>> Kevin Kutz: Thank you all for coming. My name is Kevin Kutz from Microsoft
Research and I am here to introduce Paul Miller who is joining us as part of
the Microsoft research visiting speaker series. Paul is here today to
discuss the power to technology and the way it is changing and liberating the
way we work.
He is the author of Mobilizing the Power of What You Know and The Digital
Workplace: How Technology is Liberating Work. He is featured in the Wall
Street Journal and has been at the heart of the work and technology
revolution for the last 20 years. He is also CEO and founder of the digital
workplace group. Ephraim Freed will be our interview today; Freed will be our
interviewer today. He is the community manager for the internet
benchmarketing forum or IBF. He spends his time trying to understand the
challenges that companies face around building integrated digital workplaces
and helping internet teams deliver better online employee experiences.
Please join me in giving them a warm welcome.
[clapping].
>> Ephraim Freed: Well thank you very much. Paul, for starters can you tell
us again the title of the most recent book you have written and in a nutshell
what is the book about?
>> Paul Miller: Well the book’s The Digital Workplace: How Technology is
Liberating Work. And I suppose both of those parts of it are worth
commenting about. First of all what do I mean by the digital workplace?
I think for the last 200 years we have been shaping, understanding physical
workplaces, offices, factories, shops, the physical environments where work
happens. And I think what’s happened around us, without us even noticing is
that we have been shaping, creating and living in digital workplaces as well.
So the simple definition of a digital workplace is it’s the kind of
counterpoint to the physical world of work. I would suggest that work only
ever happens in two environments; one is physical and one is digital.
But I think that what’s interesting is that the digital world is kind of
growing around us without us kind of noticing. But the other point in the
books title: How technology is Liberating Work is that I think the impact of
the digital workplace is generally a positive thing in the world of work.
For instance we can go into with a few kind of caution retails that there
also there.
>> Ephraim Freed: Well before we get too far into this, how do you define the
term Digital Workplace? What exactly does that mean?
>> Paul Miller: Well aside from the counterpoint terminology that I just used
relative to the physical workplace; it’s all of the infrastructure of the
digital world. And I am a bit loathed to try and define what that is while
in the headquarters of Microsoft. But it’s internet, it’s HR systems, it’s
e-mail, it’s micro microblogging, it’s, it’s teleconferencing, it’s the
myriad kind of tools that we connect into, the devices we use.
Those are, if you like, are the kind of part of the infrastructure of the
digital workplace. But my main way of defining it is to say we have a
physical world of work and it’s the digital equivalent or digital counterpart
to that.
>> Ephraim Freed: So it’s a landscape? It’s a digital landscape and if I
understand correctly it’s something that’s kind of emerged, but we maybe
haven’t shaped it very intentionally.
>> Paul Miller: Yeah, well I’m not a technologist and I am kind of conscious
that the audience here knows so much about that, so I am trying to think
about ways of answering the question and try and bring maybe a different kind
of perspective on it. And I was thinking about this before we came which
was, we know that in astrology that we see kind of planets, as little dots on
the horizon, and bit by bit it starts to come closer and you start to realize
that this is another kind of planetary system that we are kind of related to.
And I think the digital workplace is kind of emerging like this. It’s a
planet that’s gradually been coming into view. And I think we are not yet
sure what size this is. Is it bigger than us on a physical level? Is it
similar? And also, what’s its relationship kind of gravitationally with us?
So what’s the relationship between the digital world that the people here are
creating and the physical environments that we are used to working and living
in?
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, well we are about to go down an fascinating path of
discussion here, but before we do your book is a personal story and I am
wondering if you can kind of explain why did you write the book and what does
this mean from your own history?
>> Paul Miller: Well I noticed that the Microsoft research [indiscernible] is
ideas into reality. And one of my reasons for writing the book is I think
it’s really important to name things. And I noticed that this digital world
of work was getting very focused around internet, HR systems, ERM, etc. And
actually I think that the word itself, the term itself and the definition
needed kind of naming.
So I think that was really important. The other think was that it really
kind of started on my first day back a work which was in the days before the
internet and typewriters were around. And I started work on an evening
newspaper in New Castle in the North of England and I arrived in this kind of
supposedly dream job. And I started working and my landlady that night said
to me, “So how did you find your first day of work”? And I said, “You know,
it was sort of okay”. And she said, “Well why”? And I said, “Well I just
can get the idea that somebody sort of pays you money, you have to go and sit
somewhere, and that’s where you basically have to reside”.
And I realized, and I talk about this in the book, the thing that I was
rebelling against if you like was the physical constraints around work. That
my objection to what I was doing was not the work itself which was
fundamentally interesting. It was really that it was some of the physical
restrictions placed around work. And I think one of the implications of the
digital workplace is to change where work is located.
So increasingly where work is located is where people choose it to be
located. I mean I know there is a mismatch where the technology is and where
it is going to be, but essentially that process of that work becoming more
portable, more mobile, is giving people increasing amounts of autonomy,
influence over the design of work.
So if we go back in time and we look at kind of agricultural times work was
located in fields, villages, farms, and that was the way that we lived. The
industrial revolution created the arrival of the city, factories and the
arrival of the office. And when my dad was going to work he had to go to an
office because that’s where all the tools of work resided.
Now I would suggest that for an awful lot of people that’s no longer the
case. And the question is what does that mean? What am I going to do with
that level of kind of influence and kind of autonomy and empowerment in work?
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, this idea of empowerment, an empowered employee, one
who can perhaps work from anywhere because they have the digital tools they
need, it kind of suggests maybe a different kind of employee right?
Corporations may be looking --. How is the freedom of the digital workplace
changing the kind of employees that companies look for?
>> Paul Miller: Well, I think the interesting thing is that this is sort of
this kind of explosion of the digital capability in work is coming at the
same that people are arriving in the workplace with a different kind of set
of expectations. So what I suggest people coming into the work place and
what I notice is that they are not really interested in the status of
physical space. They are not looking for a bigger office, a larger desk, the
name on the placard.
But what they are looking for is high quality digital environments. And so
when they come into the front lobby and they are impressed by what they see
they also need to see, have a digital experience that matches up to that.
And very few organizations are really matching up to that at the moment.
The second thing is that what the younger employees are looking for is more
influence, flexibility, less kind of managed by input, more managed by
output, and so there is this kind of nice blend going on where the
expectations of younger workers and what the digital workplace can afford are
coming together.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> Paul Miller: However, I think there is a huge time lag between what people
expect on a digital level and what generally in organizations. And I don’t
know whether it’s true at Microsoft as well. And sometimes it is in major
technologies just as true as it is in pharmaceutical companies, engineering
companies; the digital workplace can be quite disappointing for people.
