Back to the future
by Miki SaxonImage credit: macinate
I was talking the old fashioned way (by phone) this morning with Scott Allen on the challenges, difficulties and plain old problems (another old fashioned term) of implementing social media tools in many companies. I said that it reminded me of the late 1970 – early 80s when the telecommunitg egg was trying its best to hatch—and still is in many places.
That was when the current crop of managers were still workers, most companies were hierarchal-but-in-the-process-of-flattening and management jobs were being eliminated left and right.
Those workers (today’s manager and execs) rallied and railed for the opportunity to work from home and the managers quaked in their collective boots because if workers were self-managing and productive from home then why did they need managers.
Nearly thirty years later, with telecommuting still only a dream to many, how fast can we expect social media tools to be adopted?
Is the problem truly generational? Age-related? A function of company size? Corporate culture?
We’re told that in the long run we all become our parents.
Do we also become our bosses?
Tomorrow I’ll offer my take on it, but first—what do you think?
