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     6  z        |      |      v            v  F   v                                                                                            Telecommuting - Meanwhile Back at the Ranch
by Thomas B. Cross
(C) 1995 CROSS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION
	What is telecommuting? - Not at home but anywhere, anytime 
	Satellite or Remote Workgroup Centers Emerge 
	No-tech and hi-tech tools & technologies 
	Home Smart Home 
Thomas B. Cross teaches Trends in Information Technology - Forecasting the Future at the University of Colorado and at the University of Denver.  He has lectured throughout the world on emerging and merging technologies and has taught seminars on advanced business communications and tele/conferencing for Business Communications Review and in England for Pergamon Infotech.  He has authored Tele/Conferencing: Linking People Together for Prentice-Hall and Networking: An Electronic Mail Handbook for Scott-Foresman.  In addition, he has authored Knowledge Engineering - Business Applications for Artificial Intelligence, Teleconferencing: State of the Art, Softside of Software, Networking Personal Computers for Organizations, Telecommuting - The Future Technology of Work, Intelligent Buildings, Chief Technology Officer, LAN$ell - Desktop Guide for the Connectivity Sales Professional, LANCOM - on LAN communications solutions and Split Second Society - Time Tools for a Time Terrorized World.  He has been a consultant to Bell Communications Research, BellSouth, Storage Technology, Cable Television Laboratories, and other Fortune 500 companies.



"Re-Thinking the Ranch"

A presentation on pre-cycling work for telecommuting

Thomas C. Cross - Chairman

(c) 1994-5 - Cross - Permission to reprint with credit 

CROSS MARKET+MANAGEMENT COMPANY

854 Walnut Street Suite B + Boulder, Colorado 80302

303-786-8008 FAX 442-2616

Abstract	

Pre-cycling is an approach to job planning that examines the job prior to its implementation.  It is not re-engineering which takes place after the job is in effect, or is reactive to ongoing changes in the organization.  Pre-cycling examines what the long-term effects of the job are - a job environmental impact statement. This is similar to many green products are now being thought of in terms of their long-term impact in order for companies to avoid expensive hazardous waste cleanups and exploiting landfills.  Our jobs and our lives need to be thought of in this pre-cycling approach.
              
Pre-cycling is a vogue term for planning and building products that can be easily recycled after they are used.  It is a preventative measure companies can take to help eliminate the confusion of finding a way to recycle a product after it has been produced. The same concept should apply to working.  Some may call it re-engineering work, others may call it obliterating, and many may say it is the correct way to plan the job from the beginning.  Work, since the dawn of time, has been thought of as an "after the fact" event - when you get to work, you begin.  With the advent of telecommuting, many thought of taking the existing format of work and moving it to their homes, which would be as safe as taking asbestos home.  You have to figure out a way to recycle after the work is done and, like asbestos, the damage can be very dangerous.   Telecommuting has suffered because of misconceptions by managers - "the staff is screwing off if they work at home," by staff - "I wonder how much weight I will gain working at home," and to others - "does this really help improve productivity."  Pre-cycling work re-thinks the processes of work. The time-independent notion of pre-cycling (working at a site, such as home or a neighborhood work center) with the aid of information technology, is on the increase.  Time is what we have so little of.  Pre-cycling does not give us more time, but more control over time.  Its claimed advantages include reduced office overhead, increased productivity, and various psychological and environmental benefits.  The pros and cons of pre-cycling are assessed here, together with several problems which face the advocates and participants of pre-cycling.  The main problem appears to be the isolation of the telecommuter.  The notion taken by employees is that once you start pre-cycling you can never, ever work in the office again. This area will require further study of the socio-communication needs of remote work.  As you will see, pre-cycling is a system that can and must be realized by everyone.

Pre-cycling - an Introduction

One of the most interesting trends in pre-cycling is telecommuting.  Not that telecommuting is pre-cycling, but as a result of telecommuting, it is forcing many telecommuters to rethink and pre-cycle their jobs in terms of why they bother to commute to work and what occurs when they get there.  Many people say they go to work because of the enjoyment of the social environment.  Yet when asked, most people complain of  having worked for, and with, difficult people.  In fact, the single most frequent work hazard for women in the office workplace is murder due to high rates of competition and ill social environments, among other factors.  Similar to the hazards of going shopping or coming home at night alone, this threat makes the office a really horrible place to be.  So, many are asking the question, "do I really need to go to the office?" "Could I not accomplish everything I do at the office from home?"  "How can I really get done all I need to do, when I am interrupted all day long?"  