>> Ephraim Freed: Interesting. So that kind of gets to the point that over
the past few days we have been getting a look at some of the technology that
Microsoft uses internally; the way they have integrated technology in their
physical workspace. They have easier access to that kind of technology
because of creating it. So the average, you know, fortune 500 type company,
there are large companies out there who are not Microsoft. They are not
technology companies, how do they compare to the technology companies that
have this technology more readily at hand? What’s the difference? What’s
the gap there?
>> Paul Miller: Well the gaps not as extreme as you think because in a way it
doesn’t matter whether you are a technology I would suggest or an oil and gas
company. You have got a large number of people, with lots of different
preferences. You have got lots of isolations, silos, fragmentation and
politics. You have got all of the issues of any organization.
However, you would expect, generally, to have a better digital experience.
On the other hand, in order to do the work somewhere here, you have got a
higher level of digital requirement.
So there is, I think in all organizations including you know Google,
Facebook, IBM, there is a mismatch going on between what people need and what
they are getting. And you know we had an interesting tour yesterday through
the envisioning lab at Microsoft and I think it’s really important that the
major technology companies are doing what you are doing here which is
thinking about the future and what do we want it to look like? Because I
think there is a unique opportunity really which is equivalent to what
happened post industrial revolution, which we need to design the
infrastructure.
We need to design it at a company level; we need to design it at a government
level, because this is the equivalent as people have said of the transport
system. The railroad system, the rail, you know of the industrial age. And
I think, you know, I see it happening to some extent to countries like
Scandinavia because maybe they are a little bit more confined, highly
educated, a smaller overall group of people.
But I think at a government level we really need to get digital
infrastructure investment into the workplace. And I think what we saw from
the envisioning lab was fantastic. But you know, and it’s true in my own
country in the UK and in the European Union and the US, where is the
government led policy that says, “This is part of what is going to make us an
efficient and productive country”?
>> Ephraim Freed: You know that get’s to an interesting point that this goes
a little bit beyond maybe the digital workplace as it applies to companies,
but what about digital rights? Do people have a right to bandwidth? Do
people have a right to access to the internet? Because people historically
maybe they feel like they have a right to clean water and now you mention the
role of government, well what are our digital rights?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think if we start taking this idea that there is a
physical infrastructure of work and living and there is a digital
infrastructure you would say, I think the equivalent is yes they do. Because
I mean I don’t think we know of a country where people are banned from using
the train system or the bus system. Whether you can afford the ticket, etc,
you know those issues, but nobody fundamentally is prevented from that. Yet
we do have effectively kind of digital divides. And I think that weakens
countries.
I mean one of the interesting examples of what happens when you put the power
of the digital workplace in the hands of people who don’t normally expect to
have it is there is a clothing Zara which is very popular in Europe. And
what they discovered was that their staff was interacting with customers a
lot and so they started using this as a chance for market research. They got
smart phone devices in their hands; somebody buys a dress but says, “Actually
I would prefer it in purple”.
What Zara has been doing is bringing back the manufacturing from China back
to Spain through the systems that they have got. They are able to kind of
re-engineer and re-manufacture very quickly and then a week later it’s in the
shops in purple.
Now the empowerment of people in those stores, from really quite pedestrian
jobs in retail to digitally equip people who can really do some proper work
is really fascinating work. The same thing is happening in some hospitals
where you are giving people these devices that are allowing them to kind of
know, when is the operating theater going to empty? What is the cleaning
team up to? What’s the turnaround time? It makes people more productive,
but it also gives them access to the information.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> >> Paul Miller: And I think those are the sort of examples. I feel this
topic which I talk about as the kind of Mobile Front Line, which are the
people in roles that really organizations found hard to reach. You know,
postman, shop workers, people working in warehouses, etc; people who haven’t
really connected in digitally into the enterprise. I think it’s a
fascinating area of capability.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, we often think of maybe the digital workplace as
something for knowledge workers, people who spend their entire time in front
of a computer all day and have access to a keyboard and a big screen and I am
particularly cognizant of this perception of the digital workplace since we
are here at Microsoft which has made office productivity software for a long
time.
Maybe to talk a little bit about, well I don’t know if this is fair to
Microsoft, but what are the biggest challenges around extending the digital
workplace to people who aren’t in front of computers? For those companies
like you talked about like Zara. What are the big challenges that they face
in extending, involving people on the front lines and the field level of
companies extending the digital workplace to them?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think, in a way, what’s interesting is I think the
focus has been around knowledge workers, but what I think is very interesting
is what’s happening in manufacturing for instance. So you know the
economists ran a 13 page supplement about four months ago called The Third
Industrial Age. And it said that the biggest change that what I would call
the digital workplace is affecting is in manufacturing. So example, you have
got seaman who have brought back manufacturing to Carolina. That factory is
running lean technology extremely efficient and productive, but what is
fascinating is it’s also linked into 350 other locations globally.
So it’s a bit like, you know, there are people sitting in the room here and
thank you all for coming and listening, there is a whole bunch of other
people we don’t know quite who they are, where they are, but we are all part
of the same experience. And in a way we are part of the same conversation.
And I think the changes to manufacturing, you know, with 3D printers,
localization in manufacturing, is probably going to be more profound than
what’s going to happen within, let’s say the knowledge based organizations
like PWC and Ernst and Young who I think we have kind of got used too having,
you know, access to tools and technology.
What happens when you put engineers, Pacific Gas and Electric, equipping
people in the field with tablet devices, smart technology in their
fingertips, the ability to organize their own scheduling? It really kind of
lifts groups up that previously weren’t.
area.
So I think that’s a fascinating
>> Ephraim Freed: How do you think, as kind of the first step forward, how do
you think companies can identify the opportunities to extend the digital
workplace into their front line employees?
>> Paul Miller: Well I often say, you know, look at we had people from
financial services for the last couple of days and other organizations. Look
at what people are doing in the front line roles in you organization. I mean
you have used the term [indiscernible] of workplace anthropologists. You
know study behavior. Study what are the supposedly kind of menial tasks that
you are doing if you are in postal delivery or if you are delivering online
shopping to people. You know look at what they are doing and see what the
technology can do to make that job more productive, but also more fulfilling
for them as individuals.
I mean I know that in one European country they are looking at giving the
postman access to the other postman that are in their region, you know in
their neighborhood, through collaboration tools, online chat facility. You
know so instead of you just walking around with the post, you have got a
chance to connect to other people.
And I think it’s really looking at what organizations are doing. Obviously
Microsoft has been doing this for years. Trying to think through what does
work, what is the shape of work and how can technology facilitate and enable
it? And I do think getting back to this point that somebody has got to
build; somebody has got to design the infrastructure and the roadmap.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> Paul Miller: Because what’s going to happen is that organizations are
going to be acquiring the technology that the major technologies create and
that’s what is going to be what’s deployed. And that’s what is going to
design what work, how it’s going to happen.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> Paul Miller: I think the other interesting kind of point that sort of just
comes into my mind when I am thinking is that work is always as I say, been
defined by location and one of the interesting effects of that is it changes
the demographics of where people live and how they live. So if you get back
to agricultural times people lived very locally, worked locally, villages,
farms, etc. The cities grew up out of industrialization. So work being
defined by location.
