Markus Albers Skypecast

In the office, we can concentrate on one task for about eleven minutes at a time.

If you ask someone how often they check their email, they will say “once every half hour.” But if you use a hidden camera, you will see they check every five minutes. Bad habits.

People in Germany don’t like their jobs. So what do you do? You start surfing the internet, checking your email… you encounter what’s called bore-out. Not burn-out, but bore-out.

Also, we have to get to the office… we have to commute for a long time. This is a problem for many people. This is bad for the environment, and bad for us.

Someone researched what people like to do. Sex was at the top of the list, and commuting was at the bottom.

We had to go to the office in the past because the office was where the infrastructure was.

We started to go mobile in the 90’s but it was difficult. You had to carry everything. One article described those people not as digital nomads but as digital astronauts, because they had to carry everything.

It’s becoming less and less attractive for companies to invest in steel and concrete. IBM for example reduced their office space by 50%.

You have younger people joining the workforce, digital natives. If you ask them what they expect from a good job, they don’t say they want a big office, they want a good work/life balance. They want to travel.

It’s much easier to raise a family and have children if you work in a flexible way.

Scientists say the one thing that’s most important is to look at the results. The outcome, and whether people meet their goals.

“The future is already here, it just isn’t distributed.”

Best Buy: Visited them in Minneapolis.

A few years ago, everybody hated their jobs. They had to be in at 8am, stay all day, and people were leaving. They wanted to change things. Enter Cali & Jody, and ROWE.

Employees could do anything, and were encouraged to. Go to the cinema during the day. Play with the kids, just be happy and do your work.

There were less voluntary redundancies. People couldn’t pretend to be busy. By looking at the results, managers could find who was doing actual work, and the people who weren’t working were fired.

If you work at SAP, you wonder where are the people?