The office can be a terrible place to work, and that is prompting the reevaluation of commuting and what role the office plays in the performance of work.  More importantly, people are rethinking the concept of the job altogether.  What is critical to performing the job?  Who does that need to be conveyed to? Who needs to know that the job  was done?  Many people only perform coordinating tasks.  They take needs from customers, staff, or others and communicate the information  to those who perform the work.  Nearly everyone does some kind of coordinating work.  The critical issue for coordinators is communication.  If the coordinator fails to understand what the customer or user wants, what he/she communicates will be in error and the customer will get the wrong item.  A lot of fuss is made over the quality of products, but very little is written, understood, or done to correct communications errors which occur more often than we can even imagine.  In an earlier work, I coined the termed "organizational velocity to describe the speed at which decisions are made in the organization.  Some of the "re-engineering" types think that if you decrease the number of levels in the organization, you would increase the organizational velocity.  On the surface that is true but what creeps into the system is the number of communications errors because, frankly, one person most likely does not understand what you are communicating to them.  In other words, the communications virus results from errors in moving one conversation to the next, much like a computer virus infected all PCs it comes in contact with.  For example, how often do you emerge from a meeting and have an entirely different impression of what took place than a colleague who was also there?  You may significantly increase the organizational velocity, but cause communications chaos at the same  time.  This has been confirmed by many studies and surveys that find that rightsizing organizations often results in decreased morale, fear on the part of the survivors, rapid departure of the survivors, and a host of other maladies.  What pre-cycling suggests is that we analyze the impact of the upcoming changes prior to the occurrence. These impacts are then modeled against ROI, product development, customer service, and any other performance measurement, from which we can attempt to forecast the outcomes and determine what should be done at that point.  One of the interesting factors in this process is the allowance or encouragement of "midcourse corrections."  As one cannot anticipate all possible events, such as the loss of tertiary players due to loss of principal, we allow for dynamic changes to occur inflight.  At the same time, what pre-cycling does is position the organization as a means of directing change rather than merely reacting or understanding change.  Pre-cycling looks at the events as a means of directing the organization toward a series of goals.  Please understand that this is not autocracy at the pinnacle, but autocracy across the board.  When we look at events in the past, many of them have resulted from accidents, luck, or devine guidance.  Rarely do we look at the role we all can play and must play for personal and corporate success.  

Up to this point, most people relied upon the guys at the top to direct them and the corporation to success.  That may have worked at one time, but does not and will not work today.  If we begin to pre-cycle the organization into thinking that we all must shape and forecast the future, then success is possible.  Today many organizations are re-engineering themselves, which used to be called re-shaping the organization, using new devices and systems for the same old thing.  This process of modernization lacks future orientation where instead of just reacting or predicting growth, we direct growth where we want it to be.  Ok, you ask, how is this possible?  If the organization focuses its efforts on the future direction of where it wants to be, it can begin to think about the placement of its customers and where they want to be.  GTE created the concept of the Smart Park.  Initially it was thought of as a means to pre-wire office parks when the cable trench was open in order to save digging up the streets again.  However, they quickly realized that it saved an enormous amount of time when customers wanted high speed telecommunications services.  In other words, GTE got their revenues a lot faster.  From this vantage, GTE then focused their efforts on directing the customer to their Smart Parks.  They introduced an economic development program to get customers to move to GTE Smart Parks.  In other words, GTE developed the ability to direct customers rather than reacting to where they wanted to have their business or predicting where they might go.  This approach is possible for all types of businesses.  It is just a matter of thinking (pre-cycling) where you want your customers to be.  If you are in the clothing industry, what do you want your customers to wear?  Certainly you can direct business in ways you want.  What it takes is to think through what kind of customer profile you are looking for.  In GTE's case, they were targeting the customer who wanted/needed high-quality and high-performance telecommunications services rather than low-tech manufacturing.  In other words, when you direct your customers, you also eliminate other types of customers.  However, if you direct your customers and markets successfully, you in turn focus on higher profit, better customer support, and long-term customer needs, which does not mean you are tied to customers for life. You realize that you both may go in different directions eventually.  Too often companies think that they should focus on a life-long customer relationship.  Directing the customer may achieve this relationship, but also may not.  Target the customer profile you are seeking and focus on that.  Too often companies think they can be everything to every customer.  That is why they fail.  If there is a product which you can direct to a specific customer, pre-cycle it.  Start a new company.  Rather than downsize or break yourself apart (like AT&T and IBM) which costs too much and takes too much time, precycle yourself into a new entity.  New organizations do things differently. There are no preconceptions as to how things should be done. Pre-cycling asks you to think about the long-term consequences of everything you do.  And while there is an EPA and a super fund to clean up the wastes we have already created, look at the cost of this.  We are burdened with the environmental damage done by our predecessors.  When is this going to stop?  And, when will we begin to clean up in the organizations we work for today?  Approximately 50,000 jobs are lost each month due to this kind of organizational damage.  Today, we as a country can still afford environmental reconciliation.  Tomorrow we may not be able to.  The loss of jobs which generally causes the loss of entire industries can cause the loss of entire economies as well.
 
Today in 1994, with an estimated 40 million people currently working at home at least part-time, futurists forecast that 45 million people on all business levels will be telecommuting two or three days each week by 1995.  Thus, telecommuting in its many forms is emerging as a significant social "quiet revolution" and economic trend. The "electronic cottage," foreseen as the evolving home setting for office work, is becoming one of the more talked-about business office scenarios.