I think the interesting question is what happens when work becomes portable,
mobile? Not that people won’t come to shared working environments as well,
but what about if that starts to become less solidified and becomes more
fluid, more flexible?
And I see a process of kind of localization of work happening and
localization of living. So I mean one of the down sides of having huge
facilities you have to travel to because can either only live in a certain
radius, or you have got that travel. And I think [indiscernible] are looking
at having few, less footprints of owned real estate, but more facilities.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> Paul Miller: And I think it also throws up the idea that major
organizations might well have shared facilities with other major
organizations very close to where people live. And I think that’s very
powerful for local economies because I spend quite a bit of time in the
[indiscernible] in the UK which is kind of what you might call “countryside”
but it’s not really, because a lot of the economy there is by people earning
their money outside of that particular area. Which I think is starting to
change the demographics, which I think will be fascinating to watch. And
again it becomes an issue at a government level.
>> Ephraim Freed: You know it’s fascinating that we are talking about the
digital workplace and the digital world, but here you are talking about local
economies. And it strikes me that as the digital workplace becomes more
sophisticated and companies adapt physically there are going to be unexpected
consequences. Are there any of these kind of unexpected consequences you
foresee similar to the localization of physical work?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think one of the sorts of kind of concepts I have got
in the book is called work stretching. And I sort of put it in partly
because I see elements of this already happening, but I also just want to
kind of just pose an idea. And if work becomes less kind of directed around
physical constraints and becomes more liberated through technology, it allows
organizations to retain a relationship with people much later in life.
So the demographics of the way we are living are that everybody is living in
Western societies longer and I can see that trend just happening increasingly
on a global level. So why when you leave the organization should you stop
being meaningfully involved in it?
One of the examples I have in the book is of somebody who is in their late
70s who was working for Shell. He left there about 15 years ago. He works
70 days a year. I think he meets the person he reports to once a year, if
that. He works virtually mentoring people, coaching people involved in the
art of specialization he has. And so I think you could see this much longer
kind of relationship between people and work going longer.
But I think the other interesting thing is at what point organizations like
Microsoft and other organizations think, “You know, we don’t want to wait for
people to graduate from college before we are kind of getting our hands on
them”, what about building up a relationship with them when they are 12-13
years old in a productive way. That is about education and it’s about
engagement. And I know that Bowing is doing something like that in the
Seattle area and I think this is --. People are kind of bored when I say
this and they are like, “Oh god, leave my children alone”.
But, you know, it’s been happening in sports and arts for years. And I can’t
--. I think if there are gaps in the education system that are not meeting
the needs of children and organizations with the right protocols around it
can build up a meaningful relationship. So I call it work structuring. You
know, you can have people starting work on the payroll at 13 years old,
running up to 90.
And another of the kind of potentially sort of liberating aspects and I
suspect the people in the room relate to this, is there is a move from work
as kind of what you might call a Protestant work ethic to the hacker work
ethic. And by hacker I mean, I don’t mean computer hacking, I mean work as
obligation to work as something that gives you fulfillment and enjoyment and
reward. And I think increasing numbers of people expect and want that.
And I think that if you take even a menial job and you give people some
influence and control over its design. So call center workers who are able
to work some of the time at home. Some of the examples I mentioned from
retail, some of the examples from the postman. You start to kind of see this
move which I think is happening from a Protestant work ethic which is work as
something you suffered to something that actually gives you fulfillment,
which I think is something that is historically only reserved for artists,
scientists, people who had a real passion for what they did.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, well it’s interesting we think of a lot of these
creative jobs, maybe a graphic designer, a developer or something of that
sort, where people have a lot of passion about it. But then you think, “Well
you know the person who is delivering the mail it’s not that creative of a
job”. But it sounds like the extension of the digital workplace can make any
job more meaningful, more influential in the design of business and more
creative.
>> Paul Miller: Well I think it’s all around this issue that I have
discovered on my first day of work. It’s about influence. I don’t say you
know you get complete autonomy over how your work happens. But as soon as
you can start to influence it and have some ability to design it, more to
suite you and your own particular preferences and style, it becomes
immediately more enjoyable. Plus I think if you give people more access to
more knowledge and tools and services, as we are finding from smart phones
that is an empowering experience for people.
So I think that’s a positive --. I mean the book does come with some down
sides, so long as I don’t sound like --.
>> Ephraim Freed: Well this is a perfect moment to maybe touch on these
topics that you talk about that really jumped off the page is addiction. Are
we becoming hooked on work? Are we becoming hooked on digital interactions
and how is that a potentially negative thing?
>> Paul Miller: Well I mean you know we have sort of all; I am sure,
experienced the whole work life blurring. Where does work end and life begin
and does it matter anymore? And I suppose there are two things that are
happening I notice, is that because work is becoming more portable and more
mobile, it allows us to connect into work when we choose to. And I think one
of the negative sides of this is that people are becoming more and more
addicted to connection and work.
There was a book; I am not sure who wrote it, it’s called Sleeping with My
Smartphone. It’s this whole idea of is a weekend is a weekend, is a holiday
a holiday, is the evening the evening? Does this blurring matter? I think
it’s important, I think work’s important for kind of human value. And I also
think not working is important. And I think we have been losing site of that
kind of distinction. And I think it’s an important one.
On the other hand one of the down sides of this move from the Protestant work
ethic to the hacker work ethic is that as work becomes more fulfilling you
want to do it more. But I do worry that we are getting into kind of people
finding trouble sleeping because they want to update their status, check
their e-mail. Ring any bells?
And I think it’s something that over time, I think can have quite a corrosive
effect. So you know do we need a little bit of self discipline around you
know when we are switched on and when we are not switched on. You know you
have got people kind of, you know, going off to the bathroom just to check
their e-mail be their wife or husband doesn’t want to kind of please, please,
stop, so you know.
>> Ephraim Freed: Well as the CEO of a company with a lot of people who are
working remotely with whom you engage only in the digital environment and as
a CEO of a company where people could be working 24/7 no matter where they
are, how do you try to set a tone or do you try to set a tone of balance?
>> Paul Miller: Well I suppose I have got that other interesting role as a
leader up to a point of a small organization within quite a number of
different countries. And I suppose what I do is I don’t expect and want
calls in the evening or weekends, e-mails. I don’t do that for other people
outside of what I would consider their kind of normal working hours.
