In the WSJ (2/15/07), there was an article "Time-Zoned: Working Around The Round-the-Clock Workday". It talks about people working 18 hour days to accommodate calls with international team members. Companies have become leaner over the past decade and ask managers to do more and more. But, everyone should realize that continuous long days leads to a lack of productivity and a greater amount of mistakes. I can't find the article, but I remember reading that operating on a few hours of sleep is like operating after a few drinks. Your decision making ability is greatly impaired.
So, what do you do. In the article, Dow Corning has created a "no-meeting week" once a quarter. IBM has created "ThinkFridays" which allow people to block Friday afternoons to think and not meet. These seem like desperate measures to me. Can't we find a way to manage our lives without it being mandated? The article did quote Xerox talking about doing collaboration via online tools such as Wikis.
Not to be a hammer looking for a nail, but I think this time issue should be a key driver for BPM. Capturing your processes; streamlining them; standardizing them; and then automating them allows your staff to focus on value added activities. We are never going to go back to the "fat" organizations of the 70s and 80s. And, the world is not going to get smaller. Working across timezones, cultures, and companies will continue to be the norm. Unless you can bring a tool to the table that manages your processes and wraps collaboration around that process, you are going to be forced into these 18-hour days to compete. I for one believe there is a better way, and it is sitting right in front of all of us.
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