Prospect for the growth of pre-cycling could be even rosier, but it is not because of the current pace of technological developments in the computer and telecommunications industries, coupled with the fact that 60 percent of American jobs currently involve information handling.  

What is pre-cycling? - Not at home but anywhere, anytime

Pre-cycling means re-thinking the way every job is performed and how all the elements of the job - time, location, people, resources- enhance one another in getting optimum results recognizing that profit, environment, conservation, consumer protection and quality of life in terms of products and people are critically important to the task.

Among the popular terms that cover pre-cycling, one hears: remote work, home office work, telework, telecommuting, location-independent tasks, and "home-distributed data processing".  One company calls its program "homework" and federal agencies refer to location-independent work as "industrial homework or "flex-place."  However, these concepts are merely moving the place of the work rather than asking the question of what happens to the work when it is done at a different location.  That is to say the software and computers speed up the work, which they do not at all.  They change fundamentally what we think about the work and how it is done.  

Though pre-cycling may assume that telecommunications or other technology is required, the role of technology is only to enhance or supplement the work activity, not to create it or replace it.  Much like the way a car is useless without a driver and a road map.  Hence, that pre-cycling has and can occur without technology.  The role of technology is like a dishwasher.  It gives the home worker more time, more control, and other facilities to perform work more efficiently and more effectively.  However,  telecommunications is allowing the players on this electronic field or highway to drive in different directions than the highway planners ever thought of.  Over ten years ago, in a editorial in Online magazine, I posed the question that is coming true today - people want access to other people, not access to databases.  People want to know what other people are thinking. Telecommunications only gives you a plug into the system - it does not create the system.
 
Many people think of telecommuting as remote work performed on a personal computer or  terminal that is connected by modem and telephone line to a mainframe computer for processing the work.  Remote work is also often performed and processed on a stand-alone microcomputer (also known as a personal computer or PC).  The completed task is transmitted over telephone lines (uploaded) to the company's computer facilities, or the disks on which the work is entered are carried or mailed to the office.  The work is then entered into the company's main computer.  When remote terminals are connected to an organization's communications network, employees can use electronic mail or groupware conferencing software systems to call up electronic files or database information onto their screens.  The results can be transmitted back to the office, to a supervisor, or deposited in the appropriate file.  Any number of people can be working remotely for an organization at the same time.  Electronic mail and groupware conferencing software systems are highly strategic tools that we are only beginning to understand.  How are these tools really affecting us?  By looking at the past, we can effectively shape our future.  We all remember asbestos and DDT, which we all once thought were good things.   How oftenly mistaken we have found ourselves to be.

Pre-cycling will emerge in many different ways.  Reporters have telecommuted for years by sending their stories to newspaper "city rooms" via telephone, teletypewriter, or facsimile equipment.  However, they are not re-thinking their jobs but doing their jobs remotely. Online real-time analysis and conversation with the readers, for instance, would involve  fundamentally rethinking what the role of the reporter is.  That is to say, the role of the reporter would expand to not only provide commentary to an audience, but to include the audience aside the reporter as he or she is gathering the news.  The audience is giving advice and asking questions about what the incoming new really means and has a say in the direction the story is going. 

 Another example of the variation in pre-cycling includes sales representatives and customer service employees. When calling on clients, they regularly connect their portable computers to the clients' telephones.  This has enabled computer users to reach their company's computers and query them on inventory information, product availability, current prices and delivery schedules.  Salespeople can then use the same linkage to place product orders and perform other related functions.

Telephone conference calls can be used to communicate information (work) and to coordinate activities, as well as to avoid costly face-to-face meetings.  If that's true, then why has teleconferencing failed miserably so far?  People are automating their face-to-face meetings, but have found that if you are boring face-to-face, you are still going to be boring via video teleconference.  What is needed is a pre-cycle approach to face-to-face meetings, where we re-think what the meeting should be like electronically.  Facsimile or FAX machines can move documents anywhere in the world in seconds.  Yet we are still moving what is on a piece of paper rather than asking what kinds of communications FAX allows or prohibits.  Electronic mail and online conferencing systems also allow participants to send their work directly to other people or place it in electronic files which others can access.  One of the most common mistakes is made with email and the resulting "flaming" often causes more miscommunications and angered responses than one could possibly anticipate.  This has even resulted in people writing books on electronic etiquette. Mobile cellular telephone, paging systems, and new broadcast technologies make it possible for the employee to work from virtually any location.  Yet we still think of the location first and what we will do when we get there second. I was once asked to drive over an hour to a one-hour meeting and another hour back home.  I responded to the person scheduling the meeting with anguish where upon she responded with "you mean you don't want to risk life and limb, just to talk?"  She seemed to understand that maybe the risks of going to and from the meeting were more than any possible positive outcomes of the meeting.  At this point, we rethought the purpose of the meeting, what the goals were, and how the meeting could take place with no one there.   We pre-cycled the meeting with the eventual goal of not having to re-cycle anything afterward, therefore saving everyone a lot of time, waste and hassle.

