Flexible and Mobile WorkingFlexible and Mobile Working

Darren Strange

Office Product Marketing Manager, UKInformation Worker Business GroupMicrosoft Ltd

http://www.microsoft.com/office

Flexible and mobile workingFlexible and mobile working Attract and retain the best staff

Increasingly a differentiator Henley Research

“managers are failing to adapt” Working time directive Outlook and Exchange

Flexible and Mobile WorkingFlexible and Mobile Working

Dr Carsten SørensenLondon School of Economics and Political Science

Department of Information Systemsmobility@lsehttp://mobility.lse.ac.uk

OutlineOutline

Technology Work Trust

Mobile-

Vaio Hiptop Nokia 3GiPod xda 2

Blackberry Fossil iPaqTabletPCGameboy WiFi

Earthmate

Media Center

SPV

Over 24 million laptops were sold in the United States alone in 2003Over 24 million laptops were sold in the United States alone in 2003

From here to ubiquityFrom here to ubiquitySmartphone

Laptop

PC

Mainframe

WANs

LANs

Islands

Nodes

52 million business mobile phones in Europe 2003

Mobility

Convergence Mass Scale

Infrastructure

Applications

We all have one!PC + TV + Telephone

Take it with you!

Office workers in the wildOffice workers in the wild

Field-workers creating offices

Field-workers creating offices

Declining cost of communicationDeclining cost of communicationSmall &

IndependentLarge &

CentralisedLarge &

Decentralised

Farm Factory Market

What does it take and is UK ready, willing and able?

Hierarchy manages

interaction

Networks create need for

interaction management

Between Hierarchy & ChaosBetween Hierarchy & Chaos

The future of workThe future of workEver-closer knitting of people and

information technologyDeclining cost of communication

… but that comes at a price! Bill Gates receives 4 million emails each day

From command-and-control to collaboration

Innovate, connect, effectivise and outsource

Productivity in the service societyProductivity in the service society

Challenge of the industrial society largely solved

Optimising the manufacturing supply chain

Managing factory work Administration & logistics

Challenge of the service society Optimising the knowledge supply chain Managing knowledge work Services & innovation

Set information workers free!Set information workers free!

OfficeCubicleOpen-planHot-deskingFieldClientsColleaguesHomeBeach?

Local and Remote MobilityLocal and Remote Mobility

LocalMobility

Mobile

Stationary

Remote MobilityRemoteCo-located

LocalWorking

MobileWorking

OfficeWorking

RemoteWorking

Medicalprofessionals

Call-centreworker

Repairengineers

Virtual team /teleworker

Context is king!Context is king!

Knowledge workers innovate at the point of contact

Services produced and consumed where the clients and collaborators are

Extending the reach of the organisationUnleash the might of the infrastructure!Trust is essential bridge between mobile

individual and organisation

Managing invisible colleaguesManaging invisible colleagues 1000 years of socialisation when co-

located Managing people that are always

somewhere else doing their job Working with people looking over your

digital shoulder Trust is accepting vulnerability based on

positive expectations of the intentions of others irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other part

Front-stage and back-stage (presenteism)

Build trust through other means than directly observing behaviour

Ways we interactWays we interact

Obtrusive

Unobtrusive

Ephemeral Persistent

Shouting in a meeting or on the telephone

Humming, gazing, thinking

aloud

Electronic mail with request to urgently reply

Discretely leaving a trace, such as a PostIt

note

Trust and technologyTrust and technologyEfficiency through modelling aspects of

work in technologyAlternatively inefficient chaos of emails and

conversations Invisible work made visibleEssential for distributed coordination of

workEstablish self-organising communities or

practiceEssential for managing work “at arms

length”The danger of codifying knowledge work

A new dealA new deal Knowledgeworkers in the field must trust

managers

Managers wherever they are (also in the field?) must trust workers

Measure of observation can be circumvented

Mutual trust a necessity for efficiency of technologies representing organisational arrangements and communication inside systems

Everywhere to go and nowhere to hide!