New working model for the new age

I have found that I am at my creative best on Saturdays and Sundays. Now don’t ask me how creative I am. That is definitely a debatable topic and we can take that up sometime later. That is why I chose my words carefully.

I have observed over the past year or so that I get most of my new ideas during the weekends. I am talking about ideas related to my work. I take necessary action through emails immediately but I get lost in mundane affairs (thanks to official pressures) during the week and by the time I am reminded of my ideas I find myself in the next weekend again. Maybe it’s the relaxed and informal environment at home which helps unleash my creativity. I really feel that I do a lot more productive work from home over the weekends even if I spend a few hours compared to what I do in office in a whole week.

All enterprises today talk a lot about innovation and drive their employees to innovate but based on my experience I have never seen anything materialize. Is talking about innovation or setting targets related to innovation alone enough? I think we have had enough of this. Enterprises should focus on creating a conducive environment to foster innovation. Maybe the formal environments in today’s offices need a change.

Atleast on Monday mornings I find myself in the same situation as Swami in R.K. Narayan’s famous “Swami and Friends”. I find myself always reluctant to open my eyes and I shudder at the very thought of that dismal grey building in glass and steel called office. I am sure many of you find yourself in the same situation.

Working from home as a concept has never taken off atleast in India. I think that should be encouraged. Based on my experience that I have cited above I am sure it will be beneficial to both Organisations and the individuals. The new age is all about trust and collaboration. We don’t need the age old methods of running organizations anymore. We don’t need physical presence of people to catch them and beat them up when there is an issue.

I also feel that the collaboration mechanisms we have in place today are grossly inadequate. The major collaboration mechanism that we have at present is meetings (F2F or telecons), email and IM (to some extent). While IM is informal to extent, I have never seen people expressing themselves freely in these forums. Where there is fear, there can never be innovation. I think Enterprise should adopt the new wave of communication largely based on Open source like Blogging, Wikis and Social networking. I have a feeling that these bring the best out of people. These mechanisms might help people over come their reservations and cut across organisational barriers and unleash their creative energies!