Before we get to the article....
Truth: Bill Gates didn't write this specifically for me or my blog. He did, however, write it for Fortune magazine from which I've copied it from and pasted it here. I thought it was an interesting perspective from a significant figurehead in technology as communication landscapes and team collaboration evolve rapidly, how similar his day is from my own and others I have worked with from company to company in Corporate America. He may be a powerful billionaire 40 or so times over, but there's no real strange sorcery going on behind the curtain; his day is just like any other CEO's...er, ahem: Chief Software Architect's.
Example - paper (aka "hard copy - eew") is indeed going away folks. I can remember only a few years ago seeing network printers set up every 50 feet or so in an office. Today there are only two for about 200 of us in this tech building, and they are almost always resting in SLEEP mode. Yet, my email inbox lights up 30-50 times a day, complete with links to documents stored on our team or company website, direction from management, answers to questions and defenses to accusations made on those particularly politically charged but always entertaining email threads. But nary a scrap of paper is distributed. Phones are used a lot where I work now, mostly for conference calls, but email is the medium of choice most of the time.
Want a good example of efficiency through technology? I often run dual (or for Gates you'll read THREE is the magic number!) flat panel monitors from my notebook computer to better organize my electronic desktop. It does really space things out nicely. Picture having a tiny desk so small you have to stack all your papers on top of one another, leafing through them every time you need to see or work on a particular page, only to reshuffle every time you need to access another page. Now imagine upgrading to a large open desktop layout where you can spread out and put that reference page over there to the far left, while you put this other important document you're working on right in front of you for easy access...you get the picture. Who woulda thunk that we could ever have a use for more than one monitor? But these days you see this everywhere in cubicles and offices, at least in the tech departments I work in. Another popular development of late are online web collaboration environments with individuals and teams sharing ideas and discussion with the entire company or specific internal groups on the other side of the building or the other side of the world through Microsoft "SharePoint", a web collaboration tool which I use nearly every day and have also used at other companies I've worked for over the years.
The article is an interesting read -- albeit a bit info-mercialish -- but definitely worth saving so I can go back from time to time over the years to see how things have changed.
> 8 ^ )
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How I Work: Bill Gates
Not much of a paper chase for Microsoft's chairman, who uses a range of digital tools to do business.
Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect, Microsoft, U.S.A.
April 4, 2006: 8:11 AM EDT
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.
If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.
The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.
At Microsoft, e-mail is the medium of choice, more than phone calls, documents, blogs, bulletin boards, or even meetings (voicemails and faxes are actually integrated into our e-mail in-boxes).
I get about 100 e-mails a day. We apply filtering to keep it to that level—e-mail comes straight to me from anyone I've ever corresponded with, anyone from Microsoft, Intel, HP, and all the other partner companies, and anyone I know. And I always see a write-up from my assistant of any other e-mail, from companies that aren't on my permission list or individuals I don't know. That way I know what people are praising us for, what they are complaining about, and what they are asking.
We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with e-mail, it's ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most. I use tools like "in-box rules" and search folders to mark and group messages based on their content and importance.
I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.
Outlook also has a little notification box that comes up in the lower right whenever a new e-mail comes in. We call it the toast. I'm very disciplined about ignoring that unless I see that it's a high-priority topic.
Staying focused is one issue; that's the problem of information overload. The other problem is information underload. Being flooded with information doesn't mean we have the right information or that we're in touch with the right people.
I deal with this by using SharePoint, a tool that creates websites for collaboration on specific projects. These sites contain plans, schedules, discussion boards, and other information, and they can be created by just about anyone in the company with a couple of clicks.
Right now, I'm getting ready for Think Week. In May, I'll go off for a week and read 100 or more papers from Microsoft employees that examine issues related to the company and the future of technology. I've been doing this for over 12 years. It used to be an all-paper process in which I was the only one doing the reading and commenting. Today the whole process is digital and open to the entire company.
I'm now far more efficient in picking the right papers to read, and I can add electronic comments that everyone sees in real time.
Microsoft has more than 50,000 people, so when I'm thinking, "Hey, what's the future of the online payment system?" or "What's a great way to keep track of your memories of your kid?" or any neat new thing, I write it down. Then people can see it and say, "No, you're wrong" or "Did you know about this work being done at such-and-such a place?"
SharePoint puts me in touch with lots of people deep in the organization. It's like having a super-website that lets many people edit and discuss—far more than the standard practice of sending e-mails with enclosures. And it notifies you if anything comes up in an area you're interested in.
Another digital tool that has had a big effect on my productivity is desktop search. It has transformed the way I access information on my PC, on servers, and on the Internet. With larger hard drives and increasing bandwidth, I now have gigabytes of information on my PC and servers in the form of e-mails, documents, media files, contact databases, and so on.
Instead of having to navigate through folders to find that one document where I think a piece of information might be, I simply type search terms into a toolbar and all the e-mails and documents that contain that information are at my fingertips. The same goes for phone numbers and email addresses.
Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.
The one low-tech piece of equipment still in my office is my whiteboard. I always have nice color pens, and it's great for brainstorming when I'm with other people, and even sometimes by myself.
The whiteboards in some Microsoft offices have the ability to capture an image and send it up to the computer, almost like a huge Tablet PC. I don't have that right now, but probably I'll get a digital whiteboard in the next year. Today, if there's something up there that's brilliant, I just get out my pen and my Tablet PC and recreate it.
Days are often filled with meetings. It's a nice luxury to get some time to go write up my thoughts or follow up on meetings during the day. But sometimes that doesn't happen. So then it's great after the kids go to bed to be able to just sit at home and go through whatever e-mail I didn't get to. If the entire week is very busy, it's the weekend when I'll send the long, thoughtful pieces of e-mail. When people come in Monday morning, they'll see that I've been quite busy— they'll have a lot of e-mail.
5 comments:
"The whiteboards in some Microsoft offices have the ability to capture an image and send it up to the computer, almost like a huge Tablet PC. I don't have that right now, but probably I'll get a digital whiteboard in the next year."
Yeah, Bill. Save up your pennies and you too will someday be able to afford one. Interesting that he had subordinates with better equipment than he has. Says alot. He has no need for it, so he doesn't have one. Acquire technology because you need it, not just because you have the ability to possess it.
This is an interesting comment on Gates. I shared an exhange earlier on this blog about how so much of technology today isn't really necessary. People buy it because they think they need it, but without ever establishing an actual need for it. Same reason a dog licks itself, so to speak.
It was pointed out to me that technology is as necessary as the extent to which it is needed. It takes a lawyer to pass that sentense off as though it makes sense. Let me explain. In other words, I am right: I don't need a lot of technology because I wouldn't really benefit from it. But I'm also wrong: There are lots of people who make the most of the technology they have and it is actually useful to them. So not ALL technology is used just because it exists.
I think this article takes the extent to which I was wrong to the very extreme. Gates is a person that uses an incredible amount of technology, but actually USES it. It benefits him, makes his day more productive. Something that did not work well before now works better because of technology.
But here is a theory. Gates strikes as a person that thinks in terms of systems. He has a system for email, a system for his desktops, a system for developing ideas within the company. In other words, he's an efficiency minded guy that appears to be exceptionally organized. I bet he was shockingly organized even when we was 90% paper and 10% digital.
The theory is this: If you are already efficiency minded and a generally organized person, then technology can take that natural characteristic and magnify it to your benefit. But all the software ads that say, "This program will get you organized" are really barking up the wrong tree. If you're organized anyway, this will make it more efficient to stay that way, and will give you better tools to accomplish more. But if you're not, this will most likely be one more underutilized piece of software you delete a year from now because you can't remember what it was supposed to do and you've never used it.
It's the treadmill analogy. A person who is already a runner will use the hell out of his treadmill and it will add value to his life. But a treadmill does not a runner make. If you aren't already predisposed to running, you probably just bought the most expensive clothes hanger in the world.
I think that's true. The technology doesn't make us more organized, it allows us to be so. Today, it's become a requirement. Can you imagine any large office today running no communication solutions but a network of pens, paper and IBM Selectric typewriters? Picture people passing memos, forms and printed reports around from employee to employee, company to customer.
We've not completely done away with disorganization and inefficiency; we've just found creative new ways to be that way.
My boss stores nearly all of his most recent email messages in his inbox – well over 1000 messages. Most of the time he can hardly accept or send a message without snippy little automated warnings from the email server bots alerting the sender their message could not be delivered due to his over packed mailbox. I (being the ridiculously neurotic organizer I am) offered my assistance streamlining and archiving those mail messages down on his local drive in a straight forward, simple 3 to 6 folder system. But, much to my horror I learned that he'd already tried setting up this concept of permanent offline folders for messages to free up scarce online storage space. He proudly showed me his local filing folders – the beginnings of his filing system...there were literally dozens and dozens of folders (I'm talking over 70) in which he manifested his "simple" idea a couple of years ago to drag each message into it's respective folder with labels like "Material number 1339437A through 1339437D", "Material number 1339437E through 1339437H", etc. For the record, my company has over 500,000 unique materials in our system organized by a variety of numbering schemes depending on many other elements, each with a unique number/letter combination. While it’s not uncommon to want to store messages that contain information about specific materials, doing it with a separate folder for each tiny range of products was crazy. It’s like having a separate manilla folder for five sheets or less to organize thousands upon thousands of pieces of paper. So, every time a new message came in to his inbox that related to another "like material" he didn't have an insanely narrow range folder set up for, he'd set up a new folder with a narrow range...for that message. Then, if another message ever came in for that range of message, he'd already have a folder set up for it. Wow boss! That sure is efficient!
