I think the reasons are quite obvious. Yahoo is not a thriving business or even a stable business. It is a large company struggling to remake itself. Mayer was parachuted in after a succession of disastrous years in which Yahoo shed market share and profits. The company had lost focus, was not adjusting to a disruptive set of changes in the Web world, and needed to change, quickly. The heart of the business was web search, but Yahoo had lost ground to Google and needed to rely more heavily on content to bring people to its pages. Much of that content was and is staff-originated, and was not doing what it needed to do: draw Web traffic.

Focus

Bringing workers back into the office allows Mayer and her staff to refocus the business. This kind of change needs both direction from management, and clear feedback and input from workers. If you want the change to happen quickly (and Yahoo surely needs quick change to survive), there are very real benefits to having everyone “in the room” every day. Ideas can be discussed and debated, refined and focussed much faster in the kind of spontaneous face-to-face conversations that happen in an office setting. As strategies are identified and accepted, the procedures and processes to implement them can be worked out and assigned. This kind of rapid “prototyping” of plans, followed by actual implementation, training, testing, and refinement, just does not work as quickly in a telecommuting environment.

Branch Offices

An analogy is a company with remote, branch offices. Every company I know of in this situation conducts week-to-week communications with those offices via telephone or video conferencing. But they also gather key players in one place a few times a year to have direct discussions, because experience has shown them that such face-to-face sessions (usually a mix of formal meetings and informal gatherings) allows for faster information flows and better communication of both “where do we go next?” thinking and the identification of problems in existing systems.

What Mayer has decided is to take the infrequent meetings to an extreme: get everyone together, all the time, for as long as it takes to change the direction of the business. I don't think the ban on working from home will be permanent; I do think it will need to be kept in place long enough for Yahoo to show positive change over a number of business quarters.

Small Business

How does this relate to a small business? If your business is successful and growing, allowing some telecommuting is a positive thing. Sparing staff the time (often long, these days) needed to get to and from the workplace can, with the right people, definitely enhance productivity.

On the other hand, if your business (and the industry it is in) is in a period of sharp change that requires the business to change, telecommuting can be an obstacle to quick decision making and the implementing of new ideas, policies, and processes. In those circumstances, it may be necessary to cut back on telecommuting for some or all staff, until you are comfortable that your business has made the right changes and is moving forward again.

About For tips and insights on managing and working with teleworking employees, see Managing Off-site Staff for Small Business by author and human resources expert Lin Grensing-Pophal.

The book is available in our Web store, where you can preview the initial chapters and read the table of contents.

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Let’s assume you didn’t take the job because it was your only option. You took the job because it was something you wanted to do: a job in a position you saw as interesting, challenging, and a good career move. Now you are having those thoughts about leaving, but haven’t actually jumped.

I’ve been there, had those doubts, and in some cases moved on. In more than 40 years of variously working for others and running my own companies, I have had a fair number of those “why?” days. I have also, as a manager, talked with people working with me who have asked my opinion whether they should stay or move on. Here is how I approach the question.

What do you want?

Assuming you are in a job you selected because it was what you wanted, do you have a career plan? If you don’t have a thought-through plan (most of us don’t!), do you at least have an idea of what you want your career to be like in the next few years? Do you want to progress in the business? Do you want your manager’s job, or did you when you started this job? Have you seen enough of the tasks your manager does to know that you really don’t want that job?

That happened to me. I enjoyed the job I had, was immersed in it and challenged by it. And I wanted to move to a more senior position. But the more I saw of what my manager did, and got to experience some of it while my manager was away on business trips, the more I did not want that job in that particular company. I knew I would not enjoy it, or be happy in it. And my desire to stay in my job eroded. I found another job in the same line of business, helped train my replacement, and departed.

Before I made that decision, I talked with my spouse and with some friends whose opinions I trusted. I knew my motivation was slipping because of the realization the job didn’t offer a future I would be happy with. I also knew that I didn’t want to leave “badly” by giving the minimum notice and walking out the door, because that would create a reputation I didn’t want following me around. I told my new employer when they offered me a job, “I need time to ensure there’s a smooth transition where I am now” and they respected that. In fact I think it helped me in my new job.