So we have a kind of culture in the company of respecting the time when
people are, I say I don’t need you to be physically present, but we do need
you to be digitally present when you are supposed to be working. So we
expect you to have, you know, strong internet connection; to be able to kind
of plug into the digital workplace. But I suppose what I am trying to do is
say, “I know that people have got a life out of work and I have got a life
out of work. And I want to work when I am working, but I don’t want to when
I am not working”.
So I think that’s something up to leadership to set the tone.
a kind of horrifying story of somebody who said it was the day
Thanksgiving and he just wanted to fire off a bunch of e-mails
sure that people knew that he was still there. You know and I
is quite a depressing culture.
I mean I heard
before
just to make
thought, this
>> Ephraim Freed: Wow, you know in the extension of the digital workplace and
the flexibility it offers for working remotely it means that people could end
up not spending any time together physically. So how does the digital
workplace, the expansion of it, how does that change the role of in person
time?
>> Paul Miller: Well I mean there is a wonderful quote from Timothy Leary who
was a Harvard business professor and kind of internet evangelist and he said
in the future physical meetings would become sacred. And I think what he was
sort of pointing to is that we have sort of abused kind of physical working
together. It has been something that has been used, kind of overused.
But I think it really needs to be something that we have to re-think and we
are seeing today some of the redesigned kind of physical work premises at
Microsoft. I mean, what I think is that the digital workplace is not in some
kind of battle with the physical workplace to replace it.
And just too kind of correct one of the things that you said, the company
that I run do meet. We do meet once a month in order that people can kind of
spend physical time together. And then we use customer gatherings and so on
to make sure that people have physical interaction. So we do engineer that.
And actually personally I find that I would like a little bit more time with
my, kind of colleagues than I get.
So I think we have to rethink for different organizations how do we want to
work together. Do we want people to come together physically everyday, and
if so, why? And how do we square that with the need for people to have some
freedom and influence over where they work. I think there are certain groups
who like physically to be together. As I understand it kind of developers,
engineers like that physical proximity to each other. Do they want that all
the time? Are there sometimes when they want certain things which they want
to do in places that suite them?
Environmentally there was a great story from Zappos and they said that they
have reconfigured their own offices so that it has got a far more
collaborative space and so on, like they have done here at some parts
Microsoft. But they said the city is our workplace. And I think if you can
start to use it like that. I think one of the kind of down sides has been
that you either work in an office or you work at home. And I don’t think
home working is that great. I think it has got its place, but we are all
starting to see this new area of third places. You know which probably kind
of started through Starbucks and we are realizing that everybody in Starbucks
working.
Well guess what, we need to have places that aren’t the office and aren’t
home that we can actually get some work done. And I think there is
tremendous opportunity for kind of people to innovate in that. We are seeing
that with the co-working spaces. Again they tend to be more of the sort of
young startups, freelance community, where they just want to kind of be
together. I am looking for something that maybe got a little bit more
suitable to kind of corporate organizations as well. You know where you can
swipe in; [indiscernible] is doing some interesting things with that.
But I think we are going to see some real innovations in places where
physical work can happen. And I guess, and I don’t have an answer to it.
You know we have to as ourselves, “Will the digital workplace become so rich
and deep and meaningful, what’s the impact on the physical workplace”?
>> Ephraim Freed: Right.
>> Paul Miller: And what I notice is that the physical is not changing that
fast, but the digital is changing incredibly fast. And that’s going to
reach; it’s going to increase its depth, its richness, its capability for us
as individuals. And it’s going to make, it’s going to put pressure on
physical environments to kind of justify what they are there for.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah. Well you know over the past couple of days we have
gotten to take a look at the different designs of physical space here on the
Microsoft campus. Is there anything that stood out to you as an adaptation
of the physical space to help the digital workspace operate better or to make
sure that they physical is evolving at the same rate as the digital?
>> Paul Miller: Well I suppose the collaborative spaces which are, you know,
places where people can mingle, drop in, seem to be physical manifestations
of what we see happening on the internet. So if you look at what’s happening
in Linkedin, Facebook, and kind of digital environments that we go into to
connect, then I think we are trying to create physical kinds of reflections
of those, which I think is important.
But I also think what we saw today was very interesting, where you are going
into physical locations, but the technology is all there. You actually don’t
need to bring any hardware with you. It’s all in the room and it’s, you are
able to kind of connect into what you need.
And I think that is kind of the aspiration for, you know, the physical
workplaces. And I think those things were very interesting. I mean what I
liked that I saw what was happening at Microsoft was the, some of the
experiments there. You know the different kind of pods that are being
created, a different use of workplaces and somebody using a desk that’s up to
here.
So you know we have got a couple of people in the company that have turned
their desks into treadmills where they are kind of running underneath the
desk doing 80 miles of running each week. A bit wacky, but you know I like
working while I am wating. I hadn’t realized this, so you know. But what I
need in order to do that is I need to be able to connect into the digital
workplace in order to do that.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah. You know this whole idea of collaborative work
spaces and office design shifting from individual offices to more open office
and collaborative, the response I often see is people who need to focus for
90 minutes, they struggle when they can see, you know the heads and you can
hear the voices of 20 other people. How do people focus in the digital
workplace? Whether somebody from you know anywhere in the world can reach
you via instant message if you are working by yourself, or whether you are in
an open office. How do people focus? How does a developer get into the
zone, into the flow to finish, you know, producing a certain amount of code
when they can be interrupted by anybody at any time?
>> Paul Miller: Well I mean, I suppose work has always been around, you need
a certain amount of focus and discipline to work. I mean, you know, it’s
sort of like what would happen if we were expected never to work? You know
work is something we have to turn up to do, wherever we are doing it. We
have to be somewhere physically. So I think we probably need to, as
individuals, work out, you know we can’t just be interrupted constantly. So
you need to find some space for yourself that allows quite working and I
think we have seen this in library environments. And I think we probably as
human beings kind of understand how we need to kind of switch off from some
of the interruptions.
I think if I was sort of sitting next to you and interrupting you every two
minutes with an instant message you would probably get kind of annoyed about
it and --.
>> Ephraim Freed: It sounds almost like the design of the digital workspace
can take some cues from the design of physical spaces. You said a library,
quite places, places where people can recede from what’s going on. Are there
other ways that you see the digital workplace design being influenced by
designs that have worked well in the physical space?
>> Paul Miller: Well what’s interesting actually is that I suppose if you
look at the whole desktop environment. What we, what I would suggest
happened there, is that there was a view of what a desk looked like and then
it was reflected in a piece of technology. And so the clues came from the
physical workplace into the digital workplace. But I think what’s
interesting, and I will get to answer your question in a minute, which is:
where is the pure innovation within the digital workplace, because the
digital workplace does not have the constraints of the physical workplace.
