Management Hardheads

Here's an excellent analysis of some well documented work the State of Virgina has been doing with telecommuting. It makes great sense with fuel at any price but it absolutely makes cents in today's environment.

Adjusting management styles to accommodate telework is more challenging than solving security issues. Chopra contends agency managers must learn to manage based on workers' production rather than the duration they see them at their desks.

The biggest problem they have in rolling out telecommuting to more and more agencies ... and thus saving the state more and more? Hints:

• It ain't budget ... their initiatives pay for themselves
• It ain't the technology ... that's proven and well developed
• It ain't laws and rules ... every senior leader from the governor on down wants the program.
• It certainly ain't the workers ... they benefit a dozen ways
  

It is middle management. people otherwise intelligent who can not conceive that they can manage the output of their direct reports if they can't look out over a sea of worker's backs and heads bent over desks.
My own best guess? I 20 years or so business and management schools will start to teach remote supervision ... US business school have easily been 20 years behind on the Internet for business, server consolidation and such, so why would tenured professors ever get on board the telecommuting band wagon? Hmm, maybe it will take longer ... can you imagine a professor teaching a class without and exspensive classroom and faux colonial brick buildings?