Lateral movement

Leaving may not be your only option. If you just don’t see yourself moving up in the department/division you are working in, have you considered asking to move to another part of the business? This may not be an option in a very small company, but it is one to consider in a larger business.

I had a very bright young lady working for me who had progressed quite fast from an entry level position to managing a small department in our large business. Her next logical step was to take on managing a group of related departments. One day she asked me, “Can I move to a different part of the business?” This was a surprise, and I asked her to explain. “I want to eventually get into senior management and I think I need experience in sales.” Sales? This was quite a leap for someone whose past few years had been in the production operations of the business. I asked if she realized this would be almost like starting over. She would have to work as a trainee (she had no prior experience at all); her income would be partially commission based; and she would have to cope with a quite small basic wage to start with. “Yes,” she said, “I’ve thought about that and can handle it.”

The initial months were a struggle for her, but she succeeded and became quite good at it. And that made it much easier to move her into a corporate management job. She eventually became president of the company.

Never think that leaving is your only option. A sideways move can sometimes be the better choice.

Don't be afraid to talk

As I hope I have shown above, you should not be afraid to talk through your concerns. Family and friends can be useful listeners, but bear in mind that they don’t know (or really understand) the nuances of your job. If you can, try discussing your concerns with your boss. Be honest about the things you feel are problems in your job, and ask for honesty back in how your boss sees your performance and your future. Don’t rely on the tea room gossip brigade for their “reporting" of how they think your boss views you, because most of that is going to be wildly unreliable information. A direct conversation will give you a much better picture of where you stand.

Be honest with yourself

Are you really doing the job well? Most jobs have two components: the mechanical, repetitive stuff, and the creative. Clearing your desk of the former every day doesn’t mean you are doing a great job. The latter is the difficult work and under performing at that can be a signal that you have a problem. Perhaps you have not had enough training, or perhaps there are not enough resources, or perhaps you just struggle because you don't have what it takes.

Self-evaluation here is tough (you will always be tempted to blame someone or something else), but it is very valuable to be brutally honest with yourself. If you hate those tasks, why do you hate them? Perhaps they involve dealing with interpersonal relationships and you are someone who prefers avoiding those? Do they involve a lot of uncertainty and you like certainty?

Making the decision

You have looked at yourself in the mirror and honestly weighed your options. You have asked questions, and have decided that moving on is the best choice. The stress of staying in the current job is not worth it. Now, how do you move on?

Once you have made up your mind, be aware that people around you will sense it, even if you don’t say a word. You need to think quickly and clearly about what is next. Moving to a near-identical job in the same industry might be tempting, but if it leads to the same challenges after a few years it is not a good move. So look not just at the next job, but also look at where you want it to take you; what improvement will come in your career as a result of the move.

Don’t hang around, but also don’t rush out the door. Telling your employer to “take my job and ... it” might be emotionally satisfying, but won’t do your reputation much good! Instead, be mature, acknowledge that you share in the failure of the job, and think about how you can end the job in a way that respects the problems your employer will now face. Would it help if you helped orientation for your replacement? How much time will your employer need to find that replacement? Can you stay around a little longer than the minimum notice period to help?

None of this means you should not set a day for departure and inform your employer of that date. Simply consider whether you are able to set a date a week or two beyond the minimum. If your employer says no, the minimum is fine, you have at least shown a willingness to be helpful. If your employer accepts the extended date, your willingness to help is being acknowledged.

Job hopping

One final note. Be aware that if you have only been in the job for a year or two, your departure starts a record of job hopping. This may be overlooked in your first job or two, but after that employers will become increasingly doubtful about hiring you for important positions. I personally think four or more years per job equates to a record which suggests a stable employee; a pattern of jumps after two or three years indicates someone I will have great reluctance to hire.

I recently did an analysis of my email activity. I looked at 12 months of email, in my four primary accounts: office email, family and close friends, and two "general" email accounts which handle my remaining friends and a lot of newsletters and other personal items. In total, excluding spam, I received just over 50,000 emails in the 12-month period, or about 137 emails for every day in the year. I was shocked. I really thought the number would be much lower.

So I looked at the data more closely. I found that I had responded to about 70 percent of the incoming emails. The ones that did not get a response were newsletters, notices of things like utility bills, and inter-office list-emails with things like weekly reports attached. But that still meant I had sent roughly 96 replies every day for 365 days!