Remote work can be accomplished at the time and place one chooses, then moved via voice, data, FAX, image to the person or place needing it.  Depending on the nature of the material and the transmission it requires, the site could be a telephone booth, an online meeting, a client's office, in or out of town, around the country or the world.  This form of operation is often called operating asynchronously or being "time- and site-independent."  Pre-cycling asks the question: "Is time more or less important than location to the outcome (or quality) of the product or service?"  What resources do we need to avoid the recycling of a product (if that is a reasonable goal)?   What would be the environmental impact should we continue to build the product in the same way we have been?  Is it possible to rethink the product (pre-cycle it) in order to have little or no environmental impact and can we, as a goal, re-cycle all the product again and again?  We used to do this with pop bottles, so there is no reason why we cannot do this with other products.

Pre-cycling does not necessarily mean working only at home, nor using a computer or telecommunications technology to link the office and home.  Offices located at any distance from headquarters (at a neighborhood or satellite work center, hotel room, airplane, or telephone booth) can be telecommuting sites.  Surprisingly, the telephone booth is the second most frequently used place for work outside of the office.  The following are a few of countless options:
	o Phone booth
	o Home
	o Restaurant
	o Customer premises
	o Car
	o Hotel/motel - "space shuttle"
	o Airplane/boat
	o Satellite-neighborhood work group centers

In addition, there are a number of ways to transfer the work product, including bicycle couriers, to accomplish the task.

It should be noted that not all office tasks lend themselves to pre-cycling, such as jobs that require employees to frequently interact face-to-face with associates or clients, to handle products, or to manage resources (microfiche or paper) not electronics based.  The principle behind pre-cycling is the old "cottage industry" concept where workers do piecework at home then turn it in to the employer, but the current pre-cycling trend is influenced by many other factors. A centralized concept is the decentralized work process of the automated office, and the management's need to process ever-increasing amounts of information.  Currently, decentralization of office work has put most office tasks in the machine, and the machine (now located almost anywhere) enables employees to access databases, graphics, electronic mail, work processing and other software system applications.  However, understand that even the most traditional face-to-face jobs such as bank tellers are being automated to the point where the employee could work remotely. Many of the jobs are being pre-cycled out of existence.  We no longer need people to conduct the job.  There are now gas stations where there are no people.  You insert your credit card and pump away.   We waste people in mundane jobs.  Pre-cycling many functions actually creates many more new jobs because we don't think of jobs the old fashion way - moving the person to the job or the job to the person.  

The Role of the Community

Who works remotely or telecommutes?  What aspects of pre-cycling can be accomplished in order to avoid any job re-cycling?  Because there are many ways to work remotely, the telecommuter can be an employee or consultant on the payroll of one or more companies, a freelancer who contracts for agency projects, or an entrepreneur who runs a business from home.  Executives who carry their "electronic briefcases" home in the evenings and on weekends are telecommuting.  Online participants who transfer the results of their work to central files or to other people are telecommuting.  

Table 1 shows actual and predicted preferences of employees for work locations in the USA, in terms of percentages of the total "white collar" workforce,  over the present decade.

Table 1.  Distribution of employees (%) among work locations
______________________________________________________
			       			1990  1995  2000
Go to office				 	 40     40     30
Split time between office and home     30     25     20
Work "on the road" anywhere             10     15     20
Work at neighborhood work center      10     10     15
Work at home                                   10     10     15
________________________________________________________


Sources include Wall Street Journal, Honeywell Information Company, Cross Market+Management Company, Bureau of Labor Statistics

The changing roles of management and technology

The manager in today's rapidly changing office environment is faced with an increasing number of technological and personnel issues.  New organizational and managerial formats will be required to handle these issues before pre-cycling becomes widespread in today's homes, satellite or neighborhood work centers, or office building settings.  This section focuses on the changes in business operations and management  that support pre-cycling in the new environment, and on the technologies that are required for effective remote-work programs.


Communications technology influences organization hierarchy

Technology is creating a number of major structural changes in traditionally  structured "smokestack" organizations.  One change is to reduce the number of management levels between corporate presidents and line workers in large organizations.  Several factors influence this reduction, as follows:

(1)  The computer permits businesses to respond faster and more effectively to clients' needs.  Before the days of automated office technology, upper-level decision makers in large, authoritarian organizations tended to receive delayed, distorted, and inaccurate product/market information after it passed through many management levels.  Now, rather than people sending information overnight, they can FAX the information in seconds. This  increases the "organizational velocity" of companies.  It also changes the direction of the velocity.  With flat, circular, round, and even pizza-pie organizational formats, velocity can move at different speeds in different directions simultaneously.

(2)  The computer facilitates the flow of business information by allowing all managerial levels to access it easily, without it being handled or set aside by intervening layers of personnel.  Electronic mail, voice mail, and cellular telephones are making more and more information both available to you and hundreds of other people in the organization simultaneously.  However, more is not necessarily better. More computer output does not mean better decisions.  We have moved from information overload to communications overload and, frankly, the latter is far worse.  Information tends to be personality-neutral whereas communications is personality-intense.  

