Hi Chris,

Excellent post, and one that I will share with my co-workers. In the past year I have been trying to get them interested in social media, and how this is going to change the way we work and live. So far with little success unfortunately.

Personally I have already joined the work from home program at Sun, for about 3 years now. This is excellent, saves me on at least 90 minutes of commute every day, and I have not done any calculation yet on fuel savings. I have a flexible work schedule, since I work with folks in CA primarily, my conf call schedule runs from about 3 pm to 7 pm. And at times I get on e-mail later in the evening as well.

But mornings are more open to personal things, such as running some errands, going to city hall, bank and more. It has allowed me to have a better work life balance (there’s another of the important concepts ;-)

In short, I would not want to give up this WFH, it has been such a life change for me, and I love it.

Cheers

Marc

Thank you for writing this and for pointing out the other links To Shel and Steve’s sites. This really hits home for me as my partner and I have recently decided to close our office and work with our staff as a remote team.

We realized that having an office is not necessary for the type of business we have, that the money can be much better spent elsewhere. We have two graphic designers, a cameraman/video editor and a web developer all working remotely now and and we actually have found them to be MORE productive overall. My partner and I each have home offices and live in close proximity to each other so getting together is not an issue.

With places like The Code Factory http://thecodefactory.ca opening up, it’s now feasible for us to be totally remote and also have a space on an as-needed basis for client meetings.

This is definitely a trend worth watching.

[…] things have softened a little, but we’re still nowhere near, where we potentially could be. Chris Brogan has a great post on this where he’s trying to put some of the trends together and create an overview of opportunity. […]

Chris:

First of all, Happy 4th! Hope you’re enjoying your day off with the kids and buying them all sorts of goodies to celebrate the meaning of “freedom.”

I didn’t know you were in the “conference” business but then again, it makes sense b/c you did mention to me sometime ago about the possibility of having me serve on a panel with you or something of that nature. Now I understand. You were speaking from a conference mindset. Interesting.

Anyway, in all the years when I worked for Corporate America (early 80s to late 90s), I never worked at home - I was always commuting to the office, 5 days a week, sometimes 6. I remember dreaming of what it might be like to work at home. That was a long time ago.

Now I work for myself - at home - almost like working “remotely.” I’ve learned how to discipline myself and I must say I am doing a pretty good job of it.

Great article - good food for thought on the 4th.

It’s inevitable - valuable knowledge workers will increasingly be able to work on their own, as the necessity of gathering people into one location melts away. Affiliations may well become more loose and temporary, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing. I am now a “free agent” (solo entrepreneur) consultant and can provide value when, where, and to whom I want, with very little overhead. And very little fossil fuel usage. Can’t see the downside of that type of arrangement increasing!

Hi Chris! Happy fourth from the Caribbean. :)

As someone who has lived overseas for the past twelve years I for one hope that the “office independence” movement continues.

I think it takes time for a shift of this nature, but the realization that you don’t have to be tied to a cube to be productive is gaining momentum.

Enjoy your weekend.
MH

Some great provocative thinking Chris…I think the “tools” are better now than they used to be, to make it more viable to work remotely.

In large part, it will depend on the industry and type of business. Knowledge work can be done anywhere with a connection. Manufacturing, not so much.

I think we’re in for a serious change in industries and how they work, meaning new Management Best Practices. Maybe the branding thing means a whole new spin on “Corporate Spokesperson”…

Excellent insights here!

Your three sentences sum up the arguments perfectly (great extended tag-line for 20th Century businesses):

“Fuel costs are rising. Bandwidth is everywhere. Jobs are shifting into knowledge delivery and networked communities more than face-to-face affairs.”

I think you’re right-on here. We’re in a transitional period, but the trend will (have to) be towards distributed collaboration and away from centralized command.

The work models established in the 19th and 20th century, though entrenched deeply in the minds of many of us, will have to be replaced with models that make sense given our opportunities and challenges.

But (and this is my tiny inner pessimist) I think there’s a factor of *corporate reluctance* which can’t be underestimated. Unfortunately, that reluctance will have economic and social consequences.

As for me, I’d like to work remotely. I’ll be going back to bedside nursing (part-time) in part because I enjoy the interaction with patients.

BUT: I wish hospitals would deploy more remote tools. For example, I’d love to be able to remotely assist an ICU. That’s a good use of knowledge-working that’s not utilized well at this point. (And it would be way cool!)

This is an awesome post, Chris. I hope it gets a lot of trackbacks & discussion.

Well-articulated points. Happy 4th (including outside the US)!

