I’m not sure it’s fair to title this “The Immobile” any longer. In the past 53 days I’ve progressed to walking, carefully taking stairs and automobile travel. I’ve abandoned my walker (after being asked by an elderly woman outside a grocery store if she “could help me”) and leg braces. I’m using a pair of canes and getting around nicely. I’ve been told I should be back to normal (able to handle air travel) in early July. So thanks to everyone, especially my manager, Ron Denham and my VP, Pam Chandor for their support during this time.

But for this posting, I’ve reflected on how my work has changed since I’ve been unable to “get around” like I used to. Other than lacking the personal face-to-face, it really hasn’t. My role as Storyteller usually requires in-person visits and speaking engagements, which I have missed. But the ability to work, communicate and interact with customers and sales teams has been awesome. And I have to give full credit to IBM for their support and development of outstanding collaboration solutions.

When I was bed ridden, I had my laptop, iPad and iPhone all available to me and with them I was able to participate and contribute to our business efforts. Our social networking, IBM Connections has kept me in touch with what is going on. The use of IBM Verse and IBM Sametime keeps the communication channel always open. And our Smart Cloud platform of these components, including web meetings, desktop sharing and fully collaborative document editing, has made me truly be “at work” anywhere and anytime.

I’m anxious to get back on the road and visiting our clients and sales teams, but I have to admit that being “immobile” has not meant being “out of touch”. Quite the contrary.

So if you are a corporate employee and reading this, imagine for a moment what it would be like if you were “immobile” for an extended period of time. Would it just be an endless stream of email and phone calls? What about the interruptions of the day for therapy and doctor visits? Would your connection to work suffer because you don’t have social tools that allow you to contribute at your convenience? Would you be getting emails on your phone and having to get back to your PC before you could actually do any work?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Contact me or check out this link for more information on how you can maintain your creativity and connectedness, regardless of the circumstances.