(3)  The computer enables managers and workers in different parts of a plant, or in company offices dispersed throughout an organization, to access information and communicate via electronic mail.  Thus, the manager does not need to be at any particular location to communicate or receive required information.  One of the fundamental fallacies of most telecommuters is that the work will take place in the home.  NOT.  Pre-cycling the work does not pre-conceive of work occurring in any one place.  Work, or what we might call it in the future (i.e. life focus, career concept, or even vision), will not be thought of in the way we think of work today.  Even the industrial manufacturing process will evolve to include pre-cycling, as they do today when they build products.  In the office of the future, as a result of the widespread access to necessary online information, management perspective will shift one step farther from the traditional, centralized office.  

This notion of "shift work" will disappear altogether in a global 24-hour day trading environment.  That is, if you cannot get it done in 24-hours a day, you have to work nights (ha!).  There will be no time zones anymore, only time references.  That is, you may live in Chicago but your time reference or preference is Hong Kong time where you work.  This is one of the fundamental issues of pre-cycling. We re-think every aspect of the job in favor of the individual performance required.  If the criteria of the job is to provide the utmost quality in its workmanship, then we need to find that person wherever she or he is and find out how they can personally design the job to be done.  We begin to think of people as designers of work processes (enablers) not as direct participants themselves.  When this occurs, we can ask the question of how pre-cycling the work will impact the outcome or output of the work.  We may find that the outcome is not as desirable as we once thought and re-think (pre-cycle again) where we want to go with the job.

(4) Technology is changing the way everyone thinks about everything.  Much to do is said about groupware technology.  Today it should be called gropeware as we are groping about trying to figure out what is going on in our organizations.  The hierarchy is gone.  There are as many organizational concepts as Calder's mobiles, Picasso's paintings, or Dali's fantasies.  Why organizations in the future will succeed or fail will largely depend on the communications patterns that exist.  In the hierarchical days (sounds like something from Jurassic Park), communications fell like a rock from the Empire State Building.  If any communications, like a drop of water trying to go back up Niagara Falls, ever made it to the top, it was largely ignored because it was something that became completely distorted from reality.  Now the CEO can track a salesperson's activity in Missoula or Hong Kong as though they were on the street with them.  This is not to say that CEO's do that but the technology exists today that would allow them to do so.  Moreover, organizations will be based on this kind of technology and while there may exist upper level management somewhere, they too will finally rethink their function in the organization. 

 Technology may have hit middle management the hardest so far, its all encompassing jaws devouring anyone in its path.  It bites at any weak spot in the organizational schema.  This is particularly true of groupware in the sense that the ability of two people- or two hundred- to communicate is not limited by anybody.  That is, in the past, there was always someone who blocked the line of communications whether it was a district manager, regional, corporate, or anyone in between.  Now we can communicate with anyone, anytime (real or over-time), anywhere.  Your skills as a communicator are changing because this kind of electronic communication is almost the complete and sometimes absolute opposite of what takes place in a face-to-face meeting.   Though there may be some slight issues that may be the same, it will be your downfall if you think there is anything similar to the way you do business today.  Because it is different, the so-called PC generation of managers today may think that they are compatible with this new form of communications.  Rather it is the 20-year old who has no preconceived idea of running all-day, face-to-face meetings that will unleash the power of this technology.  The reason why:  The present generation of PC-literate managers are caught between the previous generation of FF (face-to-face) and the younger GT (group-tech) managers who think that FF meetings are a waste of time because time is an issue. It is the kind of time that is used and the nearly totally distorted mis/dis/information that moves in an FF meeting.  The GT meeting is for the most part totally organized, rapid fire and occurs in a moment or (whenever) you have a moment.  The physics of the meeting is changing so dramatically that it seems to be truly radical, i.e. the issue of speed.  We speak at 150 words a minute, listen at up to 300 words, can read at 500+ words a minute, and can grasp multiple images of video, audio, and soon to be able to cope with 1000+ images a minute.  The issue of accuracy is certainly one of the most profound.  We are, in my opinion, only beginning to learn how to communicate via the written word (its only been 500 years since the Guttenberg Bible) in a way that allows ideas to be replicated to many people (stone tablets just didnt work well at this).  Passing words around vocally was even worse, but did make for great mythology.  So for the first 400 years since the printing press we had mainly the great works, i.e., Bible, Laws, and rules.  Xerox perfected the notion that, "did everyone get a copy of Bob's memo? No I didn't can you get me one (perpetuating and perfecting the notion that everyone should have their own copy).  So, today, we have moved our forests into our file cabinets which we dont look at,  or we wonder which category we filed it in.  If we do ever look, we can't find it, or it was probably the wrong one anyway.  So our lives are filled with great inaccuracies of what we thought we had but cannot find.  What an irony.  Well, sportsfans the next generation of managers is not going to take this kind of nonsense at all.  Who would blame them or us.  We thought we were doing it right but we didn't have computers and networks like the ones that are just starting to emerge today.  You ain't seen nothing yet.  However, the fundamental issue of communicating remains.  If your presentation is boring, misses the point, or is inaccurate, you still loose, no matter how "multi-media" it is.  You still loose with the customer if you don't listen to what they have to say.  Yes, listening is part of communication.  So we are just beginning to learn about communication and  are still groping with electronic communication.

