In Working in burst mode, Steve Collins mentions that he was told by one former boss that he had to look busy or basically start looking for another job.
Anne Zelenka suggests that this is fairly normal where business (busy) and web creative (burst) types exist in the same office. So what do we webby types do about it? Anne suggests recognition is needed by the Busy workers that their Burst colleagues are different. I’d go a step further and say that mutual recognition is a vital starting point.
What about situations where the Burst worker is a consultant? In my posting about old-fashioned service, I mentioned that my consulting clients expect me to be in “always-on” professional mode for every minute I am on site. Do I get personal learning time during the day? No. Is this fair and reasonable? Going on client and consultancy expectations of excellence I would have to say that fair doesn’t come into it - this is just the way it is.
I look busy on client site because I am. That said, I live by the advice I was given by my colleague and mentor Stephen Hall - the bottom line is to be an adult about it, and get the work done. By this advice, if I did want to research a new technology or methodology I would do so quietly - in my own time wherever I could, but regardless, ever ready to justify what I was doing as client-focused and of direct benefit to the current work. This is what it is to be a consultant. That said, I grant Anne’s point, and Steve’s in extension, that it is more efficient to let the Burst workers work in Bursts, albeit that this may be incompatible with the current organisational way of doing things.
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