Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANIZED
Acknowledgements
Introduction
NOTES
Part One - MEETING, MEASURING, MAPPING, AND MANAGING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
Chapter 1 - Redefining Distance
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
GLOBALIZATION, DIVERSITY, AND NETWORKS
THE YIN AND YANG OF WORK
VIRTUAL WORK AND VIRTUAL DISTANCE
SUMMARY
NOTES
Chapter 2 - Meeting Virtual Distance
PHYSICAL DISTANCE
OPERATIONAL DISTANCE
AFFINITY DISTANCE
THE VIRTUAL DISTANCE MODEL: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
NOTES
Chapter 3 - Measuring Virtual Distance
VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND TRUST
VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND INNOVATION
VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP
VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND SATISFACTION
VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND CLARITY OF VISION
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND SUCCESS
NOTES
Chapter 4 - Mapping Virtual Distance
CASE STUDY: MAPPING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAPPING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
NOTE
Chapter 5 - Managing Virtual Distance
ESTABLISH OR REESTABLISH A CLEAR PROJECT GOAL
SELECT SHORT-TERM TACTICS AND LONG-TERM STRATEGIES
NOTE
Part Two - HIGH-IMPACT VIRTUAL DISTANCE STRATEGIES
Chapter 6 - Redefining Teams
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TEAMS
TODAY’S WORKPLACE
VIRTUAL ENSEMBLES
NOTES
Chapter 7 - Ambassadorial Leadership
TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP
CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
PHYSICAL DISTANCE AND LEADERSHIP
OPERATIONAL DISTANCE AND LEADERSHIP
AFFINITY DISTANCE AND LEADERSHIP
THE LEADER AS AMBASSADOR
CASE STUDY: GLOBAL IT AT J&J
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
NOTES
Chapter 8 - Re-imagining Innovation
BRAINWAVES AND MUSICAL CREATIVITY
BRAINSTORMING CREATIVITY
CREATIVITY VERSUS INNOVATION
INNOVATION AND GOLF BALLS
SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TACIT KNOWLEDGE
CASE STUDY: THE HUB
THE WEB
VIRTUAL DISTANCE AND INNOVATION
EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
PROCESS
SENIOR MANAGEMENT INVOLVEMENT
INFORMATION EXCHANGE
NOTES
Chapter 9 - Technology: The Elephant in the Room
AUDIO CONFERENCING
VIDEOCONFERENCING
TECHNOLOGY AND VIRTUAL DISTANCE: SOME PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
NOTES
Chapter 10 - The Future
CULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
NOTES
Index
Richard Reilly: In memory of Erik, the best
person I ever knew.
and
Karen Sobel Lojeski: For my husband Paul whose
invaluable help with this work made it possible, for
my daughter Cezanne, and in memory of my
Mother Maxine and Great Aunt Sally.
Microsoft Executive Leadership Series: Series Foreword
The Microsoft Executive Leadership Series provides leaders with inspiration and examples to consider when forming business strategies to stand the test of time. As the pace of change quickens and the influence of social demographics, the impact of educational reform, and the impetus of national interests evolve, organizations that understand and embrace these underlying forces can build strategy on solid ground. Increasingly, information technology is bridging social, educational, and international distances, and empowering people to perform at their fullest potential. Organizations that succeed in the enlightened use of technology will increasingly differentiate themselves in the marketplace for talent, raw materials, and customers.
I talk nearly every day to executives and policy makers grappling with issues like globalization, workforce evolution, and the impact of technology on people and processes. The idea for this series came from those conversations—we see it as a way to distill what we’ve learned as a company into actionable intelligence. Our authors bring independent perspectives, expertise, and experience. We hope their insights will spark dialogues within organizations, among communities, and between partners about the critical relationship between people and technology in the workplace of the future.
I hope you enjoy this title in the Microsoft Executive Leadership Series and find it useful as you plan for the expected and unexpected developments ahead for your organization. It’s our privilege and our commitment to be part of that conversation.
Daniel W. Rasmus General Editor, Microsoft Executive Leadership Series
Titles in the Executive Leadership Series:
Listening to the Future by Daniel W. Rasmus with Rob Salkowitz
Rules to Break and Laws to Follow by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers
Generation Blend by Rob Salkowitz
Uniting the Virtual Workforce by Karen Sobel Lojeski & Richard Reilly
Drive Business Performance by Bruno Aziza and Joey Fitts
Preface
In the past decade, virtual communications have provided tremendous gains for both individuals and organizations in the global workplace. Most professionals today are mobile-leveraging portable laptops and other devices along with anywhere anytime communications. This frees the 21st century worker from the confines of any given physical space or wall clock to work unfettered by space and time and able to access a vast array of knowledge and information. Flexible work arrangements have also made it possible for large numbers of otherwise disenfranchised people to participate more fully in the new millennium workforce. All this while, business productivity has risen dramatically.