In the future, companies will reorganize around technology, using the fore-knowledge of simple pre-cycling of work.  The term "virtual management" I coined almost fifteen years ago, and invogue today refers to the concept of a department of technology that creates, coordinates, and facilitates all forms of technology, not just information technology.  However, what is fundamental to this approach is asking the human factors questions and addressing the human needs issues.  For example, one VP of Human Resources told me that he has a major problem at 3PM in the afternoon with many thousands of female employees - their children come home at 3:30 and they are not there.  Maybe if we had pre-cycled the job those that wanted to could be there.  Modeling outcomes in order to anticipate resources needed today (pre-cycling) and envisioning the unexpected (as this will be the real outcome), should prevail


Satellite or People Group Centers Emerge

Management's new time-place perspective has produced a number of business trends.  The trend most relevant to pre-cycling is the development of small, independent business operating units (IBUs).  IBUs can comprise a single person or a large group and can be located at the corporate office or almost anywhere else.  In fact, they need not be located in any  physical proximity to one another.  These operating units generally comprise professional or information workers such as engineers, clerks, floor managers, lawyers, and others.  Think of an IBU as a new approach to pre-cycling the job.  Today it is creating a new independent operating unit.  What in fact is taking place is a re-thinking of the job (pre-cycling).  People are focusing on what really needs to be done. In the future, products will be designed, built, and sold with all the features, byproducts, and impacts pre-cycled.  Electronic communications technology allows IBUs to work with any type of task force, ranging from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), to committees concerned with toxic waste, benefits, new products, sales, or education.  IBU personnel may work from home, from the office, "on the road," or at a resort.  

The concept of the satellite work center is being rapidly developed in Japan.  In fact, according to research at Cross Market+Management Company the Japanese are "far ahead" of the United States in telecommuting. However, there is little evidence to demonstrate that pre-cycling is part of this equation.  Many Japanese companies such as NEC, Mitsubishi, and Espon have developed satellite work centers where small work groups perform work as though they were "down the hall" from their superiors, colleagues, and other associates.  The work group center will, for many companies and individuals alike fill the role of the "real" office work environment.   

Groupware Communications Become Key

The subtle, but important, point is groups within the organization are able to telecommunicate- exchange information and work with one another. As shown in Table 2, manager's spend an enormous amount of time, in fact almost all of it, communicating.  The pre-cycling workers are considered by many to be "communications-intensive" in nearly every aspect of their work activity.  For example F International's communication costs account for one third of the cost to the client.

Furthermore, as the numbers of decentralized information workers at distant locations grow (internationally and across many time zones), the need for effective, efficient technology and management leadership becomes imperative.  Managers will spend more time guiding, coordinating, motivating, and educating their employees than managing in the traditional sense, in which professionals require more interaction with supervisors than do other employee levels.

Table 2.  Present and predicted distributions of working time in typical "white collar" jobs
________________________________________________________
Present manager's distribution of time
o Communications/information transactions
	-meetings							30%
	-telephone							20%
	-travel	 							20%
o Seeking information transactions
	-desk work							30%

Future manager's distribution of time
o Communications/"communinections"/people interfaces  40%
	-meetings
	-presentations
	-audio conferencing
	-video conferencing
o Travel								10%
o Seeking information transactions/system interfaces	50%
	-dictation
	-telephone/voice mailbox
	-groupware conferencing
	-viewdata-data systems
	-decision support systems-assisted "thinking"
	-computer-assisted retrieval
	-document management

Present staff member's distribution of time
o Gathering information/communications - "communinections"
	-researching, manipulating
	-data entry and proofreading
	-document management					20%
o Interpreting information
	-telephone, mail						35%
	-away from desk						30%
	-waiting for work						10%
	-absent						 	  5%

Future staff member's distribution of time
o Information analysis						10%
o Information transactions					50%
	-project research
	-meeting coordination
	-arranging travel
	-budget tracking
	-purchase order tracking
	-researching/conferencing
o Administration coordination/support for meetings
	-telephone, mail						35%
	-absent						 	  5%
_______________________________________________________
Source:  Cross Market+Management Company
Note:  Online remote non-commuters generally spend the same proportions of time as do non-telecommuters in various activities; however, where they spend that time is different.   However, it is difficult to predict the full impact of a pre-cycled job.
_______________________________________________________

Technologies Associated With Pre-Cycling

Pre-cycling Equipment

There is a wide range of technologies available for pre-cycling and for what is expected to be the supportive system behind pre-cycling.  Some of the most important technologies are:

