Recently I have been reading the Starfish and the Spider, a book I have been meaning to read for a while now.  Finally I started it and I am half way through.  As I was reading the first couple chapters there were a few things that made me think of workshifters.  In the first section of the book there is a discussion about decentralized organizations, this is where I started to see direct correlations to workshifters.  

In the book, Brafman and Beckstrom make the point that in a decentralized organization, a starfish organization, to be productive there needs to be a core set of principles that remain constant.  The best example for this is the reference to Alcoholics Anonymous.  Anyone can start a group.  However, the recovery process is exactly the same.  The core principle is the recovery process, but anyone can start a group in any place they want.  This should remain the same for any workshifter.  We should have a consistent set of core principles and/or behaviors regardless of where we are working.  

For instance, in our company, we ask all our employees to log their time in Less Time Spent so that we can manage client hours, we use Basecamp to manage projects and we meet on Skype daily with our project manager to discuss what's on deck for the day.  Those are our core principles that remain constant no matter where we are workshifting.  This is what allows us to be starfish workshifters, no matter what environment we are in we can work productively keeping our core principles in tact.

If you are thinking of allowing your team to start workshifting, you should develop a set of  guidelines that remain constant such as work product or work process.  This will allow your team to workshift while still remaining productive.  

What are the core principle that remain the same for your workshifters?

Photo Credit: Topyti