Looking at just the replies, it was apparent that almost 30 percent were me forwarding an email with a comment like "for your reference" or "I agree." But still, I had sent around 62 longer replies a day, all year! I did not try to calculate the time this cost, but it would have been a lot.

Taming the Beast

I know I am not alone in feeling swamped by a tsunami of email. I see people surreptitiously answering emails in meetings, and I see them doing the same in conferences and seminars; both are times when a break in concentration can mean missing something important.

It has taken a few months to straighten this mess out. I am not going to claim that my changed approach will be ideal for everyone, but I do suspect that I am not alone in needing to cope with an over-abundance of email, so perhaps some of the changes I have made will help you, if you are similarly afflicted.

My first step was to trim the number of email newsletters I receive. I quickly realized I was receiving some newsletters and barely reading them; whatever caused me to subscribe has changed and I am not much interested any more. That cut out a bit of the reading.

My next step was to get my email organized. By that I mean, finding ways to automatically sort inbound email that would let me focus on the important stuff first. Each of the email client software packages I use has some kind or sorting capability. Gmail is quite good, Apple Mail in its native form is more limited (I use Apple devices at home and on the road). For me the key has been to identify senders, filter their messages into individual or group folders, and then arrange those folders in descending order, from most to least important. That way, I see the important (to me) stuff first.

Finally, I decided that I could not let email rule my day. I am usually up quite early and find I am very productive in the early morning when the house is quiet. So I avoid the temptation to instantly open and check my email. Instead I get an hour or two of concentrated work done. I now open my office email mid-morning and try to deal with as many emails as I can in 30 concentrated minutes, working top-down my sorted list. After 30 minutes, I close the email client and get back to work. I do a second 30-minute session early afternoon, and a third shortly before the office closes. Late on Friday I invest a bit more than 30 minutes in the office account, trying to clear anything I did not deal with earlier in the week.

My commute is miserable (the freeway has been constantly under construction for about two years), so when I get home from work, I'm not looking for something requiring lots of concentration. Twenty or thirty minutes is given then to dealing with the typically social emails from family and close friends. If there is time, I also take a look at and try to answer some of the email in the "general" accounts.

At some point each Saturday, I spend a little more time on those two "general" email accounts, and can usually clear whatever remains in them.

Does it Work?

I have been working to this new system for nearly three months. I feel a lot less stressed about email today than I did when I started the change. There are still some things I think worth trying to fix: I get copied in on too many emails, and perhaps 10 percent of the in-office emails are not really necessary (those are the ones asking a question which, if the author of the email had spent a few minutes mulling over, she could have answered without dashing off the question).

As I said earlier, I don't claim my system will work for everyone. But if you feel overloaded with email and find yourself constantly checking your mail on your computer, cellphone, or whatever device is at hand at the moment, do yourself a favour and do what I did: invest some time in thinking about how to tame the beast so that reading and answering email is not an all-day-every-day process.

The Next Big Problem

If email was not onerous enough, many of us now have smartphones with "instant" messaging (IM) apps on them. IM can fast become something like being buzzed on the intercom every few minutes. I do nor get many, thankfully, because I discourage friends and family from using IM during office hours unless it is really important. But I see lots of people being frequently interrupted by their phones buzzing with incoming IMs, and wonder at the impact this has on their ability to concentrate. I know of some workplaces that have banned IM activity entirely; I know of others where it is being used as a replacement for in-office email. I'm just glad it is not a problem I have to deal with.

While it may be tempting to rent a private office or studio, in his book Starting a Successful Business in Canada Kit author Jack D. James strongly advises new business owners to set up shop at home, if possible, because whether or not the business turns a profit that month it will continue to have expenses. It can take several weeks or months (even years) to turn a profit in a new business so minimizing expenses is important. Not having to pay rent for office space is a great start! This is solid advice especially for new business owners on a tight budget. But what about people who don't have the option of working from home, or established business owners and freelancers who have spent years working from home or in coffee shops? Working from home can become isolating and quite boring for some people. Keeping the economic considerations in check, could one find a middle option between working from home and working from an office? Yes, in the newly trendy form of shared workspaces.

