Worktime Expectations of an Ideal Employee

How does an ideal employee spend his or her time?  This is a question that I have to think about more deeply as I'm contemplating my own job responsibilities and those of others around me.

I suppose it helps to first define what "ideal" is, and of course, as with the definition of many buzzword terms, the answer is:  It depends.  Specifically, "ideal" depends on the mission and values of an organization.  What's more interesting is when you throw in another buzzword value that every organization wants: innovation.  How often have you heard that an organization wants to be innovative?  Most of us have heard leaders say, "We must innovate, because the alternative is to be left in the dust."

Coincidentally (and fortunately for me), innovation is being championed at Granite State College.  But just saying that we value innovation is not going to make it happen.  We have to first know ourselves what it means to be innovative and then to be able to teach others how to do the same.

In order for continuous innovation to occur, it must be built into our culture.  And in order for it to be built into our culture, we have to recognize that innovation and the continuous improvement driven by innovation needs to be adopted as every individual's responsibility.  To that end, I propose the following distribution of time for an ideal employee.

During normal work hours over the course a fiscal year, the ideal employee spends his or her time on the following activities:

• Running the trains: 60%
• Self-reflection: 2.5%
• Directed learning; structured training: 5%
• Innovation; self-directed with approval from manager: 20%
• Giving and receiving feedback up, down and across: 5%
• Engage larger external community of professionals: 5%
• Engage customers: 2.5%

In addition, I believe that a truly engaged and happy employee will spend further time above and beyond the scheduled work hours (perhaps during breakfast, lunch, dinner, nights and/or weekends) to:

• Connect more personally with colleagues
• Take advantage of employee benefits such as tuition waivers

I feel fairly strongly that this worktime configuration will work for individual contributors, but I am not sure how well it applies to managers and leaders.  However, one thing is certain to me:  Innovation is the key to sustainable growth.

No Conference Room, No Problem

When I first settled into my new office, I was a bit taken aback by the fact that there was no easy way to reserve conference rooms in Outlook.  I was accustomed to being able to open my calendar and easily pull in people and rooms to determine the right combination of time and place to hold a meeting.  Instead, I was told that if I want to reserve a room I have to go through a person who is responsible for booking all of the conference rooms.  This is crazy, I thought at the time.

But all of a sudden, I reflected on this "ridiculous complication"and realized that the "problem" may actually be a blessing in disguise.  No conference room?  Great!  Let's avoid the abrupt interruption to people's days, the requirement to drop everything that people are doing just to get together and "talk it through" when a few emails (or Chatter, or Google docs with comments) would've worked as well if not better.

Part of the reflection came from a great video that a friend shared with me:  Jason Fried's convincing explanation for why work doesn't happen at work.

I remember that at my previous organization there was constant talk about "too many meetings" and "meeting management" and "getting things done", but I felt that the organization was never able to change the cultural practice of calling meetings.  In retrospect, perhaps the culture was enabled by the fact that it was so easy to get a room and setup a meeting in Outlook.  Technology could have very well been the culprit, ironically hurting productivity in the organization instead of improving it.

So... No conference room?  No problem!  In fact, we may all be better off this way.

Ideal Enterprise Platform

Before I officially started at Granite State College, one of my new colleagues in the Ed Tech department asked me a question along the lines of, "What is your ideal platform?"  The question was asked in the context of information technology, and at the time I interpreted the question as, "Which enterprise information system would you implement if you had your choice?"

In my head, I immediately started listing products such as Google Enterprise, Microsoft SharePoint, salesforce.com Chatter, MediaWiki... but I think I lost sight of the more important question:  "Why would platform x, or any platform for that matter, be ideal?"  What do I hope to accomplish?  What kind of culture do I want to cultivate?  Technology is but a means to an end.  So, what does that end look like?

With the question having shifted away from technology and into culture and people, I started painting a mental picture of the ideal organization, where all staff...

• work toward a common goal;
• consider the best interest of the organization in making decisions;
• consider the impact on others when making decisions;
• trust one another to do what's right;
• are empowered to do what's right;
• are human and will make honest mistakes from time to time.

I want to create an environment where people are not only highly productive but also happy in doing great work that matters.

Is there a single product that can facilitate the creation of such an organization?  I don't think so.  I also don't think there ever will be a single product as an all-encompassing solution.  So, as an organization, the next best thing is to develop critical competencies in identifying best-in-class solutions and integrating the snot out of everything.