Banning mobiles at work in the age of BYOD and Digital

Enterprise X has banned employees across all its group companies from using mobile phones in office. On July 30, it was extended to offices of all group companies, including …. The thinking behind the move, according to an employee who did not want to be identified, is that "people tend to misuse social networking sites inside office. Popular chat applications, while used for official purposes can also be used to chat with friends and family. So the management is trying to curb the unwanted use of these platforms during work hours”.

One step forward, two steps backward, or did I get it wrong, two steps forward, one step backward ! Either way it does not matter, reality for the hapless employees of Enterprise X is that one of their primary sources of collaboration and customer insights is no longer available to them. Everyone is bewildered; what was the trigger that caused it ? Did employees protest ? Did they voice their anguish to the Management ? Did the quality of work improve after the draconian law was passed ? Did output actually go up ?

On the same page of the publication was another report: “No one really doubts the importance of digital transformation to today's businesses. Our global survey found that few can deny the mounting internal and external pressure to do more than pay lip service to digital. Yet, digital adoption is not achieved without changing the behavior of the business. Management must be convinced of the business case, a thorough implementation plan must be in place, and enterprises must alter and revamp internal processes, technology, and staff to make the digital transformation”.

The founders had held on to control despite the next generation driving the business; the younger inheritors were adept at technology and current with the times however unable to challenge the occasional unilateral and irrational directions the company took. Were the business interests of Enterprise X immune to Digital disruption ? The answer is a vehement no; in fact they had led digital innovation from the front. Then something changed and they started lagging behind competition with the margin increasing with time.

Discussions on clamp down on social media and mobile enablement are in the past. Digital aspirations of enterprises changed the dialogue, while benefits from mobile computing driven by consumerization of smartphone, created new opportunities for information dissemination and customer engagement. Better telecom networks also enable geographically dispersed workers to stay logically connected thus improving collaboration and productivity. In such an environment the concentration camp mentality raises curiosity to get to root cause.

Reading the report verbatim the purported trigger was work hours being utilized for personal interest; it raises an interesting question on the dividing line between what are defined work and personal hours. For most work hours extend beyond the time spent in the place of work; laptops changed the paradigm two decades back, the smartphone redefined it a little later. Globalization of enterprises extended work hours beyond the conventional 9 X 5; whatever limited time that was remaining disappeared in the economic troughs.

Is Enterprise X giving a message that staff needs to clearly demarcate work and life hours ? Are they saying don’t indulge in any activity that can be construed as personal at workplace and similarly when they step out of the hallowed premises they shall not be expected to cast a cursory glance at the official email ? Or for that matter if the workload increases, the employees will not be expected to spend extra hours to complete tasks at hand ! An internal circular demanded people to deposit phones on the way in and take them when leaving the premises. OMG !

Everyone would nod their heads to the fact that attention span of the new generation has significantly reduced. Messages and notification craving have people checking their smartphones with increasing frequency; distractions apart, reality is that everyone is also connected to the enterprise 24 X 7 with rigor and passion unknown in the past. Weekends and vacations have laptops, tablets and smartphones as constant companions seeking wireless networks. With the work and life disconnected it’s anybody’s guess if withdrawal symptoms will emerge post working hours.

Maybe Enterprise X is path breaking with this new policy; only time will tell …

My Refrigerator has gone shopping !

I was at this conference where one of the streams focused on Internet of Things or as some speakers preferred to call it Internet of Everything. Every speaker had statistics on the number of “things” that will connect to the Internet and communicate with other devices or the Cloud; the number range varied from 25-50 billion depending on who you would like to believe. The “things” with intelligence could be for specific tasks or multi-faceted to do a range of activities like personal health monitoring, cooking, cleaning, etc.

Every speaker without exception talked about smart refrigerators which will connect to the nearby or your favorite grocery store and proactively order provisions you consume and debit your credit card/bank. One of the speakers dramatized the situation with driverless cars going to the store getting filled by a human. The collective hypothesis was that this is no longer science fiction but reality as it will pan out by 2020, the year by which the number of 25-50 billion devices would be reached; cars, fitness bands, microwaves, light bulbs, interesting thoughts !

