The ‘branch of one’ looks like it’s here to stay

Working from home used to be the privilege of a few lucky souls, spared the inconveniences of the daily commute and the tittle tattle of office politics around the watercooler by virtue of their special status. Now after a year or more of Zoom meetings and flaky broadband, some of the ‘specialness’ and mystique of the remote lifestyle has worn off.

Luckily we’re entering a new phase. The future will be a lot more hybridised than we’ve experienced hitherto – with some back full time at HQ, others opting to remain at the kitchen table, while a third and more enigmatic category will flit between the two, driven by invisible motivations of their own. There’s research to support this. Post COVID, IDC expects more than half of employees to be working remotely, either full time or part of the time.

For those remaining solo, sticking with the lockdown lifestyle even as actual lockdown lifts, a term has been coined – the ‘branch of one’. But let’s be clear about one thing: The technical sticking plasters and glue that supported the rush to remote work in 2020 will no longer be considered good enough going forwards. What’s needed is an architecture able to extend enterprise class networks to remote and mobile employees, not by way of a temporary fix but a full-on fixture. Whatever the solution chosen, it needs to deliver a level playing field whereby no individual is inconvenienced or marginalised – or left with a second-class level of cyber protection.

There’s every chance that the technology that will make this happen has not yet been developed. Or it may still be a work in progress at R&D stage. We do know that it will have to ensure resiliency, enable agility, and overcome all of the business continuity and cost optimization challenges that enterprises managing hybrid workforces have. Those organisations will need the right networking in place, accompanied by the kind of real-time insights that support pervasive digital experiences. Yes, working from home counts as an experience and it’s expected to be a good one. Networks supporting the branch of one will have to carry high bandwidth stuff, such as video traffic, so we’ll need to worry about low latency too.

So do all branch of one workers need the same access to the same technology and applications? No, nothing as simple as that. There’s knowledge workers, accounting for the biggest chunk of remote workers. These might just need some solution that ensures connectivity to a cloud gateway. The next tier up are people like developers and call centre workers who maybe need something a bit more than a piece of enabling software. They can ill afford downtime, and would suffer arguably more than knowledge workers from a cyber attack. Then there’s remote workers for whom connectivity failure is just not an option – so C-level types in finance, legal and healthcare. They might need an SD WAN gateway, or a firewall appliance.

There’s a lot of work to be done to make the branch of one a viable reality. That work needs to start right now.

 

The following webcast will offer very useful insights into this area:

The Branch of One and the New Enterprise Edge

 

And these are the organisations that took part:

 

Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks IDC

https://www.idc.com/

 

Samantha Davis, CIO Americas, Arkema Inc.

https://www.arkema.com/global/en/

 

Mark Parr, Global Director of Information Technology, HFW

https://www.hfw.com/Home

 

Gaurav Anand, Board Member, Tata Communications America, Inc.

https://www.tatacommunications.com/

 

Ian Wood, Head of Technology UK & Ireland at Veritas Technologies

https://www.veritas.com/en/uk

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Book of the Month*

The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck

By Dr Christian Busch
Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

Chance encounters, or strokes of fortune, feature in countless stories of business success. This book looks beneath the surface, reveals and teaches the mindset that can transform pure chance into opportunity. The author is director of the Global Economy Program at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and a lecturer at the London School of Economics.

Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

The author says “This is a book about the interactions of coincidence, human ambition and imagination”. In the above example: finding the wallet is the coincidence; ambition is the desire to make something of the discovery; add imagination and you open up a whole menu of possibilities: from spending spree to earning a reputation for honesty – or even making a wealthy friend.

Business is typically forged on human ambition and imagination, but early success often feeds an appetite for control – and “control freaks” can be blind to the opportunities thrown up by the unexpected. They only see chance events as distractions. If plans go awry, they may blame the failure on “bad luck” rather than admit their own inflexible attitude.

The author himself admits to being “a German who is used to planning” and prone to feel anxious when something unexpected happens. That makes him an ideal teacher, because he has worked hard to discover and analyse the mindset that enables one to “connect the dots” and cultivate serendipity. He presents a goldmine of examples from science, business and life where an apparent mishap or failure lead to a breakthrough.

Indeed, studies suggest that around 50% of major scientific breakthroughs emerge as the result of accidents or coincidences. A well-known example is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, launching the whole field of antibiotics. Other examples include X-rays, nylon, microwave ovens, rubber, Velcro, Viagra and Post-it Notes – where would we be without these!

The book goes beyond the ability to recognise and respond to opportunities in chaos, but the subtitle – The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck – is actually a bit misleading. True, he does show ways to develop better fortune, but it would be better to call it “inviting” or “encouraging” good luck. For example, he suggests better ways to start a conversation with a stranger – ways that will make it more likely to lead to chance connections or shared interests.

The publishers may have chosen the word “creating” to make the book appeal to the human desire to control – for control freaks are exactly the readership that would benefit the most from this book’s wisdom and practical advice.

For the rest of us, it offers a great way to rediscover the sense of play that is so important in life – and too often lost in business.

 

“Following the success of The Serendipity Mindset hardback, a paperback edition has also now been launched under the title “Connect the Dots”.

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