Top 10 New Rules of Working You Should Adopt Today

The workplace, more and more, is changing, and with this change comes a whole new set of rules.

The traditional office work environment and tools are still around, but at a very rapid pace, they’re being supplanted by newer and better tools, newer and better ways of working. The old rules are being broken, and new ones are emerging.

You could call this the Workplace of the Future, as not all businesses have adopted these models, and it will be a few years before these new rules are the norm. But for many people (myself included), this is the Workplace of Today — there’s no need to wait for new technologies or tools, because they’re already here.

So you could wait a few years, resist the new trends, talk about how great things were back in your day … or you could embrace the new rules, and be a part of the change.

Google, Wikipedia, Linux, and Freelancers and Bloggers … oh, my!

A number of companies and projects embody the spirit of the New Rules of Working, but my favorites are Google, Wikipedia and Linux. And the rise of freelancers and bloggers is another trend that shows these New Rules.

The New Rules of Working - Top 10 Rules

With new tools, thinking and new freedom and mobility in working styles, some New Rules of Working are emerging. Not all of these have asserted their dominance yet, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever totally supplant more traditional rules and ways of working. But they are emerging, and in my mind, they’re all positive and exciting developments.

1. Online apps and the cloud beat the desktop and hard drive. While the majority of workers use desktop applications such as Microsoft Office, that’s rapidly changing. Today, people like me use apps that are almost all online, such as Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Gcal, WordPress, Twitter, Zoho Office, High Rise, Backpack and many others.

Using the cloud instead of your hard drive and one of the best being that you don’t have to back up your info on your hard drive. In the cloud, the data is already backed up. And again, it’s available everywhere — a very important factor in the emerging mobile workplace.

2. Collaborate on documents, don’t email them. I won’t name names, but recently I had to figure with a gaggle of individuals on a draft of a book. These people are intelligent people, but they are used to their old processes, and one of those is to use the Microsoft Word format for drafts, and to email revisions of the draft back and forth. In one case, they actually printed stuff out, marked up the printout, and FedExed it to me for further revisions.

But that’s outdated! With online apps like Google Docs, real-time collaboration is very easy lately. 

You can be working on the same document at the same time, and changes are autosaved. You can see who made what changes, you can go back to previous versions of the draft, and you don’t have to worry about who has emailed the latest version. Best yet, if one of the collaborators is a Mac user (as I am), you don’t have to worry about whether he has a copy of Microsoft Office. You can chat while collaborating. You can invite others to collaborate, and give them specific permissions.

3. Collaboration is the new productivity. It wont to be that we tried to figure our butts off to supply, but mostly individually. Sure, there were meetings, and there were teams, but in the end we mostly did it individually. It’s still that way mostly.

But consider Wikipedia: if each of those articles were written by a single writer, and then went through the traditional editing and publishing process, it would’ve taken forever to publish that many articles. Not to mention the headaches and cost of coordinating such a vast project. But using collaborative technology (wikis), Wikipedia was able to do it at relatively low cost (mostly computers, not many people), and a massive project has been accomplished by collaboration. Groups of people collaborating in a smart way are way more productive than those people could be in the traditional way, individually.

That said, there will always be a need for individual work. Sometimes the best software is written by one genius, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But to urge really massive things accomplished, use collaboration.

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those that learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Darwin

4. People don’t have to be in an office. This is the one I wish most businesses would get, right now, right away. It’s so obvious once you get away from the traditional mindset. Traditionally, people worked in offices (and in fact most still do). They go into the office, do their work, go to meeting, process paperwork, chat around the watercooler, clock out and go home.

These days, more and more, that’s not necessary. With mobile computing, the cloud, online apps and collaborative processes, work can be done from anywhere, and often is. More people are telecommuting. More people are working as freelancers or consultants. More businesses are allowing people to work from anywhere — not just telecommuting from home, but literally anywhere in the world. People are forming small businesses who haven't met, who survive different continents. People have meetings through Skype or Basecamp group chat. They collaborate through wikis and Google apps.

If you are stuck in the traditional mindset, think hard about what things really need to be done in an office. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for working in an office, but often those barriers have other solutions you just haven’t explored yet.

5. Archive, don’t file. Traditionally, people filed paper documents in folders, labeled the folders, and arranged them in cabinets. With more and more documents being stored in computers, this manner of organizing carried over to the pc desktop, with folders and files all being organized (or disorganized, if you aren’t careful). This meant that either you spent tons of your time filing and organizing, otherwise you lost things.

Today, many of us still work that way, albeit it doesn’t make the foremost sense. What makes more sense, with the facility of computers and speed of today’s apps, is that the method popularized by Gmail: archive and search. Rather than creating folders for everything, then diligently filing, you'll now just hit “archive” then use Gmail’s in no time program to seek out what you would like. Of course, you'll still “tag” things which is nearly like folders but more versatile, but even that's optional.

