Ten years ago I was one of the first in the avant-garde group in my department to work from home. I was recruited to be a part of a process-improvement project conducted by an external consulting company. This company was not prepared for teleworkers. I had to beg to get a phone conference for the meetings, and everything was geared toward in-person activities without capturing the information in electronic form. One time I drove forty-five minutes to the office for a meeting only to find out the meeting was cancelled fifteen minutes before starting. 

Fast forward to today. I am sitting in the same home office I was sitting in ten years ago. I had a meeting in which the phone conference information was not sent until twenty minutes into the meeting. There was no screen sharing for the Power Point presentation. There were hard copies of documentation distributed in the meeting, and electronic versions were not distributed prior to or during the meeting. By the way, this is the kick-off for a big project scheduled to go live on 10/1. This is an inauspicious beginning, and I don’t have high hopes that the project will be successful on this timeline.