Shared office space (also known as co-working, communal, or shared workspace) has been made easier by recent technological inventions such as laptop computers, wireless Internet, and services such as Dropbox and iCloud that give business owners flexibility in their work environments.

This flexibility has given shared workspaces a huge boost. According to a March 2012 survey entitled “Global Coworking” conducted by Deskmag, an online magazine about co-working, the number of shared workspaces has doubled each year since 2006. There are currently about 1,300 shared workspaces worldwide. While many of these spaces exist in large cities, the latest trend in the US has been the expansion of shared workspaces into small cities with average populations of 20,000 people; it's not just for big cities.

These shared workspaces provide unique environments for business owners and freelancers; they are not simply cheap office spaces. Many co-working organizations believe in fostering creativity, networking, and collaboration. The shared workspace becomes a social environment where users are community members. Other shared workspaces have different philosophies. Toronto’s Camaraderie Coworking Inc.’s slogan is “work independently, not alone.” Even in quieter workspaces, the idea is that in simply being around others, the quality of your work and your work ethic will improve.

Just as some students choose to study in libraries because they find it fosters increased productivity when they are around others who are working hard, it's the same theory with shared workspaces.

Some business owners and freelancers use shared workspaces on a part-time basis to break the monotony of always working at home. Shared workspaces offer this flexibility. If you were to rent a private office, the rent would be the same no matter if you were there for 20 hours or 160 hours a month. However, with shared workspaces, if you’re not in the office, you don’t pay for the space! The Creative Space, a shared workspace in Barrie, ON, even offers part-time memberships. For $180 per month, a business owner or freelancer has access to workspace three days a week. That is about $15 a day to work in a professional and creative environment with several amenities included in the price.

In the past, people would spend the day in a coffee shop for a change of scenery. It might only take two beverages to spend that $15, and you might be jostled around by other customers who are not working, or perhaps who are not interested in giving you an appropriate environment in which to work. Shared workspaces offer a new option, sometimes with coffee and tea included in the price.

For businesses, office space (as opposed to a home office) can provide an increased sense of professionalism for the company. Many workspaces offer mail services so that a company can have a commercial address without the cost of renting private office space. There is usually a receptionist on staff to greet your clients at the door and walk them to a rented meeting room.

For some businesses such as consulting firms, having a professional image is very important. Eesmyal Santos-Brault, founder of HiVE Vancouver understood this and kept it in mind when designing his shared workspace. The nonprofit organization is situated in downtown Vancouver, BC, where its customers are given a professional postal address in the business district as well as a convenient and suitable place to meet clients. The workspace is in a renovated historical building and offers amenities such as wireless Internet, meeting rooms, kitchen, and mailboxes.

All of this is available at a highly reduced price making it an affordable option for small-business owners.

Shared Workspaces Are Appealing to Many

A change of scenery; flexibility in rental options, office hours, and workspaces; being surrounded by other entrepreneurs; and the opportunity to meet clients in a professional space are all appealing attributes for a small-business owner or freelancer wanting to run his or her business out of the home without sacrificing significant revenue.

Unfortunately, entrepreneurship is much more difficult than many people realize. It is said that two out of three small businesses fail within the first three years. So, how can you raise your odds of building and maintaining a successful business? You need to have a viable business plan of course, but there are other factors to consider when starting a new business.

In a February 2012 Financial Post article, seasoned entrepreneur David Cohen was interviewed and said that mentorship is a critical requirement for startups. He believes in it so strongly that he founded TechStars, a company that mentors and invests in new technology-driven businesses. While not everyone can enroll in TechStars’ wildly successful and competitive mentorship program, any aspiring entrepreneur can take his advice to heart by engaging with other small-business owners, asking questions, and learning from their mistakes.

Another influential factor for a business’s success is the type of person running it. David Trahair, author of The Entrepreneurial Itch, reveals in his book several essential skills and personality traits necessary for any new business's survival. Here are a few of those attributes for you to consider:

Not everyone is born with the entrepreneurial gene, but many people are, and many more can improve crucial skills to become successful small-business owners. Even accomplished entrepreneurs need to consider their personal strengths and weaknesses before embarking on a new venture. A combination of a prepared entrepreneur with the guidance of an experienced business owner will give a new business its best shot at success.