetDeck updates.  We have a real opportunity with Social Media that may not be realized if we don’t think through how we push information out to our followers.  

With Social Media, we can transform the traditional push model of learning into a pull model. Pull models treat people as networked innovators who are uniquely positioned to transform a problem into an opportunity. Pull models can be designed to accelerate knowledge building by participants, helping them to learn as well as innovate.  But that success is directly proportional to how much effort and thoughtfulness we put into the content that becomes pull available.  I’ve found this to be a delicate balancing act, since the instant gratification part of me wants to respond to each tweet or Facebook update, the structured part of me wants undivided time to itself to Think through the topic before pushing this content. 

Writing this blog is my self-imposed method of taking the Think approach, creating content that can be pulled by my followers.  They can then aggregate my thinking with others and produce a higher value content from which we can all learn and benefit.  As for my tweets, every so often I allow an Oversimplified and Under-Thought retweet loose on my followers.  Sorry about that. 

Try this approach yourself if you dare. You have the capacity to produce valuable content that can be pulled and leveraged to advance our collective learning. Then the promise of Social Media will be realized and we can all innovate the next frontier of communication and learning. 

Comments are welcome on this topic, as long as they are Thoughtful.

To learn more about Ed Becker, visit  http://www.linkedin.com/in/edbeckerprincetonnj