Making work geographically independent in the Cloud Services Factory

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For a year now I have worked as a manager in a team called The Cloud Services Factory in the TeliaSonera group. We are a team of project managers and ICT specialists and our responsibility are innovation and product development projects on different TeliaSonera markets. Most of our team is in Tallinn, I work in Stockholm and the projects are aimed towards the Swedish, Finnish, Danish and other markets. This all creates a very interesting geographical challenge! How to manage for example a project that is aimed for the Nordic markets and that is managed by specialists from Estonia, Nordics and other countries?

In this and a the next posts I would like to share some of the experience that we have in organizing our work to be geographically independent. I would like to push this even forward. I am quite sure that for ordinary office work the technology is almost there to end the need for being in the same physical location all together. This will create a shift in the whole society as concentrating jobs into growth cities like for example Stockholm, Helsinki and Tallinn will no longer be necessary. Imagine earning the Helsinki salary and paying for Võru or Sundsvall real-estate.

The first thing I would bring forward is the biggest benefit you gain when all work is organised geographically independent. This is a benefit for both the company and the employees. And it is quite simple: If all meetings are organised as video- or online meetings then it is you as the participant who decides where you will have the meeting...not the meeting organizer.

I have worked this way for over two years now and after a while walking even to the next building for a meeting sounds...a waste of time. Why not just call-in or talk over a video.

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