It’s almost like human beings being able to fly. You know we were talking a
little bit before about the nature of time in the digital workplace; it means
something different in a digital environment. So you know I can watch a
program live, I can watch a program later, I can tune in remotely, I can
pause and come back to it later. I am able to connect in instantly with
people from different countries wherever with a very high quality of, you
know, voice connection. So I think what’s interesting is to start to think
about the digital workplace almost with kind of forgetting about the physical
workplace. Because it’s boundaries are so much wider or possibly limitless.
>> Ephraim Freed:
Yeah.
>> Paul Miller: And I think this is where I get into this analogy of the
plant kind of approaching, is that we don’t really know what the size of it
is. I am sure that you know the people here, you have probably got more
insight into what that’s going to look like, but I suspect none of us really
know what the extent is of this transformation. And what work is going to
look like. But I do think then there are some clues.
For instance, people do like physically to meet in physical work places. So
I think factoring that in as part of what’s happening in collaborative
environments, trying to present something that’s a far more rich and tangible
version of you to me through a digital environment than we have had at the
moment. At a lower cost would be something that I would find something kind
of useful. I said that in the future, in the book, again it’s a rather kind
of throw away statement that park benches would be come much sought after
when we have holographic images that replace the teleconferences of today.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> Paul
And the
able to
But you
Miller: You know with data that we can kind of pull up beside us.
reason I say park benches is that you can sit there and you can be
do what I do which is have teleconferences sitting on a park bench.
know, I want so much more than I am getting at the moment.
>> Ephraim Freed: Well that’s interesting. I think that maybe sometimes we
think of, you know, the digital workplace lets me work from somewhere besides
the office. And so then I am not seeing people as much, and people sometimes
think, “Well we want people to still be in the office”. So they are getting
that engagement. But I have heard examples where people say that the digital
workplace can actually create new types of engagement. It can enhance
engagement between people, interaction between people in ways that we
wouldn’t see that in the physical workspace. Can you think of any examples
or anything that could back that up or refute that kind of idea that the
digital can be more interactive than the physical?
>> Paul Miller: Well I mean Jaron Lanier in his book You Are Not a Gadget, I
Am Not a Gadget? Sorry I have got the name of the book wrong, but it’s Jaron
Lanier who some of you will know, talks about the ability to connecting
globally to a group of people playing the musical instrument that he
specializes in. People he could never, ever meet and have meaningful
dialogue with them. So something is happening digitally that would be
absolutely impossible on a kind of physical level, to have that kind of real
time whenever you wanted access to a global community.
of your question, sorry?
So what was the rest
>> Ephraim Freed: Well, that’s actually a good example. But how can the
digital offer more interaction, better engagement between people than the
physical? Because I think a lot of people are worried that you lose so much
of that when you go from physical to digital. But I have seen examples of
where it can, and I think you just made a great example, when geography is an
issue, when you can’t engage physically, but the digital makes it more
engaging.
>> Paul Miller: Well I suppose there are things that you are able to do when
you are in a digital environment that you can’t do if it were a purely
physically environment. You are able to access data and information that’s
there available to you, and through shared documents, etc, or anything off
the internet. You are able to bring in; I mean as we do in the company, we
use different video conferencing tools. So you are able to connect into
people without any travel. So I think that we are already kind of designing
those environments.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, um, the --. Related to the digital I think that
maybe, what has been the role of smart phones and mobile technology in the
growth and the rapid growth of the innovation in the digital workplace?
>> Paul Miller: Well I mean it’s interesting, because you know it used to be
the tone where people said, “Well it’s not about the technology”. But I
think the digital workplace, to some large extent, have been about the
technology and is about the technology. So I think what we have seen in the
last five or so years is really this explosion of really powerful technology
into peoples hands in a mobile way. And with, you know increased capacity of
internet access, better access to WiFi. I think these things have really
made a huge difference and enabled some of the things that were simply
impossible in terms of work to start to happen.
So I do think we are starting to see this. But I think you also, I just kind
of remembered, you asked one of the questions about some of the other down
sides I think potentially can happen you know with the shift to the digital
workplace. And we talked about this work addiction. And I think the other
one is around kind of isolation.
You know, people at IBM have been working, some of them from home for 10
years now and some people call IBM “I am By Myself”. There is a danger that
if, I have got a section in my book called, “Has anybody seen Steve”? Which
is all of a sudden we introduce workplace flexibility and Steve is still
doing a great job, it’s just nobody has seen him for 18 months. And what’s
the loss to the organization and also what’s potentially the loss to Steve?
And I find this myself since we don’t have an office. There are some days
when I am either working from home, or working in a café, or we are using a
co-working space, and I just kind of miss the people I work with. And so I
think there is a danger of potential isolation that companies on a cultural
level need to kind of guard against. So I think it’s important to kind of
orchestrate opportunities as we do for people to actually work together, be
together.
>> Ephraim Freed: What about managers who are managing remote teams? People
with whom they connect digitally, what do managers have to do to maintain the
connection? To maintain, to make it so that those remote employees don’t
feel like they are isolated?
>> Paul Miller: Well I mean there is a real challenge for managers and I got
asked the question as a conference recently which was, “What’s the future for
managers”? And I said, “Well there won’t be nearly as many of them”. You
know I think one of the questions is in a digital work place environment do
you really need this level of management that we have had, because I think a
lot of what managers have been doing is kind of watching people work.
So I want you to come into the office and then when you are in the office I
want to observe you working. So it’s really watching people based on input
rather than output. And I think increasingly when people have got some
autonomy and flexibility over where and how they work, when you start to
manage people based on what they produce and what they deliver and I don’t
really care how you get there, my role as a manger really changes quite a
lot.
And I think that all the studies and research show that this creates higher
levels of productivity and higher levels of trust. I think the organizations
and managers who are struggling are ones who fundamentally don’t trust the
people who report to them.
>> Ephraim Freed: Right.
>> Paul Miller: So it’s almost like I need to keep my eye on you. And I
think that’s always kind of been a false thing. It’s like if somebody looks
busy, are they really busy. And if they are busy is that the same as
delivering some value into the organization. So I think the management grew
up through the industrial revolution as a way of policing people, really.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah.
>> Paul Miller: And I think one of the questions in this transformation to
the post technology world, and post technology I mean the period after the
technology started to settle down, which is probably impossible to imagine.
But I think that will happen at some point. I don’t mean it won’t continue
to evolve, but I think rather like the industrial revolution, the key
infrastructure of it will be in place.
What will we need? Where will we work? What kinds of people do we need to
have working there? What are the roles that they are taking on? And one of
the things that make me think about this also in the book is around the fact
that companies are going to employ fewer and fewer people. And statistics
are at Microsoft between employees and contractors, but I think you are going
to see fewer employees, more contractors, more collaboration with other
organizations and agencies and third parties. So in a way the workplace for
the organization feels a lot more distributed and a lot more fragmented, but
also my ability to connect into what you as an employee can connect into
become a lot easier.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah. Well, one thing that strikes me is here at the
Microsoft campus, Microsoft is made up of a lot of technologists, people who
work in technology and who think about it everyday. What are the most
important non-technological concerns that technologists need to really be
aware of when it comes to the digital workplace?