As I thought about it I wondered about the situations in my life. For one I like variety in my food and cannot imagine eating the same stuff every day or week. Probably the refrigerator can be taught to have variety. I also don’t want stuff ordered when I plan to eat out go on vacation or call friends over for a dinner; maybe calendar integration will solve the problem to some extent. I hope that leftovers management, use of partially used open packs and managing short expiry products is part of the functionality.

Let us assume that the refrigerator is intelligent enough to not order one item at a time and creates a list of item taking care of minimum order quantity or bill value to avoid unnecessary shipping charges. What happens when the store does not have the items or in the pack size that I prefer ? Will the store substitute another item ? What if I don’t like to substitute ? The store supply chain is probably connected to suppliers’ warehouse system which through predictive analytics understands demand forecasts generated by connected refrigerators.

I am a shopaholic and love to spend time in the stores. My young daughter who grew up traveling in the shopping carts still wants to go back occasionally to now push the cart that was her vehicle. In most of these trips we end up buying a lot more than what we had planned. The visual merchandising appeals to the senses and impulsive buys are triggered by material and inane offers that scream at you while you walk the aisles. So what about cross-sell and upsell that is the hallmark of a good store which entices you to fill up ?

If the above were to translate to reality all the high street and neighborhood stores would struggle to survive and probably turn themselves into warehouse type stores which don’t need a storefront. It would significantly change the way we shop and ruminate over products on the shelves where we can compare not just the price but other attributes. Packaging could be dumbed down to basic, no need for creative colored eye catching wrappers. How will marketers of new products reach out to me on TV or print when I rarely walk the lanes in a store ?

Maybe big data analytics would churn offers to me on the screen of my choice from which I could put it into the refrigerator’s shopping list. I hope that the cold creature (refrigerator) will know its capacity to order only as much as it can store adjusted to my variable consumption pattern. I wonder if my Robot can take out the right quantity of ingredients and cook a meal that I browse and drop it into the task list for the mechanical cook and keep it hot for me when I arrive home. Maybe I am getting a bit ambitious now in my expectations.

The one thing I could not fathom through all the presentations; the bright and intelligent refrigerator knows what to order; the store knows who the order comes from, the car knows where to go to pick up the groceries and brings them back home. I stay on the fourth level of an apartment complex. How do the packages get to my apartment and inside of the refrigerator ? Now don’t tell me that the Robot will do the job, as it would end up compromising the security of the house ! Even a dumb crook will see the pattern and break the system.

I hope you can fill in the missing link for me.

The Hyperconnected Executive

We live in a world of information overload, information thrust at us across all mediums; print, hoardings, building facades, transport buses, taxis, email, SMS, chat, social media, and now multiple mobile devices that wake up and stay with us until we go back to sleep. In bed, while traveling, at work, at home, with friends, in a meeting, relaxing by the beach, even while in the washroom, we are now connected, consuming, creating and contributing information to the ever growing heap.

Information overload was a term I heard long time ago when dial-up internet connectivity was just beginning to get into our homes. Suddenly the world of information opened up; over the years the quantum of information just continued to grow exponentially while technology folks created new terms to encompass the new paradigm. KB to MB took longer than MB to GB did and GB to TB to PB happened in a jiffy. Suddenly it appeared to be more than we wanted. Nostalgically, we did enjoy occasional moments of privacy with sparse cellular coverage, unaffordable handsets and obscenely high tariffs.

So when along with a few CIOs I met a learned senior consultant talking about the disruptive nature of technology innovations, it provoked an interesting debate. He outlined his theory on hyper connected information overload that every executive faces today. He postulated a world of hyper mobility where devices connected or disconnected from people receive information on the go. People consume this information and take decisions that influence business and personal outcomes. Everyone agreed and sought to look at the future. The wise man smiled and refrained from making any predictions.

