Almost twenty years ago I wrote a page on the JALA website about the impacts of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Yet terrorism is just one of many sources of disaster that telework could have subdued.
Twenty years later my message is the same as it was then. The difference is that not much happened after that first message while plenty happened after the recent — and continuing — pandemic disaster. It clearly took something greater than the mere destruction of the twin towers in order to get the world’s attention. Telework is clearly a solution, at least in part, to many types of disaster.
We now have much greater set of impending disasters, that of climate change, that threaten to uproot many of our fondest customs and practices, even our lives. Telework is likely to be an element of the means for averting that threat.
There’s a physics/engineering term called stiction. Stiction is defined as the force required to get a stationary object to move; the force needed to overcome the friction that make the object stick to where it is. In my experience organizations, even individuals, have stiction. It takes some force to get them to leave their comfortable places. For years, even decades, I have battled to get organizations to move out of their familiar positions and adopt telework. The process often takes years of urging and cajolery. The response has been slow to move from interesting but too risky to OK, lets do it. Now an unlikely force has made it happen, almost overnight. Coronavirus has defeated organizational stiction. Worldwide. It’s disaster time once again.
In my last blog I wrote about possible impacts of the coronavirus and teleworking on cities, particularly downtowns. Specifically, I wrote about patterns of evolution of the urban structure; what will we do with all those downtown office buildings when they are mostly empty? Recently Matthew Haag in The New York Times wrote about some possibilities in his article Manhattan Faces a Reckoning if Working From Home Becomes the Norm. Here are some thoughts about how this may work.
Millions of information workers have been suddenly forced into working from home, teleworking, because of coronavirus-induced lockdowns. I suspect that a large number of these workers — and their supervisors — have never experienced this before. So, in case you have missed my years of writing about telework as a means of disaster survival, here are some of the basics for surviving those lockdowns.
Supervisors
Foremost, it’s time to rethink the traditional methods of management if you haven’t already done so. Your job is to lead, not to be the work cop. When you think: “How do I know they’re working if I can’t see them?” you’re falling for the tried-and-false management myth: observation of process means knowledge of progress. It doesn’t. Here’s how to do it right.
One of the continuing dangers to society in the digital age is that of binary thinking. Things, ideas, events and people are labeled as either true or false, this or that, positive or negative, no in-between. One of the most pervasive such attitudes, other than in politics, has to do with offices. The common assumption is that offices have been the way they are today “forever”, never mind that they are largely industrial revolution artifacts. Millions of workers have “always” been commuting to their offices every day. Now here comes Covid-19 and pervasive lockdowns; suddenly we are facing the prospect of no operational offices at all, at least until Covid-19 has been extinguished or at least suppressed. Then all will be back to “normal,” right?
But that is not the way things will turn out. As I hinted last time we won’t all go back to offices in the Covid-altered future. Here’s why.
The world never seems to stop having disasters. And it’s time again to start the 2020 disaster season. The disaster most in the public consciousness today is the coronavirus. I remember writing about its predecessor, SARS, as well as other disasters of the time, 16 years ago. That article is on our website under the title War, pestilence, natural disasters. What I said then is even more true today: teleworking is a great tool for coping with disasters.
For example consider China. China, Wuhan in particular, appears to be the origin of the latest pandemic. From a few reported cases in January 2020 the number of people infected with the coronavirus has swollen to more than 70,000 with almost 1800 fatalities as of this writing. Most of the people affected are in China but the disease has spread to many other countries, including the US. It has also had a growing negative effect on global commerce. The Chinese school systems have shut down after Chinese New Year because of the virus.
Telecommuting can be particularly important during and after disasters. Thirty years ago, on 17 October 1989, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake, named the Loma Prieta, occurred at almost 6:00 in the evening near Santa Cruz, California. The shock was felt over much of California but particularly in the San Francisco region. Bridges and freeways crumbled or collapsed. Buildings were damaged, some destroyed. Almost 4,000 people were injured and 63 were killed. The damage was estimated at almost $6 billion.
Coincidentally JALA was running a demonstration test of telecommuting in cooperation with the state government of California. One of our test sites was the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC’s offices in downtown San Francisco were essentially trashed by the earthquake. They remained that way for more than a week. It was impossible to work there until the offices were repaired.
Exactly a year ago I wrote a blog entitled TELEWORK AND UNNATURAL DISASTERS: BREXIT. Today one or other of the versions of that disaster is almost upon us — or not. The United Kingdom and the European Union have been talking past each other for the past year. As a result the UK might just fall out of the EU with no formal political arrangements of any sort between them, an unnatural disaster indeed.
The UK’s prime minister is at odds with parliament. Parliament is at odds with itself. Both are at odds with large parts of the populace. The EU doesn’t particularly like the UK’s exit plan Brexit. There appears to be a growing part of both the populace and the government to say: “Oh, just forget it! We’re staying in the EU.” But, as I write this, the governments, at least, have to make some sort of formal decision by April 12th. Stay or leave and, if the decision is leave, what’s the deal? Very complicated.
One of the reasons I recommend telework is its usefulness in allowing work continuity even in the case of natural disasters: earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, blizzards and the like. I haven’t spent much time writing about telework and unnatural disasters. Now here’s one that’s made to order: Brexit. A disaster that the UK and the EU are just now beginning to recognize.
Amid the gory details of the Brexit process, a saga that evolves daily, is that of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The problem is that the EMA is currently domiciled in London; Canary Wharf to be exact. The role of the EMA is comparable to that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. The EMA approves medicines for millions of Europeans.
But Wait! How can an agency responsible for the medicines of Europeans be located in a soon-to-be non-European country? Answer: Politically speaking it can’t; it must move to the Real Europe. Continue reading Telework and unnatural disasters: Brexit→
On 23 June 2016 the voters of the United Kingdom opted to leave the European Union; Brexit won. So far the consequences have been jubilation, shock, horror, recrimination, disaster and confusion. But one of the consequences may be a surge in Brexit-induced teleworking. Here’s why.
