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Across the technology world, many organisations are embracing new ways of working strategies that on the surface look like an interior design project but under the bonnet are improving productivity and ticking a number of strategic boxes.

work is not defined by place but by how we connect with others

Tips to deal with communications problems in virtual work settings. the author emphasizes that they stem from lacking context when mostly communicating with email and phone - another way (than those mentioned) to overcoming them is to use more sophisticated tools and communicating at multiple channels

Easy(?) way to deal with distributed work issues.

What will our future look like? Four scenarios for sustainable lifestyle. Very different ways of working. 

A series of blog posts on new ways of working

Important to be aware how micro-decisions affect the way we engage online. What are we paying really attention to? what are we really focusing on?

It wasn't that long ago-in the memory of most workers today-that people "went" to work. The work place was actually a "place" and people went there to earn a living. Some people still do. If you assemble circuit boards for Intel or automobiles for BMW, you will go to the place where the tools you need to do your job are kept. For the rest of us, a change has taken place that has fundamentally altered the way that work gets done. A typical project, for example, is planned in a series of meetings, launched in a rented conference room in an airport hotel, executed in who knows where, and managed using email and on-line tools. Sales meetings, to cite another example, take place on conference calls not in conference rooms.

Participating in social media has become a business imperative. More than 70 percent of organizations operating around the world are now active on social media. Many are finding significant benefits and unexpected risks along the way.  KPMG surveyed more than 1,800 managers and 2,000 employees at organizations in ten major markets and found that - in many cases - there remains a significant gap between expectation and reality when it comes to social media. 

Technology has changed working habits not all for the better. Here are some thoughts on how people get affected and what could be done. Leslie Perlow suggests predictable Time Off (PTO) without gadgets. She claims that people are more satisfied and effective if using PTO system. 

Summary: "Although groups are initially "wise," knowledge about estimates of others narrows the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines the wisdom of crowd effect in three different ways. The "social influence effect" diminishes the diversity of the crowd without improvements of its collective error. The "range reduction effect" moves the position of the truth to peripheral regions of the range of estimates so that the crowd becomes less reliable in providing expertise for external observers. The "confidence effect" boosts individuals' confidence after convergence of their estimates despite lack of improved accuracy. Examples of the revealed mechanism range from misled elites to the recent global financial crisis."

Prsentation by Steve Wheeler, University of Plymouth

Virtual open space activities

More structure can be better than more freedom to foster collaboration. Yet, it is not the goals a team leader needs to define but the roles of each team member need to be clarified so they are well understood by all.