>> Paul Miller: Well, that would be a great question to end on. I think that
we should then open it up to the office, but. I think the things I would
thing Microsoft should think about is that you have really got this
unbelievable opportunity to start to design this digital workplace of the
future. And create, in a way, something that’s really going to shape and
define where people live and how people live.
And I think that is a tremendous social opportunity. I think the opportunity
to actually empower people in front line roles, people who haven’t really had
the same access through technology is a tremendously important opportunity.
And I don’t think these opportunities just come along all the time. I think
this is a unique kind of period of time we are in, where there is a lot of
disruption, there is a lot of uncertainty about what the future will look
like.
But it really does, I think there are so many parallels with what happened
after the, you know, agricultural change and the industrial revolution. And
I think we are in that technological revolution and some people are kind of
lucky enough to have a shape and a role in designing it and I think the
people at Microsoft have got an important role to play in that.
>> Ephraim Freed: Wow. Well on that note, the people at Microsoft are here
in the room with us. Anybody have any questions related to what we have been
talking about?
>>: You spoke for a minute about the issue of having to go from where ever
you live to where ever you work. And those cities were brought up out of an
industrial necessity. How do you reconcile the notion that we can all sort
of stay where we have chosen to live and not go to a common place to work
with the indicators that more of us will live in cities 20 years from now
than will live in the country because the natural resource cost is just too
high.
>> Paul Miller: Well I think it’s a fascinating point. I see the regeneration and re-population of cities with people living increasingly in
cities as part of the localization. So it’s, just because it’s the
countryside they haven’t got a monopoly on localization. So I think the fact
that cities and neighborhoods are getting re-populated with people who can
live, and work, and kind of enjoy whatever in that particular vicinity I
think is a really positive, quite unexpected, kind of consequence that I
hadn’t quite foreseen.
So I have talked
countryside, but
countryside that
countryside, and
about some of this adaptation of what happens in the
I think there is something between the city and the
we don’t quite yet know a name for, which really isn’t the
isn’t really the city and it’s not the suburbs.
>> Ephraim Freed: I am just going to throw out there, I wrote down urban
localization. That seems to be what you gentleman are talking about right
now. I don’t know if that make sense, but.
>> Paul Miller: Did that answer your question?
>>: It does, yes.
>>: How do you deal with times zones?
basis.
It’s becoming a huge issue on a daily
>> Paul Miller: Oh, I love that question.
>>: I had an 11:30 PM call last night, 7:30 AM this morning, another 11:00
call tonight, because if you do a global call, the only time where there is
nobody is between midnight and 6AM, for us is 11 to midnight. You can do it
right. You can do it from home now. So you can open up your computer and
you can do it, but how do you try and balance that out. It seems like it is
just going to be a bigger and bigger problem.
>> Ephraim Freed: I will just repeat that question briefly for folks who are
not here in the room. So when, in this world of a global team, global
colleagues, how do you deal with time zone differences? How do you deal with
that stretch time where you know the morning 8AM for you is midnight for
somebody else?
>> Paul Miller: I think this is a fascinating question because it’s where the
digital hits the physical. So is it possible to communicate in real time
with somebody who is in a different time zone, but it’s the same time for
them? That’s impossible isn’t it? So I think that’s a fascinating business
opportunity, because it’s impossible isn’t it, until somebody, somehow,
unlocks the code. And I, I don’t have an answer to your question, but
whoever cracks that is going to make an awful lot of money.
I almost throw it out because I believe if I say it maybe somebody will kind
of come up with a solution to this. But it’s one of those kind of, the
digital hits the physical and the world has a certain rotation. But I also
think it’s, I don’t know how to answer it, but I do believe it’s a
technological opportunity.
>> Ephraim Freed: Well, just related to that --.
>> Paul Miller: Does that sound, does that sound crazy, because you know, and
it sort of is isn’t it?
>>: I mean you see a lot of venue where people will work, you know, crazy
hours. If [inaudible] the 12 hour time zone is virtually impossible to deal
with.
>> Paul Miller: Well that’s the physical adapting to the digital. I am
talking about something that somehow deals with the point that the gentleman
in the back was talking about.
>>: [inaudible] he works those hours, responds the way I would and interacts
the way I would. [inaudible]
>>: Before we get genetically modified caffeine.
[laughter]
>> Paul Miller: Or maybe, I don’t know, but it gets into this point that time
is different in a digital world than it is in the physical world and feels
different. You know our expectations at times are completely different,
seconds feel like hours, you know.
>>: I just think to that point, I mean, we as a company have been sitting on
a tool that addresses this problem better than any other and it’s e-mail.
The problem is synchronicity verses asynchronicity, right. And we as a
company have completely bastardized the single most valuable part of e-mail
which is, “I can send it and you don’t have to know until you choose to”. We
use exchange like an IM client, that’s not what it’s there for. So, so to
your point I think the only rational solution is you have to look at the
landscape of the work that needs to be done and say, “How do we shrink the
footprint of when we need synchronicity”?
>> Paul Miller: Hm.
Yes, sorry.
>>: [inaudible] the same notion comes in when you are talking about the
physical workspace and the notion of having face to face time as being
something that’s both temporal and physical and yet what ends up happening is
we take advantage of the time we are [inaudible], where they are not
necessary. So I think we are still in a state of flux, where we have all
these tools, we have face to face meetings, we have asynchronous email, we
have instant messaging, and online meetings and we are not using the best
tool for the job. And so it tends to sort of expand to fit, fill the time we
have.
>> Paul Miller: But it also gets to this idea that I have that’s planet
arriving that we are trying to get the terrain of. And we don’t really
understand the geography of it yet. So what is it, the terms synchronous and
asynchronous, which --. What is the nature of the kind of modes and formats
in this digital world? Which ones require this synchronicity, why do they
require it, which ones don’t, how does that happen effortlessly? We need to
start to chart this, this territory, which is why I think it’s important to
name it; because I think almost when I start to talk like this I hope that we
can start to see this world around us. I think if we could actually visibly
see it would feel a lot more tangible to us. The physical, we are so used
to.
But I also think, just kind of picking up what you said, was that in the
Olympic opening ceremony when they did the industrial revolution piece they
talked about pandemonium. It was pandemonium for 20 or 30 years. Some
version of chaos, you know, disruption, change, where am I supposed to be,
etc. And I think we are in some kind of version of that. So I tell
companies not to panic. You don’t need to resolve this today, but we do need
to resolve it.