Chris,

Great post and terrific synthesis of a few themes. I agree that a remote workforce can be a huge advantage in flexibility. If you also add-in the freelance model, which allows businesses to quickly scale up or down as needed, while allowing skilled workers to increase or decrease their workload as desired, it can be incredibly powerful.
At the same time, the one thing that many employers (and some employees) overlook when approaching this model is that it requires a conscious effort to facilitate strong communications throughout the team. Using email and IM can be extremely effective for communicating specific data points (e.g. “are we still tracking to have this move to production on Wednesday?”) but the shared organizational knowledge that occurs through day-to-day work can easily be lost. At Alacra, we have all of our employees in 2 offices (NY and London) and use a completely open office structure, so that everyone becomes part of the conversation. That allows developers to hear details about sales calls, etc. While I’ve worked remotely in the past and at one point led a team where everyone was in a different city, it was always a challenge to create the communications platforms to ensure everyone was on the same page. We used heavy videoconferencing (at the time very expensive) to make sure that we all saw each other and built strong relationships. The tools are there to make that easier (and cheaper) today, but for any organization looking to lean heavily on remote employees, I’d recommend that effective communications be the #1 goal for the CEO and the management team.

I’ve worked remotely for over 20 years, as part of a large sales force. Barry’s comments are right on the money. There is inherent value in “face time” that cannot be quantified. In our company, my value in being out in the field is that I am closer to my customers, and so add value by being on0site there as much as possible. It allows me to do much more to drive sales than just a quarterly sales call. The trade-off is that I see most of my colleagues face-to-face only a few times per year, and I miss out on much the informal information exchange that happens outside of formal meetings.

Hi Chris,

Your post hit home. I am leaving my full time job this month partly because there was no flexibility to work from home regularly (even though we are in the remote email business, go figure!). I do think a balance of working from home and working in the office is ideal.

Having lived all over the world I also find the North American (esp. American) style of all-work-little-play to be unhealthy. So solutions for workplaces to be looser in terms of physical location is a step in the right direction, I believe, although nothing beats sitting together with a group of people and collaborating on something.

In terms of conferences, I find I am as interested in the networking as I am in the actual seminars, so opportunities to connect to other attendees ahead of time and during the conference are valuable.

–Amrita

Chris, your posts are thought provoking. The idea that corporations will be coupling personal brands while building brand equity fascinates me. To be effective using social media, companies will need to loosen rigid control so employees can be go off script and genuine when fostering relationships with prospects and customers. It will be interesting to see how large enterprises wean themselves off big, centralized systems to grow smaller, more adaptable ones more effective at creating a positive customer experience.

Based on the resumes we are getting, people still ARE clamoring to get into Forrester.

http://tinyurl.com/63pw5l

Nice tie-up of multiple interrelated themes. I agree, appreciate MH’s used of the phrase ‘office independence movement’ (new one - at least for me). I’ll also throw one side thought into the discussion.

There’s the additional side benefit to all this of reduced of green-house gas emissions.

Reduction of office space/stuff means significantly reduced energy requirements.

Office independence/remote collaboration means less fuel burned on the road/in the air and more efficient use of what already exists, eliminating needless (and costly in often invisible ways) duplication.

Though I agree with Amrita: face to face collaboration and networking beats remote handsdown.

Lissa

People need to realize that they are their own personal brand. It goes with them from employer to employer. Companies and individuals can benefit by brand association.

I am my own brand. I just happen to own a company and have different publishing and distribution vehicles.

Jeremiah is his own brand. Charlene Li is her own brand. Forrester is their own brand; but the intermixing of these talented people and their brands (influence) is great than the sum of the individual parts.

Cheers!

Rodney Rumford

[…] this post by Chris Brogan — especially the part about the “Loosely Joined Employee.”  He describes how […]

Another fabulous post, Chris.

As an independent online communications designer & consultant, my work is almost completely remote, but I was particularly stimulated by your thoughts about the “loosely joined” employee or “half-owned” brand.

Mine is not a high-profile brand but it’s still an issue for me and it’s been an interesting challenge to hold my own identity and “brand development” in the right relationship to my ongoing work with clients. It’s simple when I’m just a designer or short-term consultant - I leave my link as a credit in the appropriate place and move on to the next job - but in my long-term work, as the community tech steward for the World Café for example, the question is more complex.

As far as conferences go, I’m lucky to live in my industry’s mecca and don’t really have to travel much to find fabulous opportunities for learning and networking. I will and do travel for unique events that I really need or want to attend, however.

Nice post, Chris. There has been a lot of rumbling about this lately. I’m glad to see you wrap it up in one article.

