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At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours. Hence workers pulling into the company's amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren't considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It's O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid. Best Buy did not invent the post-geographic office. Tech companies have been going bedouin for several years. At IBM (IBM ), 40% of the workforce has no official office; at AT&T, a third of managers are untethered. Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW ) calculates that it's saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want. And this trend seems to have legs. A recent Boston Consulting Group study found that 85% of executives expect a big rise in the number of unleashed workers over the next five years. In fact, at many companies the most innovative new product may be the structure of the workplace itself.

Working via networking Dear Helen, thank you! Yes, it's actually amazing! Currently our company is in some projects and we are responsible for a lot of things. I'm practically alone in my office for days on end, at the same time virtually I'm extremely busy networking with project partners and my employees constantly. We interact via Skype, email, wiki and phone, and sometimes it amuse me with how much people from different countries I contact at once. But what's become clear to me after all - an idea that virtual collaboration could be effective only when it is supported by periodical face-to-face (or at least, vocal via phone/Skype) conversation. Otherwise, a level of trust and mutual responsibilities is reduced even you were a good partner earlier. Helen Baxter, 10-Oct-06 @ 03:41AM Networking = Happiness & Higher Productivity I now run two networked companies, a record label and 3D/TV production house. We have studios interconnected with a combination of free Google Tools and the wonderful Basecamp PM system. Innovators & Creatives don't keep office hours and tend to work on a results not time basis. Overall I think my crew are much happier and far more productive than if we all tried to work out of the same office. This way I never feel like I'm herding cats ;)

They've got the smarts and the confidence to get a job, but increasing numbers of the millennial generation — those in their mid-20s and younger — are deciding corporate America just doesn't fit their needs. So armed with a hefty dose of optimism, moxie and self-esteem, they are becoming entrepreneurs. "People are realizing they don't have to go to work in suits and ties and don't have to talk about budgets every day," says Ben Kaufman, 20, founder of a company that makes iPod accessories. "They can have a job they like. They can create a job for themselves."

"They want to create a custom life and create the kind of career that fits around the kind of life they want," says Bruce Tulgan, the founder of RainmakerThinking, a management training firm in New Haven, Conn., and an author specializing in generational diversity in the workplace. Experts say these children of the baby-boom generation, also known as Gen Y or echo boomers, are taking to heart a desire for the kind of work-life balance their parents didn't have. They see being their own boss as a way to resolve the conflict. So now they're pressing ahead with new products or services or finding a new twist on old-style careers. They're at the leading edge of a trend toward entrepreneurship that has bubbled for decades and now, thanks in large part to technology, is starting to surge. "It is a fun-loving generation," says Ellen Kossek, a Michigan State University professor in East Lansing who has spent 18 years researching workplace flexibility. "They view work as part of life, but they don't live to work the way we were socialized as boomers. There is a real mismatch between what the young generation wants and what employers are offering."

Those who have studied generations in the workplace, such as author David Stillman of Minneapolis, do have some insights. Stillman, who co-wrote the 2002 book When Generations Collide, say these young workers have very different ideas than earlier generations. "This generation has the group-think mentality," he says. "When you are raised to collaborate at home, then you are taught how to do that in middle school and practice it in college, you show up at work saying 'Where's my team?' They're just comfortable working with peers." Many go into business with friends.

Companies are finding it harder to hire and retain younger people, and applications at business schools are plunging. 70 MILLION STRONG.  Nick Hahn, a managing director at Vivaldi Partners, a New York consulting firm, remembers just a decade ago when he was looking for a job, how most college graduates would have given almost anything for a top-paying spot at a big-name investment bank or consulting firm. It was taken for granted that to climb the corporate ladder they would all work 80-plus-hour weeks. That's beginning to change. Increasingly, "today, college grads ask: 'what can your firm do for me' to help them lead a more purposeful and meaningful life," says Hahn.

Kaizen philosophy continuous incremental improvements Kaizen method   The Kaizen method of continuous incremental improvements is an originally Japanese management concept for incremental (gradual, continuous) change (improvement). K. is actually a way of life philosophy, assuming that every aspect of our life deserves to be constantly improved. The Kaizen philosophy lies behind many Japanese management concepts such as Total Quality Control, Quality Control circles, small group activities, labor relations. Key elements of Kaizen are quality, effort, involvement of all employees, willingness to change, and communication.   Japanese companies distinguish between innovation (radical) and Kaizen (continuous). K. means literally: change (kai) to become good (zen).   The foundation of the Kaizen method consists of 5 founding elements: 1. teamwork, 2. personal discipline, 3. improved morale, 4. quality circles, and 5. suggestions for improvement.   Out of this foundation three key factors in K. arise: - elimination of waste (muda) and inefficiency - the Kaizen five-S framework for good housekeeping       1. Seiri - tidiness       2. Seiton - orderliness       3. Seiso - cleanliness       4. Seiketsu - standardized clean-up       5. Shitsuke - discipline - standardization.   When to apply the Kaizen philosophy? Although it is difficult to give generic advice it is clear that it fits well in incremental change situations that require long-term change and in collective cultures. More individual cultures that are more focused on short-term success are often more conducive to concepts such as Business Process Reengineering.   When Kaizen is compared to BPR is it clear the K. philosophy is more people-oriented, more easy to implement, requires long-term discipline. BPR on the other hand is harder, technology-oriented, enables radical change but requires major change management skills.

K-Log guru and advocate John Robb presents the benefits of K-Logs as:1) Answers. K-Logs make it easy for people to find answers to problems they need to solve. A simple search of K-Log archives will quickly find an answer if available.2) Experts. Because K-Logs organize knowledge and information byindividual, it is easy to find people with the expertise you need. They can be found via search, cross linking from other K-Loggers, or community tools.3) Organized archive. K-Logs provide a permanent archive of all posted knowledge. Employees may come and go, but their knowledge remains.He sells the economic benefit of K-Logs as:1) Shorter time to find. Giving you faster, more accurate responses to customer inquiries, etc. 2) More accurate decision making. Use of experts, revealed by K-Logs, will improve the quality of corporate decision making. Improved knowledge transfer will expose wasteful projects and inaccurate assumptions. It will also unlock hidden knowledge resources within the company.3) Faster training for new employees. New employees can quickly find the information, context, and insight they need to become productive quickly. A new team member can synch up quickly with an ongoing project by reading the team's K-Logs.4) Simplified management and improved corporate control. The elimination of what is that person doing (?) or how is that project progressing (?) questions that plague managers.

K Log noun. See: Knowledge Log. Also: Klog, K-Blog. K-logs are usually internal blogs (i.e. on an intranet and not visible to the general public) and are used as highly effective knowledge management systems and/or internal company communication systems (such as project blogs, for example).

Do you know the age profile of your staff and their retirement plans? Can you identify those staff members whose knowledge would be most keenly lost by your organisation should they leave? Who’s responsibility is the retention of knowledge? David DeLong’s book begins with a discussion of current developments and provides examples of the types of impact experienced by companies when senior employees retire. DeLong’s studies appear solely within the USA, but nevertheless they offer examples that are deeply worrying should they be replicated elsewhere.