"NO-TECH TOOLS"

However, before getting started don't assume that you will need a "clone" of your office in your home before you start pre-cycling.  Take a look at what office tools you use today.  Many of the tools that can be used to do most jobs require NO technology.  These "no-tech" tools include:

	o Meetings
	o Yellow pads
	o Calculators
	o Staplers/supplies - we forget we need these too
	o Micrographics
	o Dictation
	o Answering machines

When you begin to consider the role of technology and how it can help you, take a "step at a time" approach before moving ahead.  Some technologies work for some and not for others.  Other technologies can take more than a week or two to get used to.  Allow people and the technology to get to know one another.  Remember, technology will be blamed for everything, e.g. getting fat or smoking too much.  This is due to the fact that most jobs have not been pre-cycled and that until they are, there will be awkward and irritating results from telecommuting without rethinking the job.  Remember that the GT generation is total-tech - technology in everything.  
  	
The working environment

	o Access - lost on your desk but which desk
	o Storage - keeping it from getting lost
	o Communication - courier, FAX, modem
	o Quiet - understand waiting time

Some of the of the other physical environment issues include:

	Home support system
	o Comfort heating, cooling, lighting, humidity
	o Ergonomics-sitting, standing, moving about
	o Psychological-visual, convenience, flexibility

"HIGH-TECH TOOLS"

Some of the technologies most suited to pre-cycling are:

Any technology can telecommute - "high tech" tools

	o Personal laptop computers
	o Facsimile
	o Electronic mail 			
	o Voice mail
	o Communications - cellular, pagers, phones

Remember, technology will likely be used to increase time for other activities including aerobics and other "lifestyle" time activities.  Consider the following "lifestyle" considerations:

	Personal lifestyle support system
	o Parking
	o Exercise
	o Daycare
	o Offices - "windows"
	o Power lunches
	o Social

Consider the many facets of why people work.  Pre-cycling increases significantly the amount of time and "freedom" workers have.  And, the more there is, the more they will do.

"Home Smart Home" 

The telecommuter's immediate work environment is the workstation, its furnishings, and surroundings.  The blending of these elements, and their ergonomic characteristics, have considerable effect on the remote worker's performance.  A recent National Bureau of Standard's study cites the design of the workstation and its job features as being essential to VDT-based work.  The study also points out the need to accommodate work areas to the physical differences and preferences of workers and indicates the following:

o  The individual should have some say in the design and selection of furnishings and equipment, as well as an opportunity to personalize the workspace.

o  Special, separate devices should allow the user to adjust the height of work surfaces, keyboard level, source documents and terminal screen.

o  Chairs with high back rests and adjustable inclinations are recommended.

o  Forearm/hand supports should be available for keyboard work, and keyboards should be movable.

Computer specialists from the Department of Computer Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, are designing an "ideal" professional remote workstation for the home.  It is expected to provide a personal information system and a secure communications gateway for information, and to integrate all normal office functions for the telecommuter.  This facility will simply appear to be another office workstation to office personnel who interact with the remote worker.
 
All vital home management information will be readily accessible on the computer, and the device will be used to control appliances, energy, and resource consumption.  In addition, the computer will enable the worker to access various information services such as consumer networks and banking.

Whether the telecommuter works at company headquarters, in a work center, or a home setting, office space design flexibility is especially important because manufacturers are currently producing equipment that increasingly reflects changing technology and upgrades the power and versatility of the worker.  Make it really flexible and easily changeable, advises a workspace design specialist, because some very responsive clients do change the configuration of workstations as many as 10 times per year if the work demands it.


In any organization, goals of office efficiency and cost figure highly in choosing technologies.  Companies that consider pre-cycling must balance their potential costs as they apply to both "hard" dollar and "soft" dollar savings.

While people remain the most important factor in any pre-cycling environment, the significant aspects of using pre-cycling equipment include:

(1)  easy installation and compatibility with the existing data processing equipment,

(2)  choice of appropriate type of personal computers from among the many available,

(3)  security and archival issues, i.e. protecting both the users and corporation from loss,

(4)  communications technologies involved,

(5)  networks to the advanced "highways" where information travels-current telecommunication systems are hardly more then "dirt roads" when compared with the systems becoming available.

Pre-cycling comprises a complex set of systems for which understanding of which tool to use, and when, is required.  Furthermore, a company that telecommutes needs to plan for system expansion and increases in numbers of people using the program, as well as in the productivity of those who are already pre-cycling.
 
The integration of management and technology creates a balance between human resources and the computer "power tools" that assist people in accomplishing their tasks.  The following equipment provides some of the advanced systems with increased capabilities:

o  computers,
o  copiers/graphic scanners,
o  telephone systems,
o  networks,
o  smart desks and chairs,
o  electronic typewriters/word processors,
o  mail systems,
o  electronic file cabinets,
o  buildings/cars/homes.

