The changing nature of work

In response to a request from Open Forum, a public policy discussion forum in Australia, I posted a short piece on the changing nature of work and the way in which Cisco enables a more flexible and distributed workstyle...

The full post is at http://www.openforum.com.au/content/working-smarter

This is the start of it...

The nature of work is changing and consequently we're witnessing a proliferation of workstyles that reflect new demands for flexibility, balance and autonomy. Organisations in all sectors confront the need to respond urgently to a bunch of demands that include the ability to work in less predictable patterns of time and location and to work in new and more complex patterns of collaboration and co-presence. 

Some days you need to work on your own, some days you need to work with a team of people who are all in the same physical space and the next day you need to work with team members who are all on different continents. On top of that, people are juggling professional ambition with personal commitments to family and community. Maintaining personal good health and looking after the health of the planet are dimensions of life that can't be conveniently forgotten or pushed to one side in the face of work demands and routines that are physically, emotionally and environmentally unsustainable.

So what are organisations going to do? 

My experience, fuelled by eight years' experience working with global networking and communications leader Cisco Systems, is that new rhythms of work are evolving, responding to these complex and sometimes contradictory demands, enabled and sometimes accelerated by new communication tools and information management capabilities. What is emerging is a simple challenge - making it easy and reliable for workers to stay connected to their work, to their colleagues and to their customers anytime, anywhere. Putting in place the platform and the tools, not to mention the culture and practices to make that outcome a reality, is much harder.