The phenomenon today is driven by multiple location-aware mobile devices all connected to an ecosystem of corporate data and applications and personal/business social media interlaced with multiple apps. Thus corporate decisions are no longer only dependent on transactional or analysed data within the enterprise. This trend is increasing exponentially with buzz around Big Data which encompasses all the data. It however does not factor in the speed at which information is disseminated to the consumer of information. Are we burning the wires, read wireless, faster than we can process it ?

I do carry 3 devices (almost) everywhere with me; my laptop, my tablet and my smartphone. Across these almost all the information I need on the go is synchronized over the air. They are interchangeable and yet serve different purposes. From one line responses on the phone to approvals, dashboards and longer responses on the tablet, the laptop is still the device for writing posts like this and doing a lot of figure work with formulas or creating presentations. I know many would jump up and say all this is doable on the tablet; I personally find it easier on the laptop.

With divergence being the new convergence, it is certain that we will continue to waddle between screens; a recent study talked about multi-taskers using two or three screens connected to the same desktop computer for enhanced productivity. Really productive ? Velocity of information will continue to increase and our day will continue to shrink. We are doing more everyday thanks to technology. Our world is more productive, our companies more profitable; as individuals we see ourselves evolving faster, achieving goals quicker than we did even a decade ago. Will we ever stop ? I don’t know.

What will be the next disruption in this space ? A connected device to keep us busy while we sleep ?

Work in Life in Work

A CEO in a heated debate asks a question to one of the CXOs; the poor phone tapping guy has no clue what the discussion was all about. Confused in his reality, he blurts the words that were top of the mind recall, the interaction he was having with his girlfriend. Everyone on the table smirks, but the CEO accepts whatever nonsense comes out. “Go ahead, mix your worlds” proudly says an advertisement for a mobile service justifying the jumbling up of internet social media world and the workplace.

Ever since the time of portable computers to the current paradigm of everything on the handheld device, be it mobile, tablet or the laptop, work transgressed the boundaries of what was earlier a 9X5 or whatever hours people worked, and the dividing line between what was referred to as work and life has disappeared. It is normal to expect a response to a mail 24X7 and many obliged. In an interconnected world with business being conducted across timezones, this became a way of life. Umpteen cases have reflected the damage this phenomena causes to friends, family and the individual.

As we grew up through school, there was a sense of relief that there will be no homework when we start attending a job in an enterprise. The irony of the situation is that work has expanded to fill all the time beyond the cubicle or cabin reaching the bedroom permeating every nook and corner of life, threatening to follow like the shadow.

So a debate on work life balance is an exercise in intellectual stimulation; reality for most executives is that balance is a utopian state never to be reached with the swing all the way towards work. So if work activities are standard fare, why not allow the life to creep into the workplace ? Why do organizations abhor the thought of employees occasionally checking personal email or posting a few updates on social or micro-blog sites but expect them to work on the presentation or spread sheet while traveling or in their homes ? Security is one of the justifications and then corporate data travels all over the world. Consultants will tout productivity loss due to distractions not recognizing the gains in after office hours.

This is more so now with the IT function with networks, ERP systems, messaging and collaboration, you name it is buzzing with activity through the day and night. Downtime ? What’s that ? And scheduled downtime shifts again and again until the breakpoint is imminent. CIOs struggle to retain teams engaged in keeping these running. Weekends, holidays, vacations belong to an era gone by; the executive is now chained on a WIFI, GPRS or 3G network which cannot be unshackled.

IT and work policies straightjacket the behaviour on premise and often off premises too when using corporate assets like the laptop, smartphone or others. We all accept these as a way of life. Progressive organizations have taken a lenient view of some digression, as of date they are the exception. I believe that productivity will be higher when knowledge workers have the flexibility to escape a few times. Unfortunately there are no empirical data or solutions to validate this. Contradictory claims make such decisions difficult while burnouts continue. Incidences of fatality are getting younger with stress induced by work pressures and lifestyles that may get promotions, but what is a promotion worth when you are dead ?

I don’t know what can help alleviate the issue; unless life is allowed to creep into the work hours.

P.S. I wrote this past the midnight hour on Saturday