A Connected World and how important is it?

JASE Podcast #7 (3:50 minutes):

Keith Parnell put up a post on his blog this week talking about varying, vital departments of organizations being connected via smartphones. Interesting. We’ll reprint it here.

CIO.com recently stood up an interesting survey – BlackBerry Users Vote: How Tethered Are You?

I think a more important question for company decision-makers would be, How Tethered Should My Team Be?

My world is very interesting and overall I think unique. Not unique for the tech industry but unique as compared to the work force as a whole. I require myself to be electronically connected at almost all hours of every night and day. Much to Nicole’s chagrin, yes, ‘every’ night and day. My tech team is nearly the same and during their disconnected times there should be another connected person capable of filling the needs of the organization.

Let’s move to other member (sets) of the organization’s team. Should the Operations team be consistently connected? Should the Creative team be consistently connected? Should the Sales team be consistently connected? Should the Marketing team be consistently connected? (I’ll stop there but there are other teams just a critical such as HR, Finance / Accounting, etc.) Within each of these teams an evaluation of senior management, team leads and team members should also be weighed. Should they, or at least their role, be consistently connected?

Here’s my answer – YES! Yes, they absolutely sure should. Each of these teams occupies a vital role in the decision-making processes that are important to the organization’s success. A senior member of each of these teams should be always available, reachable and able to communicate at any given time as dictated by the real-time needs of the organization.

So how do we make this connected state happen? Smartphones. Smartphones that are reliable, (platform) stable, secure, usable, functional and yes, okay attractive. Smartphones that put email, SMS, MMS, Internet access, IM and phone calls at your fingertips. RIM’s BlackBerry tops the list of recommendations from leaders of most top organization around the globe including myself. Nokia (the N95) makes fine smartphone products as does Palm (the Treo series) and HP (the iPAQ series).

CIO.com’s Survey Results for “How Addicted to Your SmartPhone Are You?
5% – My phone is for business. I put it away at night, unless I’m traveling for work.
2% – I check messages every few hours after work and on weekends. But I’d never bring my smartphone on vacation.
19% – I’m more productive because of my smartphone, and it doesn’t negatively affect my work/life balance. I wouldn’t call it an addiction.
67% – My smartphone never leaves my side. At work, rest, play, vacation, you name itmy best electronic friend is with me.
7% – IMHO That’s NOYB. BB4N. EOM. (In my humble opinion, that’s none of your business. Bye bye for now. End of message.)

Where do you stand? Do you make yourself available to be a vital piece of your organization?

See Keith’s full post here on his blog.

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