I think established companies with a cubicle farm will be the ones least capable of adapting this way. The need for middle mgt to walk around and kick someone in the pants is just too great. How can you justify your mgt style if it’s based on actively interrupting work to put out your latest fires? How can you measure productivity that way? I think it’s easier to hide how screwed up goal setting is when you can just count a persons hours in office as “productivity”.

For smaller, younger companies like the one I’m at now, a soft-phone and a laptop with a ‘net connection is all I need to have a working office. The soft-phone is optional. maybe just IM and email.

Luckily, the people who matter in my office are aware of this and accepting of it. I might even go so far to say that it has been encouraged. A few comments have been made in office like, “why don’t you work from home once in a while, you could save a few bucks.”

Maybe I will…

Thank you for sharing great info and insight - yet again!

Currently managing an online community and social media strategy - I know I could do my work from home or anywhere. I’ve often thought of proposing the idea to the company I work for.

Location close to work is everything to me - not just for the money one saves in gas, but for the simple fact that I refuse to spend an hour or hour and a half in a car 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, 12 months and year… and how many years I chose to stay employed.

Currently I live 3 minutes from work.

The few times I have been able to work from home my productivity was significantly higher – less interruptions.

Any conference I attend really needs to offer something of value – all do – but now I need to know I’ll learn something that I otherwise couldn’t learn buy spending some time online. Networking and learning can be done from anywhere and you don’t need to go to a conference – though it does help.

You proved that perfectly with your Twebinar.

I liked this post alot Chris, I forwarded to a few people. You have *quite* the commute BTW, you gotta do something about that ! =)

aha! so Charlene’s leaving Forrester struck a chord in you too Chris? You have a # of things that resonate with me so I’ll reply on my blog. I have another quote from Seth to add to this conversation.

[…] Remotely a la Seth Godin Published on July 4th, 2008 Posted by Connie in Working Remotely Today Chris Brogan’s post struck a chord with me: working remotely & your personal brand. He pointed to some good […]

Hey Chris,

Happy 4th, hope it was a “bang-up” good time. Cheesy-geeky humor for you.

I think I can echo most/all of the other comments here, this is excellent and something I can re-read a couple of times.

I have a relaxing twelve-minute commute through nine miles of beautiful farm land to my laboratory job. I can’t imagine myself staying in a vehicle for anywhere near an hour in order to get to a place like an office. Even though my commute isn’t a killer, I’m still on board with the idea that “work from anywhere” is more productive than “work from office park” for many people (your noted exceptions are, well, noted).

What you are saying is so “on”, so timely. A great Independence Day theme. American productivity. It is almost certain that several who could benefit from this will refuse to implement it. They will pay a hefty price for not adapting. Many towering redwoods will crash down to earth and it is already starting. By the end the roar will be deafening, the dust blinding.

I think that the efficiencies to be gained here can be of the sort that might save an industry like automobile manufacturing in the USA. Let’s roll up our sleeves and do it, as we always have (a little patriotic nod to American ingenuity on this Fourth of July).

I helped instigate a (somewhat) flexible schedule at my own company, a manufacturing plant. I drew many a sideways glance from our execs. I spoke up in memos and in a meeting on behalf of a group of employees requesting the “freedom” to work 10 hour days instead of 8 hour days, with one extra day a week spent away from the plant. This effectively gave us an extra ten hours of work when we examined the available manpower and eliminated some redundant activities. NO ONE in a decision making capacity was happy that I was pushing for this, and it was something that I never took part in (I still work a 5-day, 8-hour rotation). As a result, I could staunchly claim objectivity throughout the negotiating phase. Several months after implementation, the fact that we are doing more with the same labor has not been lost on management and everyone is happy about the changes now.

Imagine the productivity gains for companies that make REAL flexible schedules, those that implement SUBSTANTIAL remote worker programs to eliminate the need for costly office real estate, and the few who will try out ROWE (results only work environment) programs such as that at Best Buy. Better still, imagine the speed with which companies could work if they embrace your idea of employee-as-brand-as-employee.

Fascinating stuff! This will come about as a matter of necessity, whether the command & control folks like it or not.

My best to you and yours on this Fourth of July! Thanks for the great post.

Great post, and a topic I think about often.

It’s interesting that connectivity and tools allow us to work and live anywhere, but Richard Florida’s findings say that it matters where you live and who you see face to face.

So, even though I could be in Boca del Toro Panama permanently, Florida says it’s better to be somewhere like Austin, Texas for the interaction with other creative people.

Brian - so as you were typing in this comment, I was writing back to someone on Facebook that, although I might fantasize about living anywhere in the world, WHERE I live will still matter to me, if I want to connect to a community, if I want to meet up with interesting people, if I want the occasional conference in my own backyard.