Why is that this better? Believe what proportion time is saved, once you don’t need to file. It’s much easier, less headaches. You don’t need to remember to file then lose things if you get disorganized. You’ll just search and find it.

6. Small teams (as against collaborative efforts like Wikipedia, where anyone can get involved), are better than large teams. i do know I said collaboration is that the new productivity, except for many projects small team works far better . It’s faster, nimbler, smarter, less bureaucratic, more creative.

Think of an outsized corporation like Microsoft, trying to start out up a replacement enterprise. Microsoft has never been good at that, due to its size. It’s better at taking the innovation of other companies and leveraging existing dominant markets to form its new software or service successful. Or buying smaller companies who do something well and merging it with existing businesses. 

But when it tries to start out something new on its own, the team doing so is well-funded, with the complete force of the mega-corporation behind it … and yet has got to undergo numerous bureaucratic steps, it’s like browsing the old USSR government. The new product finishes up having plenty of features (most of which aren’t needed) and takes forever to launch.

New startups of just a couple of individuals — sometimes just 3-4 people — can create brilliant new products by keeping things small, lean and straightforward . They don’t included a bloated feature set, don’t need to worry about writing up technical specs and getting approval, don’t need to undergo bureaucracy. they only write the code and make it work, as fast as possible, because otherwise they die. Small teams are lean and hungry, with more freedom and creativity.

7. Communication may be a stream. This is often something I still have trouble with. within the traditional model, paperwork comes into an inbox, and you process things sequentially until you’re done. Phone calls came in and you took them as they came, and took care of every one. Letters and faxes came in, and you addressed them one at a time.

So when email became the norm, an equivalent top-down, sequential processing applied. Getting Things Done uses this method — start from the highest , and work to rock bottom until you’re finished. Unfortunately, this is often a touch overwhelming to several people lately , because there’s just an excessive amount of coming in to handle this manner .

So the new way of working sees communication as a stream. 

You enter and bathe within the stream, then get out. It’s never-ending — believe when emails and IMs and Twitters and RSS feeds and forum posts and other sorts of belongings you read ever stopped coming in. It doesn’t happen. and since it’s never-ending, you can’t process from top to bottom, sequentially.

Don’t process everything — specialise in what’s important to you.

8. Fewer tasks are better than many. With the overwhelming amount of data coming at us, there’s also an awesome amount of requests and things to try to to . While the old way of thinking said that we should always Get Things Done, that’s just impossible anymore. And it’s not even desirable to try to to an enormous task list — you’re just spinning your wheels.

Instead, specialise in the few tasks that make the foremost difference — to your company, to your career, to your life. Simplify your task list.

9. Meeting (usually) suck. the normal way of doing business includes company meetings throughout the day, taking an hour or more usually. this will eat up half your day or more. increase that individual meetings — at lunch, or having drinks, or simply a one-on-one within the office — and you’re meeting quite you’re producing.

If you’ve sat through tons of meetings, like I even have , you recognize they’re nearly always useless. Sure, sometimes they’re good, but most of the time they’re boring, filled with chit-chat or useless information, and really are often accomplished through an easy email or call. They’re a waste of everyone’s time, and worse yet, most of the people realize it . and zip changes.

Instead, learn to accomplish the tasks of a gathering through an email, a fast call , a fast and focused IM, a web group chat if necessary. Collaborate through online tools, like those mentioned above. Keep meetings to a bare minimum.

“Meetings are indispensable once you don’t want to try to to anything.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

10. Open-source is best than closed. this is often associated with Rule 3, where collaboration is that the key to productivity, but it goes a step beyond that: rather than being closed and protectionist, open things to the general public . Be accountable, release copyright, allow people to share, and permit others to contribute.

The traditional way was to stay things a secret, and not let others be aware about your details. Only those on the within were allowed to collaborate.

The open-source model works far better in many cases. It allows people to contribute, recognizing that not just a get few people have good ideas or talent. It allows people to share, recognizing that a thought grows in value because it becomes more widespread, and an artist grows in worth as he reaches a wider audience, and a program becomes more successful because it becomes more popular.

A Few Final Words - Top 10 New Rules of Working

Not all of those “rules” are accepted by the bulk of individuals today — actually , most aren’t. But a growing number of individuals are working this manner , and that i think a majority of individuals will work this manner within the near future.

Not all of those ways of working will work for you or your company. Some businesses and other people are better fitted to the normal models, and that’s OK. find out what works for you, and what you are doing .

However, a minimum of give these points some consideration. In some cases, they’ll be a far better way of working, and may be good changes. i feel this is often exciting stuff, and that i hope you’ll embrace these changes as I even have.

“He who rejects change is that the architect of decay. the sole human institution which rejects progress is that the cemetery.” – Harold Wilson

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