Page 229 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

208 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

written about half the chapter, we happened to do an Internet search
for it. Naturally, we found the Wikipedia entry for “Keeping up with
the Joneses,” which reconfirmed for us the connection between that
phrase—which means keeping up with your neighbors—and the
importance of keeping up with your competitors when it comes to
mobile technology. (We, of course, also ran into the entry for “Keep-
ing up with the Kardashians,” which we hadn’t expected, but should
have. Research sometimes turns out to be more interesting than you
might think.)
We couldn’t believe it when we came across a 1996 New York Times
article called, you guessed it, “Keeping Up with the Phoneses,” so
2
we weren’t being as original as we’d thought. The New York Times
scooped us, which is of course what they get paid to do. And it was a
14-year-old scoop at that.
But let’s think a minute—if you hadn’t kept up with the Phoneses—
that is, updated mobile technology in your business or organization
along the way, what would you be using today, while the world is
walking around with smartphones?
Well, for one, your employees would be lugging around very heavy,
clunky mobile phones, if they had them at all, and (if your employees
hadn’t updated their own personal mobile skills over the years) the
odds are very small that they would even know what a text message
is. And forget about hooking up to a Wi-Fi hot spot in an airport—
your employees would more likely head over to a telephone booth
(which, of course, they couldn’t even find today) to check in with the
office. When they got to the office, your employees would head to
the library to look up information that had been printed—if they are
lucky—sometime this year, because they wouldn’t know anything
about Google, which actually began in 1996. Internet searches? Web
pages? Blogs? Laptops? Forget it! Your employees would be helpless
competing against those in companies that actually did “keep up with
the Phoneses.” 3
Like the Joneses next door, businesses down the street and across
the seas are doing more than trying to keep up with technology you
are using and plan to use. They are trying to get ahead of you. If you’re