For every busy woman, the conference call is a thing of beauty. Instead of allowing rogue minutes to escape as you travel to work, get to the meeting room, go through the chitchat rigmarole, and hang around for the postmeeting meeting, you can simply dial in from wherever you are and get going. Best of all is that you don’t have to be present to be present: have a bite to eat, browse a document, or simply admire the view—and no one’s the wiser. You may be able to talk from home so you don’t have to waste time getting “office ready” (you know—hair, makeup, pressed jacket—all time-consuming stuff).
Over at Marriott the executive vice president of human resources is David Rodriguez. David has seen his company’s business change dramatically. Unfortunately not all of his managers, the older ones in particular, are changing at the same warp speed. They cling to the 1980s way of doing business—meetings in meeting rooms, people sitting around a shiny conference table, minions to watch over. But in today’s world that means they are missing an important skill.
“In the United States our lodging business is segmented into three large divisions: West, Central, East. Those regional teams are somewhere between twelve to fifteen people, and they rarely see one another. They’re on teleconferences and constantly traveling,” David explains. “If we had a senior manager who was uncomfortable with that, to me that would tell me he or she is not suitable to lead one of those teams, because you know some people have that attitude of ‘I want all my staff surrounding me physically.’ But that wouldn’t meet the actual needs of the business. Because we need our people distributed.”
So flexibility—the ability to teleconference and build and maintain relationships with virtual not-in-person communica — tion—is, for David Rodriguez, a positive asset. This is good news for anyone wanting to detach themselves from their desk. Your ability to be flexible, to function away from the office, is a business asset, and a time-saving gift.