The telecommuter's ability to reach out and communicate through these devices is one force behind his/her ability to work.  The business community expects that as international standards are applied in the computer and telecommunications industries, these systems will communicate using the same language.

The ability to communicate from many sites has spurred people to use their equipment in increasingly more mobile work conditions.  Equipment mobility, in turn, affects the physical needs and design of the office environment-possibly more dramatically than it affects the telecommuter.  When office designers can truly address the increasing speed and efficiency of office work and the psychological work environment, productivity will increase even further.

For more than 300 years, offices have been created by interior designers and architects rather than the people who understand office functions and procedures.  This has resulted in work environments becoming poorly suited to today's office tasks, and has also fueled general interest in pre-cycling from other settings.  In other words, technology can now allow workers to relate to the office electronically rather than physically.  As a result, people increasingly realize technology can bring the job to them.  They have the option of not moving where the job is.

It must be noted that technology often places pressure on managers and staffs.  In many instances it forces them to:

o  improve productivity,
o  reduce "information float"- "time-to-decision cycles,"
o  increases their effectiveness, efficiency, and spread,
o  decentralize business activities,
o integrate information systems.

Each of these areas can be significantly improved through appropriately integrating and applying pre-cycling programs.  In addition, remote work "pressures" the office worker differently than then office.  The technologies which may make the greatest impact will be those, like pre-cycling, that complement rather then replace the office workplace.












Conclusion

There is no standard approach to integrating pre-cycling technologies.  Whereas many remote workers use nothing more than their kitchen table and telephone, others require elaborate video/computer/telephone automation systems with robots.  As the reader has probably noted, this paper emphasizes communications.  This is because people in business, whether upper-level managers or payroll clerks, spend much of their time communicating.  For the telecommuter, isolation appears to be the most limiting factor.  Thus, the type of communications system used for remote work may be the most important factor to consider when designing an effective pre-cycling system.  

In summary, bringing together management commitment, an ergonomically sound environmental setting, and appropriate technology, provides the most suitable business conditions for pre-cycling.


REMEMBER RE-DESIGNING YOUR LIFE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE 


BUT EVERYONE CAN DO IT!


We at Cross Market+Management would like to work with you in developing and expanding your pre-cycling needs.  

 


PAGE2

 PAGE 1 (c) Cross Market+Management

PAGE1

(c) 1992 - CROSS COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY

(c) 1994 - Cross Market Management Company



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    4  5                   $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  	$  $  	$  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  /$  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  	$  $  $  $  $  $                     +  [  \        C  X  n              (  8  M  b  v      ՘      5  S  i  j    љ      )  D  _  y        ֚      ,  C   $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $                 ,C  V  h      Л       8  a  ]          ֝  ם              ͟  ܟ      /  <  R  S          3  ]              ,  Z   $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  	$  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $                 ,Z          ٤  ڤ  
    +  8  O  ]      H  I  l  w              r  s          (  )          h  i  C  E  l  m  |  }   $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $                 ,}  ~  f  g      L  M           ,  -      $  &  )  *  8  U  k  x      ϶        8  9      ;  <      ˼    ?  d         $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $                 ,                                  V  W  X                        '  (  O  P  Y  Z       $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  	$  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $  $                                                                                                 &                             $                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     K     (  @ ( Normal 
      	 ] a	c                    " A@ " Default Paragraph Font              @    Footer    !    @   Header    !  * O* DATE      	 ] a	c  : O": AUTHOR'S NAME (BELOW     	 ] a	c  > O2> AUTHOR'S TITLE (AFTE   P   	 ] a	c  6 OB6 ADJUSTABLE LETTERHEA 
    	 ] a	c  @ OR@ INSIDE ADDRESS/Mr. J   0  	 ] a	c  : Ob: SALUTATION / Dear...      	 ] a	c  : Or: shift- RETURN NAM      	 ] a	c  6 O6 REF INITIALS       	 ] a	c  : O: COMPLMNTRY CLOSING/S      	 ] a	c  " @ " 
Footnote Text     c    &@   Footnote Reference  h )@  Page Number                              	  
      
                                                                                                                                                	     
               
                                               !                    	   
       
                             )  n5  A  M  X  a  m  z    %        |                 ;             $         	   
 w
   m    6  
 #    ]           2               
   2   <   e            ž    b c    5  a    C  Z  }        d e f g h i j k l           
         2   7   9      !!!F 	Tom CrossC:\DOCS\TOM\PRECYCT.DOC	Tom CrossC:\DOCS\TOM\PRECYCT.TXT@HP LaserJet III LPT1: hppcl5a HP LaserJet III                 
8D R                                                                                       HP LaserJet III                 
8D R                                                                                                     
     Times New Roman  Symbol &  Arial "  Univers (WN) " 
Helvetica Arial F0  prestige   CG Times (WN) 
1  Courier "  V  h    ϼϼ           ٹ                                   !S   -Telecommuting - Meanwhile Back at the Ranch   	Tom Cross	Tom Cross          ࡱ                ;  	                                       