Page 81 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

60 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

An API, then, is a metaphor to describe how a manager
can assess, plan for, and then design ways for managers
and members of their workforce to interact. “We acknowl-
edge,” Greg told us, “that people thrive on networks, they
thrive on support, and they thrive on interaction. I think we
need to channel and create that interaction to bring people
along.” That means anticipating what workers might need
to do their work—information resources, preloaded soft-
ware and work tools, networks both electronic and social, or
any other kind of structure or process that will facilitate that
interface between the worker and other workers, the worker
and the manager, and the worker and external environment.
What a human API does, then, is to bring a sense of pres-
ence to mobile workers. Presence in this sense bridges
technology and people, connecting the worker with what is
needed to do the job. To Greg it can be even more esoteric,
yet pragmatic. “How do we encourage people,” he asks, “to
use their own energy but then create natural pathways for
that energy to follow such that they are motivated [more
easily], helped to find information, plugged into the network
that they need with the least amount of investigation and
energy required, and . . . get the most return on their invest-
ment of time and energy?”
The human API—the next frontier in socio-technoengi-
neering! What kind of interface will you be?