I asked why he wouldn't rather simplify his mountain of 10,000 or so messages he'd already filed away in various material number specific folders from the early part of the 21st century into one catch-all folder called "materials", then use Outlook's powerful built in search function should he need to reference an email thread from 7 months ago he needed which mentioned material # 100H448954XB. As an added benefit, for those messages that may discuss more than one material (very common), he'd not have to sift through so many folders to find every single pertinent message. "Not only that," I went on, "but you could even set up a few other folders for messages that don't have anything to do with materials. Maybe something like 'Team Folder' for messages relating to...well, discussions between or about our team. Maybe even have a folder for important reference messages like “Company Policies”, etc.
He emphatically and passionately disagreed, instead insisting his way was more organized if he could only find the time to finish it instead of having a half built solution. I exclaimed, "But with your system, I can't send you an email without you first deleting another email to make a bit of space available on your online inbox! It’s no wonder you don’t have enough time to do anything, you’re always reading old emails to determine whether or not they’re worthy of keeping another hour or two until your next new email arrives." It was explained to me that since the IT department is simply so stingy and gave us such small little server limits on our inboxes, his email woes are "their fault!". I detected a hint of victorious righteousness in his tone and his demeanor.
I then shoved my head firmly and completely through the wall and chalked it all up to the fact that beauty and simple elegant organizational design are in the eye of the beholder.
It is amazing to me all the students in my classes that are so anti-technology. Personally having the view that it is an education in itself. Technology is how business gets done these days. So hopefully using this technology now will better me for the workforce. The whole point in being a mid-twenty somthing college freshmen. The current topic amongst the departments is creating pod-casts of lectures, to be downloaded after class, from the universities online "blackboard". Of the documents that are already posted there are class notes, PP presentation's, quizes, assignments, and news articles. Instructors will post new documents for the students to download, just minutes before class begins. The students are expected to keep up to date with these new postings.
The dual monitor thing is great. On hooking my external monitor to my laptop for the first time, I was terribly upset. Knowing that a computer is only to have one display, yet could not get the main image on that monitor. After playing with it in that configuration for about an hour, I realized its advantages... I love it now. If I could only figure out how to pack my 19" CRT into my laptop bag, LOL! Happy Easter Cuz!
I just love it when someone tells me they're "anti-technology". More often than not, they're anti-high technology because of devices like laptops, the internet, and home cappuccino machines that we don't need to survive. Okay, I can see that. We don't need the internet or a tablet PC, but it does make us more efficient and propel human intellectual evolution, albeit at a price. High technology can and far too often does separate us in a lot of ways. Just ask any high school kid today about how he spends time with friends. Places like myspace.com and tools like instant messaging programs are replacing social face to face interaction. Not good.
But back to my point, to say you are anti-technology is quite an overstatement.
Anyone could easily argue that without technology, what would you be wearing to class? What would we carry our books in? For that matter, how would we humans print, buy and sell our books in the first place? Gutenberg's press back in the 1400's was considered bleeding edge technology because it allowed us to print many copies of the same book so many could draw from the same well of knowledge. Up until that point this was impossible -- if you wanted access to a book to expand your mind, learn about science or more likely strengthen your relationship with God by reading the Bible you had to have access to one of the few great European libraries, all primarily managed by the oppressive governing body of the church. The same church, incidentally, who fought very hard to prevent Gutenberg from distributing copies of the Bible in German as it was their belief that the common folk should be kept at arm's length from God so they felt all of scripture should be read and written only in Latin.
To read a book was for most common folk at the time simply not possible. The technology of the Gutenberg press advanced human intellect, and thus aided in the advancement of human evolution.
But let's back up. At some point in history even ink and parchment paper scrolls were cutting edge technology. To truly remove ourselves from the realm of technology is to return to the caves living on the brink of extinction day after day, honing our hunting and gathering skills to fend off starvation for another twenty four hours.
Actually, no. It was our cave dwelling ancestors who were the first ones to pick up a rock, shape it and consciously use it as a tool to aid and increase efficiency in the hunt. Truth is that a rock could easily be argued as an early relic technology as well -- it was a device foreign to the human body that was shaped, sharpened and molded to extend human capabilities beyond those of our predators.
For anyone under the age of two million years or so, technology has been an integral part and will continue to play an increasing role in the modern human condition.
Now, regarding the idea of lugging around your 19" CRT screen, I think this might actually be a great use of technology. Anyone who clicks on your Blogger name will see that you're a rock climber, and rock climbers need strong legs and arms. By carrying around a 30lb screen either tied to your back or carried in your arms you'd effectively expand your own capabilities by building dexterity and muscle through the use of technology and climb higher and more safely.
> 8 ^ )
PS
Happy Easter to you too cuz!
LOL, not for a few months. At the moment I am quite thankful for technology. Being that my computer only weighs 4lbs and is compact is a blessing. Not to mention the invention of crutches, X-Ray machines and Vicodin. Broke my foot on wednesday.
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