I live an hour north of Boston, and even that is impetus to miss several events a month. With that in mind, I can’t imagine just living somewhere willy nilly for the family and pleasure side of it, because it would impact the business/professional side of things. It has to be a blend for me.

Interesting that Florida was way out ahead of this, though. Meaning, we’re kind of thinking about this now, but he’s been writing that book for about 16 months.

Great post. While more companies seem to be embracing the concept of a remote workforce, we still have a long way to go. I think the problem with some companies is that they see allowing their workers to work remotely as a loss of control for them, instead of seeing it as a perk that could improve morale, motivation and loyalty. I used to work for such a company, and have since decided to break out on my own as a freelancer. That’s scary for some, but due to the remote working trends, there are now resources available for those who choose the freelance lifestyle: I work with a company called MBO Partners, which acts as an employer of record and handles my back-office tasks. So, I have all the benefits of both worlds: access to everything I would have if I worked for a big company, but all the control, freedom and tax perks associated with having my own business.

Florida’s been talking about physical location and creativity since 2003’s Rise of the Creative Class, and he really hammered on it in the follow-up Flight of the Creative Class… good stuff.

I think we’ve resolved to remain based somewhere like Austin, but spend summer’s abroad (or at least in a different state). Good for the kids, and great to get away from the Texas sun. :-)

Well, okay .That’s true, but a whole book on it. : ) I loved Rise of the Creative Class. I tried connecting to him via his blog, but that went nowhere. Maybe at a speaking gig.

Nice, timely post, Chris.

I agree with all the work remotely points made by other commenters, too.

Tim Ferris’ coverage of the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) at Best Buy validates much of this approach.

Also, I was just talking with Gary Vaynerchuk of Winelibrary.com video fame about “personal brands” on Thursday as an interview for my online radio show about Internet marketing.

He and I are both convinced that there is a “personal branding revolution” underway that offers major opportunities to anyone with expertise to share. They can do this independently or under a corporate umbrella as Scoble has proven.

The interview is up now here if anyone wants to hear how Gary V. has used online video to build an explosive personal brand online for himself with his wine-tasting videos: http://www.scottfox.com/blog_index.html
(or archived at scottfoxradio.com for later readers…)

I like this blog “`

[…] Brogan is threading some trends together by combining the writings of Shel Israel on Social Media & the Cost of Fuel and Steven Rubel […]

Fascinating aggregation of thoughts and thinkers.Interesting that I also wrote about this coming change in a post today.http://blog.stealthmode.com/2008/07/enterprise-frie.html
I wasn’t so much thinking about the concept of the employee as half-owned brand, which I think is a fascinating one, but more of the enterprise as adopting the social media tools of its youngest members. But all these things are related, and it would take a book to understand them all. Good start, and keep going.

[…] I was really into three years ago is really starting to make some headway at my former employer. Chris Brogan adds a few more words to the […]

[…] Today, “businesses are primarily organized in 1950’s-era style.” But, increasingly, the world of work is not. So says Chris Brogan in a thought-provoking article on “Threading Some Trends Together.” […]

Great post, Chris!
I’m looking forward to that time when it will be perfectly normal to work from home or, as you wrote, “remotely.” I find myself much more productive when no one walks by my cubicle every other minute, when the printer isn’t growling behind my back and when I don’t have to listen to my co-workers speaking on the phone.

Sure, some people will have to learn how to discipline themselves. And many employers will have to begin trusting their employees. But if you think about it, there is just as much destruction in the office (co-worker, computers, water-coolers and coffee machines) as there are at home or any other place.

[…] Technology | Tags: brands | Chris Brogan, whom I regard as a lead evangelist of social media, raises a great question: Are employees quietly becoming a “half-owned brands” of the company they work […]

[…] media is a changing landscape where personality, historical actions and group membership/brand association continue to impact the individual and identity. Below is a piece that Chris did a […]

[…] A Chris Brogan quote was also included: “The age of half-owned brands is upon us,” Chris writes, citing Robert Scoble as the impetus for this trend. “…Is Jeremiah Owyang about Forrester, or is he a half-owned brand that Forrester can claim for the time being?” […]

[…] blogger Chris Brogan had a recent post where he, too, was threading some trends together that related to work/life balance, telecommuting, […]

[…] Threading Some Trends Together | chrisbrogan.com I think that employers are definitely in a spot where they might have to consider how their employees work. On one side, the management challenges are huge… On the other hand, there are cost savings to be had (tags: business internet journalism) […]

[…] of folks have been talking about talent, corporate and employee brands and using social media to get a job. But few are talking about how to use social media in tough […]

[…] Threading Some Trends Together […]