Looking over the horizon

Abstract

Larry’s experience will seem alien, though possibly quite appealing, to legions of office workers around the world. He is an example of how the future of work has already arrived for individuals and organizations at the leading edge. He works closely with teams in India and China, talking to them weekly by phone and chatting online by IBM’s in-house messenger every day, but he has never met any of them. Most of his colleagues are based in the US and China, while he works from home in Britain.

When Larry Smith joined IBM in the UK in the late 1980s, he used to make sure he walked past his manager’s office after 6.30pm so his presence was noted. It was almost an unwritten rule.

Nearly 25 years later, he is still working for the company, but in a radically different way. He is a contractor, supplying his services via Persistent, one of IBM’s preferred suppliers in India. He has done this for over a year without ever coming face-to -face with the people who manage him.

‘I have never met my manager or any of his management chain, yet I lead his business development efforts which represent several million dollars of business,’ he says. Asked where his boss is based, he has to check. It turns out to be Connecticut — though it could have been anywhere in the same time zone.