>>: The analogy when I remember e-mail coming to the fore I had to explain to
my father that he didn’t need to sit down and write a 10 page e-mail; that
you could use e-mail for much simpler things. At the same now on the
receiving end of it my daughter’s primary mode of communication is instant
messaging. And so she will instant message me several times during the day
of things that are not of an instant nature. She can tell me later, she can
send me an e-mail, but you know. And I just tell her, “Yeah, that’s great”.
So you know it’s one of these things that a generational aspect or coming to
terms with the technology.
>> Paul Miller: Yes.
Any other questions?
>>: There are other trends coming from children of this age. And one of the
other ones I notice is music. They don’t buy albums anymore; in fact the
concept of an album is foreign to them. They buy songs, they don’t have
lengthy discussions they have these chats. And so it seems like [inaudible]
are synching whether you use [inaudible]. And there are other trends that
you are seeing that [inaudible].
>> Paul Miller: Do you want to repeat your question?
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, the question is the way that younger generations,
kids these days are communicating it’s in these short bursts and maybe to
link back to what you said they don’t necessarily have a sense of what needs
to be synchronously communicated verses asynchronously. And if young people
are communicating in these little itty-bitty, well what are the other similar
kinds of trends that we are seeing related to the digital working and the
young, new generation?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think one of the interesting, the fascinating things
now seeing this with one of my teenage daughters and some of her friends, is
to some extent a switching off of technology. By that I mean they sort of,
the penny seems to be dropping the technology is driving them. And there’s a
certain level of kind of frustration and disempowerment coming from that. So
it doesn’t mean that they are switching off completely, but they are choosing
to kind of leave, you know, phones down stairs while they go upstairs, not
check into the Facebook that evening. And I think there is a bit of a
backlash coming up that say’s, “Whose in charge”? Because we always assume
that younger people will just become more and more deeply immersed in
technology constantly. I see something that might be a counter to that,
which is trying to get some kind of control or influence over the machine.
So I think that’s something that surprised me.
>>: For me the generational thing that makes the biggest difference, as I say
to all my friends outside the company, you have never heard it, but if you
have [inaudible] for your personal life things would get a lot easier. Like
that it’s a thing that our software makes a part of our lives so much easier
in doing this job that you do not understand unless it’s given to you. It’s
one of the tools that just say, “Let’s have the computer determine when the
best time for us to share time would be”. As opposed to the back and forth
that’s required [inaudible].
>> Ephraim Freed: I am just going to repeat that briefly for folks that may
be watching; this idea that the Microsoft technology has this simple basic
concept of free/busy, right. And if I am busy then you know you can’t reach
me right now, or you can’t interrupt me right now or something like that.
And what if we had that --.
>>: Like if I want to have lunch with you, will the software tell me when the
next available time [inaudible].
>> Ephraim Freed: And what if we extended that into the consumer realm
better.
>>: Right.
>> Paul Miller: Yeah I am just, yeah sorry.
>>: And one thing along that though is that we need to start adding new parts
to that because now it used to be if you are in the office you were free or
busy, but now at noon you have no idea where that person is going to be
necessarily. I may be free at home, I am free traveling, I am free at the
office and we need to start adapting those things, the physical location of
where they are at.
>> Paul Miller: Yeah, and what I am just thinking, one of the points that we
haven’t covered, which is interesting, is that obviously there’s also kind of
megatrends sitting on top of this. And there is, you know, the whole
environmental impact and the need to conserve energy. And to have that
orientation feeds into the digital workplace. So we are trying to extract
the greatest value from the least kind of energy. And I think that is one of
those things; it’s a bit like the changing expectations of people coming into
the workplace. It’s something that really I think kind of correlates with
what’s happening. I am not saying that digital workplace doesn’t take
energy. Of course it does, but I think some of the things that we sort of
abuse on an energy level will change. Yeah?
>>: I just, to that point, will remind you that there was a paper written a
few years ago by a new economics foundation that argued whether or not we
needed a 21 hour work week. And one of their really strong points is there
is a natural resource drain that was required for the industrial revolution
to provide us what we now have. It’s not required anymore, right. And so
what I was going to ask was your thought on their core [inaudible], which is
would you, how many people would opt to take half the money for working 21
hours as opposed to 40?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think it’s, it, the --.
>> Ephraim Freed: Maybe I will repeat the question real quick. There is this
idea out there that, let’s see if I can get this right repeating it, that the
40 hour work week was designed around resource constraints? Do I have that?
>>: It was an industrial construct that said in order to produce enough wages
to feed the coming market we have to run factories 40 hours per week, which
means we have to have this many human beings, which means we have to work
this many hours.
>> Ephraim Freed: Yeah, and so, if there is a new 21 hour work week will
people be willing to work half the time for half the money? Will people be
flexible to that?
>>: Will that re-balance the natural resource need?
>> Paul Miller: Yeah, well I think that in a way everything’s up for grabs,
because it’s a bit like what do we mean by work? So if you are unemployed at
what point, how much work do you need to get in order to be working? Five
hours a week, an hour a week, ten hours a week? Obviously it gets related to
what you are getting paid for it, but I think the working week will not just
continue and it’s probably already starting to fragment anyway. I think some
of these ideas of kind of micro-jobs, of project based work, of reduced kind
of work. I mean we have got an issue with some people working 80 hours a
week and some people with no work at all. So there is this mismatch between
what’s happening.
And these things are all unsustainable. You know, if we want to, you know
you go to Scandinavia --. I was sitting next to somebody from Norway and
it’s almost like listening from somebody from Norway is like listening to the
best practice. It’s like if the world were run like Norway it would be so
good, I suppose. I am sure there are some down sides with Norway, but
anyway.
And they, they, you know, they see, you know, people having
need to start to think, you know, on a kind of global level
sustainable. And I think there is a certain amount of work
there are people. And we have got a certain format for it,
hour week. So I think that’s a fascinating article.
--. I think we
about what is
required and
which is the 40
>>: Yeah, another aspect of that is what, for example, Netflix is doing where
they are not counting anymore vacation, for example. So they are saying,
“Okay if you need to take time off for any reason just go and do it, because
we want you to be productive. So if you need to take time off just go and do
it”. And the whole idea of vacation and work time I think [inaudible] and
disappears in the digital world. So I think companies need to talk about
that and it’s not about counting 21 or 40, I think it’s more about what does
the [inaudible] look like? And that is more the measure that probably we
need to have.
>> Paul Miller: Yeah, no I think absolutely. And you know this whole switch
from output to input that’s a very threatening idea to an awful lot of
companies and to an awful lot of people. But again, I think these changes
require a bit of evolution, a bit of time. But what’s fascinating is the
number of different aspects of the way we live that we have talked about.
All around the subject of the digital workplace, because if you change the
way people work you change the way we live. Yes?
