What if being non-communicative weren't an option?. This Fortune article on Esther Dyson was cited on a private mailing list. It's interesting to see where she is placing bets: ... [Jon's Radio]

Heinlein argued in one of his books that the next industrial revolution would happen when long distance calls became free. I counter that the next revolution will happen when information becomes accessable to all the people in the organization. No, the janitor doesn't need to know how often the CEO goes for coffee.  However, when the people who are working on a project all understand the goals and importance therof, they can all make sure that everything runs smoothly.

While this is a part of good project management, it’s also vital for non PM work within an organization. Communication and access to information helps to minimize the time spent going "How do I fill out this request form?" and maximizes the time spent getting it done.

True story: I worked for a company that had a department that had to approve all media that went out to the public. Their rules for what was acceptable in a readme.txt were not all published on their site, and were subject to change. So what worked last week, might not work this week. If they had an easy way to publish the guidelines, or better yet, supplied forms that were to be filled in that would in turn create the readme file would have literally saved days of work that was lost to the heartless trial and error system that we were forced to work in.

Likewise, having a searchable set of data that explains the process and projects would serve to get new employees up to speed on how things work, as well as help existing employees with policy changes to existing processes.

Dyson has the right idea, investing in companies that are on the cutting edge of this. One of them is bound to succeed, and now is the time to invest.

10:32:22 PM