Page 54 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

discovering a new workforce paradigm � 33

to use mobile purely from necessity—in some extreme re-
mote areas it’s the only form of communication and media
portal.
Today’s workforce is changing into an army of well-
equipped professionals who are not afraid to spend most of
their day accessing a mobile computer device.

Think about the qualities that Ahonen describes in terms of your
workforce. Mobile is the first “always present,” “always on,” and al-
ways within-arm’s-distance communications channel. You now have
the ability to skip all the previous media. You can communicate via
written word, voice, or video. You can search for information, and
receive it, in those three modes as well. You have instant access to
anybody on your team and can meet anytime. You can communi-
cate immediately with your direct reports, the whole company, or the
world. If you need to let people know something urgent—or if there is
something pressing going on that you want to know about—you can
do it or get it in real time. Right now. You can make information more
secure than your locked four-drawer file or than your bank lockbox.
You can teach, meet, share information, study prototypes, and even
conduct complex, sensitive medical operations virtually.
Your organization is probably mobile already. Do you get messages
from people not in the office now, perhaps sitting in a subway or taxi
or in a hotel room? Do people send you the latest presentation or
document on your phone while you’re sitting at home eating dinner?
They are working mobilely, and so are you.

paradigm Buster number 4: work and the worker
do not have to Be in the same location
Former Principal Investigator of the Afghanistan Water Agriculture
and Technology (AWATT) project, Bob Grassberger, seems like the