Work Nouveau

I coined the phrase “Work Nouveau” in 1998, whilst running European Telework Week, trying to encapsulate the shift from old “telework” concepts to broader flexible working attitudes. The problem still exists. Most people in the knowledge end of work, do so wherever and whenever they find it convenient. The trouble is more often than not we are just overlaying new technology capabilities on old work patterns.

Most of us work on the move, at home, airport, train, in a café even in an office – wherever, but mainstream corporate culture is only slowly catching onto the fact that there are real and significant benefits to redefining work especially in hard times such as these. Much of telework is rather ad hoc, albeit often supported by technology infrastructure, but mostly oriented to doing the same traditional functions away from the office.

My first real experience of using ICTs in a creative way was when I joined up to CompuServe. The social aspect within a forum generated real opportunities for collaborative working albeit within a POTS environment. In those days the barriers to getting on-line were substantial, and only the technically adept had any real chance of doing it, but it forged working partnerships and friendships that still survive. Acting as a sysop in those days needed a mixture of moderating skills, social skills, and help desk expertise whenever required. It was these early collaborative ventures with unseen colleagues that convinced me of the way ahead.

Social networking is so much easier these days and is showing signs of being an indispensable tool in redefining work patterns, but needs to be considered in the broader context of Enterprise 2.0. In the same year as Work Nouveau was first used, I had a presentation from John Chambers of Cisco as part of a small group of invited consultants in Nice. There he outlined many of the guiding principles to Cisco’s internal development: all applications working through their intranet, developments in small discrete increments that were not considered unless they conformed to time and budget targets, quick to develop, easy to cost justify, in fact very reminiscent of the attributes of Enterprise 2.0 as we now know it. He ascribed much of the phenomenal growth of Cisco to this strategy, contributing effective solutions in a rapidly changing environment.

As hierarchical structures slowly disintegrate, so  the traditional functional organisations change and evolve. Marketing, H.R., R&D, Finance, Technology, may still feature in the organigram, but one person may have the skills necessary for several functions, and one function may need the skills from several people. The business social networking environment contributes to the building of the understanding and the linkages necessary to use these polyvalent resources, and this really does offer the prospect of being able to radically restructure an organisation.

Work Nouveau may have finally arrived on the back of Enterprise 2.0.