My guest today is Brett Johnson from Scale Up to talk about The Distributed Workplace today on digBiz.
Recently, I phoned a store's customer service helpdesk, a woman picked up the phone and in a very professional and friendly manner announced the business name and who she was and asked how she could help.
It was a positive but otherwise normal start to a call to a customer service department.
What was different this time, was that I could clearly hear a baby gurgling and making predictable baby noises in the background. Clearly this woman was working with her child close by quite likely from home. She was just as professional as anyone all the same. It made no difference to me. In fact it was quite a pleasant call.
When I got to thinking about this after the fact, I realized that as a young children's store I had phoned, not only was this easy to understand that they would employ young mothers, but that this was actually a business advantage.
As a potential customer I was being immersed instantly into an environment that embrace the reality of, well, babies, but also a supportive environment for mothers in an environment that works for both mothers, schedules, and the business itself by walking their own path, not just talking it up.
As a Distributed Workplace, this simple gesture made possible by the right systems and business workflow is a simple but brilliant example of how businesses can not only use distributed offices, teams, and staff, but benefit from the very flexibility, positioning, and staffing opportunities they might otherwise be ignoring.
Some markers you may want to jump to :
- 02:00 : The Entrepreneurial Operating System
- 08:00 : Are Franchises slow or the ultimate distributed business model? Speed vs Effectiveness.
- 10:20 : Customer Experience and core values, competing with a Distributed Business against everyone
- 20:00 : Are your staff built for a Distributed work culture? Is there even a choice anymore for businesses or staff?
- 26:30 : Embracing distributed operations tech .... or not. Are you working as a local business when it counts?
- 33:00 : Prepared to be disrupted. Apps, Big Data, dynamic everything. It's all disruptive.
- 39:40 : Can Distributed Workplaces help real estate and staff lifestyles?
- 43:00 : Distributed urban scenarios. Revitalise smaller towns.
- 45:00 : Make it easier to maintain and love your company distributed culture: accountability, enabling, and talent.
