Today we have a guest post from Bevis England.  Bevis is the director of Telework New Zealand and facilitator for the Telework Australia initiative.  Bevis is also a member of Citrix Online's Worldwide Workplace Council. Since 1989 he has been assisting organisations assess and access the benefits of telework.

Fellow workshifters. We are the vanguard of the revolution.

And what is this revolution? Well, perhaps it's more of an evolution but when we look around we can see a battle going on, a battle between change and inertia.

Recently, the people of Samoa, Padang in Sumatra, and Bolivia have been affected by major earthquakes or tsunami. Australia is on the cusp of its bushfire season, with temperatures set to reach dangerous levels of 47 degrees Celsius in three states. The nation only just recovered from its Black Saturday fires - the worst bushfires in Australia's history.

We're only just beginning to recover from the impact of the debt crunch and the subsequent economic recession, terrorism is an ever-present threat, and I sense that another oil price shock is not far away.

My point is that we are faced with major change. We always have been but it seems to be becoming more severe, both in the number of events and in the impact they have. In the words of Robert Holden, we live in a white water world: a world dominated by change. But we workshifters are very well placed to cope with this.

Some change is unpredictable. It can be sudden and catastrophic, such as a natural disaster, power cuts, extreme financial market movements or terrorist attack, or it can be gradual and still have a profound impact, such as peak oil scenarios, climate change, spreading pandemics, or the impacts of recession.  Other change is predictable - weather trends, demographic shifts, or changes in government or legislation. But all such change is beyond our ability to control it. If we were a natural ecosystem we could only react, adapt and, if there's time, survive beyond the change by evolving. But we are not a natural ecosystem. We have the ability to dream and set objectives. And we have the ability to prepare.

Preparing for and responding to change has become critical for individuals, businesses, and communities. And this is the battle that I'd like to think that workshifting can overcome.

Workshifters are probably the best placed to lead the way, for a number of reasons:

• Workshifters recognise that action is needed now and that when change it happens it's already too late. Denial is not an option. We always have contingency plans and have prepared for change.
  
  
• Workshifters have also recognised that not all change is negative and that not all risk is a challenge. The move away from the static office (whether we were pushed out or not) might have been a major change but we've learnt to make the most of the positive advantages of the new ways of working.
  
  
• Workshifters are learning to do more with less: less money, less travel, fewer resources, and fewer 'qualified' staff on hand to help out. This is a vital skill when coping with and making the most out of change.
  
  
• We've learnt to be flexible and we have recognised that simplicity is a virtue. Some of us have even recognised that flexibility and simplicity together are much more important than mere efficiency. Just doing things faster is not as important as achieving the same ends flexibly and simply. (After all, efficiency is normally measured in incremental steps. Completing the task is more important, however we choose to do this.)
  
  
• We've recognised that we need to reduce our inertia if we are to react quickly. It's hard to run for a plane if you're carrying too much. And it's hard to change course quickly if you're burdened with outmoded ideas.
  
  
• Many workshifters have also recognised that, paraphrasing Einstein, we can't solve our problems with the thinking that created them. New ideas will be essential. New ways of working will be vital.
  
  
• Most importantly, we've recognised that we need to know our 'community' if we are to survive in a changing environment. Whether this is the location of the next coffee shop, the movements of our friends and colleagues, or the depth of our communication, our business and personal communities are important to us.
  

All of these lessons have been learnt by many, if not all, workshifters. That's what makes us the vanguard of the revolution. In the battle between change and inertia, we are well-equipped to survive.

At least, we should be...

Photo by: walkadog