>>: We talked a bit about the time zone problem, but based on you know your
kind of research and [inaudible] are there any other tools that you think a
company like Microsoft should be developing from a digital workplace?
[inaudible] or problems you see in your company that you think, you know,
could be solved by technology?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think that the --.
>> Ephraim Freed: Can I repeat that real quickly?
>> Paul Miller: Yeah, sorry.
>> Ephraim Freed: So that was, we talked about the time zone problem. Are
there any other examples of problems that enterprises face related to the
digital workplace that Microsoft maybe should be, or could be, looking into?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think the quality of kind of real time interaction
between human beings in a digital environment could be much, much better than
it is. So I would say that the audio quality is now, is now first class, but
my actual experience of you when I am talking to you, my voice will hear your
voice like I can hear it now, but my experience of you would be very, very
inferior. And so that I think is, and it’s not just about video
conferencing, I think it’s something much more tactile, something much
richer, something much more visceral. And I don’t know what that is, but I
think there is a huge need for that. And I think it would really remove a
lot of the unnecessary kind of physical meetings and things that take place.
I think there are sometimes when we do need to meet, but that would be you
know a particular area. I am just kind of wondering about other subjects.
It’s great isn’t it? It’s like a wish list. What would you like?
[laughter]
Well I suppose people are looking for things that are going to really do the
work for them. They are kind of inundated with, as you know, people are
inundated with this flow of technology, information, service and they really
want this kind of sense of, you know, something intuitive that really kind of
effortlessly takes them, navigates for them. Another thing is a much, much
better user experience. So people want to navigate through the digital
workplace. The digital world of work in virtually any organization is like
going to that door and finding it’s locked. Going to that door and realizing
that you have got to crawl in through the roof. It’s, it’s very
disconnected, and it’s very imperfect. And I think what we want to have is
something that feels as natural as walking, you know, through a pleasurable
building, hotel, you know. And so I think that would again be something that
I think is very powerful for people. Yeah?
>>: So in the digital workplace, in many respects it has inundated us with
more information than we would have ever seen before and we have the
opportunity to consume it as we make decisions. Have you seen any good
examples out there in how people are able to filter through that and get to
concise decisions or answers using that information verses being inundated
with it?
>> Ephraim Freed: So if I can restate the question. The digital workplace
has led to this huge influx of information, more than we have ever had
before. And have you seen examples of people who are able to filter through
it effectively so that they are able to make decisions without being
overwhelmed by this flow of information, but really getting what they need
when they need it?
>> Paul Miller: Not really, no. I would like to kind of, I would like to
kind of come up with some really good examples, but I can’t really, nothing
specific kind of comes to mind. I keep coming back to this mobile front line
where there is some kind of intelligent thinking going on that drives
information to people at the point where they require it; which I think has
got some clues in those examples, I think in my dimension earlier, about the
Swedish rail system giving people information who are running the rail system
out in the field that actually enables them to be better informed than their
customers, because it used to be the other way around.
So I think that those examples kind of come to mind. I haven’t really seen
much in the way of kind of management decision making tools that really kind
of simplify things. I suppose you see on the internet, you know, tools that
aggregate things that you are interested, you know intuitive search, etc.
>>: [inaudible] was actually an interesting example. It was a way to kind of
tie into that social feedback and be able to almost in relatively real time,
but to the economics of the decisions consumers were making around that. I
have heard of similar scenarios around the media in terms of movies. And the
real time feedback that they get through social networks helps them quickly
understand what they should be doing relative to marketing or advertising for
that movie based on media feedback coming from consumers who had seen
[inaudible]. So it’s just that harvesting, that power of the information out
there to be able to, you know, concisely make decisions.
>> Paul Miller: Yeah.
>> Ephraim Freed: Well it sounds like this overflow of information is, and
our inability to cope with it very well, is part of this analogy to the
industrial revolution that you talked about. You know there is a 20 to 30
year period of what in the heck is going on. Well this overflow of
information, this excess is kind of maybe representative of us being that
same type of period.
>> Paul Miller: Hm, yeah. And obviously it reflects yet another huge
business opportunity. And I also really like the points that you have
referenced about tools that you have developed here in the past, that really
have somehow kind of got neglected or derided or whatever, but actually have
got some characteristics in there that are actually required in the future.
>> Ephraim Freed: Oh, looks like we have got one more.
>>: Do you go --. I think information overload is a very important question.
Do you go into your depth in your book about distraction and discipline in
work and really focusing in on it? Because if, you know, if you are back in
your newspaper company in New Castle and you can work wherever you want where
are you going to get the discipline? Who is going to teach you the
discipline to not, you know, just spend every minute watching Alan cheer at
the pub?
>> Ephraim Freed: So just to repeat the question, does the book mention the
idea of discipline and concentration and focus in the digital workplace?
>> Paul Miller: Well I think actually for people at the age that I was when I
started on that newspaper I needed some training and I needed some kind of
oversight. So my objection was not really that I wanted to kind of leave
that office then, because I think I would have come and wanted to be with
people. And I actually got sent, interestingly enough, to a kind of district
office and I was kind of mentored by somebody there. So I did get a lot more
kind of, you know, freedom from that. So, um, the other part, what was your
--?
>>: It’s just discipline, how do we --?
>> Paul Miller: Yeah, the discipline, yes.
>>: If we work wherever we are and have the option of working what, why we
choose the option to work. Is technology liberating us or is it distracting
us to the point that we are slaves to it?
>> Paul Miller: Well I have got a little in the book about it. I think that
where a lot of people are is a bit like, kind of toddlers with sort of toys.
They will just play with the toy until, you know, they get kind of bored with
it. And I think we really need to just kind of mature with the technology,
just because it’s ubiquitous, just because it’s permanently there, just
because it’s 24/7. We need to develop our own disciplines. I mean I have
had 30 years of really kind of regulating my own work by some kind of strange
journey of work that I have been on. And I have found that what worked for
me was to have more delineation between the working day, and the evenings,
the weekends, holidays and so on. So I have developed my own kind of
practices around that which work for me, but I think a lot of people now are
kind of, “Oh my god I can do it. I can work when I am skiing”. Well, so
what. So it’s probably a maturing going on.
>>: [inaudible] to go through to stop your work day and start your other
life?
>> Paul Miller: No, I just sort of at about 5:30 that’s enough, that’s it.
[laughter]
>> Paul Miller: I mean, you know, I used to --. No, not really no. People
tell me I am quite odd that I can kind of get deeply passionate about
something and then go on holiday and kind of completely forget about what the
digital workplace is. So then two weeks later I have to go, “What do I do”?
And so, I don’t know if there are any lessons in that or not.
>> Kevin Kutz: On that note we are going to try for a graceful exit at this
point and shut down. Please join me in thanking Paul Miller and Ephraim
Freed.
[clapping]