ARE NEW OFFICES NECESSARY?

Everyone says that when business is good, you’re supposed to be able to relax a little. Whoever said that never set foot in the office of your magazine.

When you launched the magazine, the staff consisted of you (editor and publisher), an advertising salesperson (who also handled distribution), an art director, a page designer, and a production director. All writing was by freelancers. As circulation has grown, so have the number of pages in the magazine and the frequency with which you publish issues. That core of six people has quadrupled, causing the space you all occupy to become cramped. At 6,000 square feet, the office is comfortably full with 25 people. Your problem is that you have more work than your 25 employees can comfortably handle, and you need to hire about five more people. Where will you put them?

The way you see it, you have a couple of options. First, you could move. Pack everyone’s desk up, all the equipment, and find a space that will accommodate a larger and growing workforce. Moving, though, would be costly. Companies typically charge upwards of $50 per hour per mover, plus you’d have to get insurance to cover the move. The Better Business Bureau received complaints about companies in over 1,000 industries; the moving industry received over 5,000 complaints, putting them 11^th on that list. Finding a reputable, high-quality moving company could take time away from magazine work. And managing the logistics could be a nightmare. You can’t just shut down, turn off the phones, and move in peace. You’d still have to conduct business, sell ads, edit copy, handle subscriptions, lay out pages, shoot photos, and do dozens of other day-to-day activities. Plus, the sheer volume of paper archives related to five years of magazine publishing, not to mention all the technology hardware, would make packing and unpacking a big endeavor for each of your workers.

The second option: Stay put and let workers telecommute. Although you’d avoid the headache of a move, you’d trade the management of a one-time event (moving offices) for regular management of everyone’s on-site and off-site schedules. Telecommuting is on the verge of being a widely accepted form of scheduling despite the very real danger of work and home life blending into one big pot of time. Already 40 percent of Americans work evenings, weekends, or on rotating shifts, and the numbers of full-time workers who work from home at least one day a month rose 30 percent in a single year, proving the trend is toward working from home. People tend to romanticize working from home, however, and forget that there are real challenges (like not having access to convenient photocopying or shipping, lack of quiet space, not enough space, and, yes, no social interaction).

You’re primarily concerned about a drop in creativity as fewer people are on site to collaborate and give feedback on article ideas, layouts, and other decisions that come up nearly every hour. Statistically, 14 percent of U.S. workers who could telecommute if they wanted still prefer to work in an office. That means you could be left with only four people in the office! But offering telecommuting would let you tap into a larger talent pool and help you retain workers who are looking for flexibility with their schedules and work locations. If your employees could work from home, you wouldn’t lose as much time during inclement weather either—no more snow days.

Even though your choice is between two options—move or offer telecommuting—you also need to consider how involved your employees should be in the decision. Telecommuting affects their work and home lives, but the expense and the responsibility for managing the project will be yours.

Sources: T. Rivas, “Atypical Workdays Becoming Routine,” The Wall Street Journal, 4 April 2006, A19; S. Shellenbarger, “When Working at Home Doesn’t Work: How Companies Comfort Telecommuters,” The Wall Street Journal, 24 August 2006, B1; “Real Estate Exchange,” U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, available online at http://knowledge.fhwa.dot.gov/cops/rex.nsf/discussionDisplay?Open&id=EF35631CF1E86D918525709200504C4E&Group=Relocation%20Forum&tab=DISCUSSION; M.-Y. Lee, “Don’t Fall into the Trap of Paying Extra Moving Costs,” BuyerZone.com, 15 May 2001, available online at www.buyerzone.com/features/savvy_shopper/ss051501.html.

1. How involved should your employees be in making the decision?

2. Because everyone has worked closely in the same open office, you’ve been able to use an achievement-oriented leadership style. Would a shift to telecommuting require a change in style? Explain.

3. How do you manage space issues as your business grows? 

CROWDSOURCING A MORE STABLE ECONOMY

Magazine and newspaper articles, op-ed columns, and even entire books are being written in an effort to explain the causes of the recent global economic downturn. “How did we not see it coming?” many ask. Being in the credit rating business, you know that the signs were there; they were just missed by big name agencies like Moody’s, which gave Lehman Brothers an A2 rating despite signs of a likely default. What’s the problem in your industry? One problem might be groupthink: There is not a lot of diversity or creativity in how algorithms are created among the big agencies, so there is not a diversity of opinion. And, these models are not available for public scrutiny. Another problem: large firms can be slow to react to new information. What’s more, credit rating organizations often take payment from the companies they evaluate—it’s legal, but it still looks an awful lot like a conflict of interest.

You think you may have a solution—crowdsourcing—set up a website where users can create their own algorithms to assess credit risk. Your main goal is to get a clean, open store of financial data and make it available for download. You might offer some examples and templates to get contributors off to a start, but you want to encourage people to come up with their own strategies. This will certainly provide a diversity of algorithms that will be transparent and can be assessed on how well they actually perform.

Your problem: How can you motivate potential users to contribute to this “ecosystem” without offering financial rewards? Crowdsourcing has been growing in popularity un recent years, enabled by the fact that people are motivated by other things besides cold, hard cash: recognition, respect, satisfaction at having accomplished something and contributed to a greater goal, the opportunity to express themselves and build a personal brand. You know you will have to invest in creating a base—giving contributors access to the financial data they need will be a good start—and a message that will bring potential contributors on board. But beyond that, what can you do? Some organizations, like those who post challenges in need of solutions on InnoCentive.com, can offer cash prizes for the person who comes up with the best solution. Others create online games or contests to offer incentive, create competition, and make it fun. You know you’ve got a powerful message that can tap into this set of powerful internal motivations: We can work together to create a more stable economy. Now you just have to create a strategy for doing it.

Sources: K. Pattison, “FreeRisk: Crowdsourcing Credit Ratings?” Fast Company, 30 March 2009, available online at http://www.fastcompany.com [accessed 16 June 2009];  S. Baker, “Will Work for Praise,” Business Week, 16 February 2009, 46-49; K. Pattison, “Crowdsourcing Innovation: Q&A with Dwayne Spradlin of InnoCentive,” Fast Company, 15 December 2008, available online at http://www.fastcomapny.com [accessed 16 June 2009].

1. Think about the four theories of motivation you read about in the text? Which one (or combination of more than one) might work best in this situation?

2. What specific incentives would you design and implement to motivate potential contributors if you were in charge of this website? Discuss them with reference to one or more of the motivational theories presented in the text.