Rarely, however, do we hear about any downsides or after-effects of virtual work, either in terms of added costs that actually deflate the bottom line or in the emerging mental health detriments resulting from the pressures of operating in a 24/7, “always-on” culture. For instance, one insurance company we worked with lost $3 million on one project alone due to issues surrounding virtual work. Employees were highly dissatisfied with their jobs and morale had all but bottomed out.
According to our research, these financial and social costs are accelerating and point to an emerging paradox: As communication technology advances increase, we feel more disconnected from work and each other than ever before. This produces a widening “gap” between rising productivity expectations and decreasing social well-being. And in this gap lives measurable and costly problems resulting from a growing sense of distance among the people caught in between. And we call it Virtual Distance.
Simply put, Virtual Distance is a psychological distance created between people by an over-reliance on electronic communications. As Virtual Distance rises, our data show that there are some staggering effects. Among them:
• 50% decline in project success (on-time, on-budget delivery)
• 90% drop in innovation effectiveness
• 80% plummet in work satisfaction
• 83% fall off in trust
• 65% decrease in role and goal clarity
• 50% decline in leader effectiveness
But can these losses be prevented? Is there a way to help each other feel more connected, to see ourselves as a meaningful part of an integrated organization and still take advantage of cost savings and productivity gains from virtual work? Can we control Virtual Distance to improve global team unity?
The answer to these and other questions is yes, if we begin to understand Virtual Distance—what it means, how to measure it, how to map it, and how to manage it.
For example, after we implemented various Virtual Distance mitigation techniques at the insurance company described above, project success rates increased substantially. Job satisfaction also improved. At a technology company in Silicon Valley, we’re working with senior management to minimize Virtual Distance between the company and their Gen-Y interns so they can attract and retain the best talent and, in turn, help young professionals feel more connected to the organization and aspire to a shared future.
After reading this book, we believe you’ll agree that despite the “unbridled enthusiasm” for 24/7 work capabilities, forceful problems are affecting work in the Digital Age. However, by seeing these problems as the result of unregulated Virtual Distance, we can quantitatively understand how they’re impacting the bottom line and disrupting the potential of teams and their individual members. Managing Virtual Distance, then, will provide a vivid road map for removing barriers to collaboration, innovation, and unity across the enterprise.
HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANIZED
Part One: Meeting, Measuring, Mapping, and Managing Virtual Distance
Chapter 1 gives a historical perspective on “distance,” exposing the so-called “death of distance” as a myth and showing how our understanding of distance in the virtual workplace has to include not just physical spaces but the psychological gulfs that develop as we tap on our keyboards instead of each other’s doors.
In Chapter 2 we make Virtual Distance visible by building and discussing the Virtual Distance Model and its three major parts: physical distance, operational distance, and affinity distance.
Chapter 3 shows the reader how Virtual Distance is measured, using the Virtual Distance Index, a tool we developed to quantify how Virtual Distance affects the most important aspects of work.
In Chapter 4 we “see” Virtual Distance through Virtual Distance Mapping, a powerful technique built to illuminate those flash points in a team structure, causing the most Virtual Distance.
Chapter 5 concludes Part One by describing how to manage Virtual Distance with specific tactics for overcoming both present and future Virtual Distance.
Part Two: High-Impact Virtual Distance Strategies
In Chapter 6 we focus on how virtual work has changed our understanding of how teams work and how Virtual Distance offers up a new universal language that transcends even the most culturally diverse and individualized team members.
Chapter 7 discusses the implications Virtual Distance has on leadership and why old-style leaders that do not adopt an Ambassadorial Leadership style, are ineffective in virtual workspaces.
Chapter 8 describes how innovation can be most damaged by Virtual Distance and provides crucial guidelines on how to avoid this important threat to continued growth.
In Chapter 9 we look at the importance of selecting and using the right technology and software to help offset Virtual Distance.
And, finally, in Chapter 10, we discuss ways in which we can build a better and more connected future. We also share our concerns about how this could be derailed if the pace of technology expansion outruns our ability to reduce Virtual Distance and develop and maintain close human relationships in the virtual workforce.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge many people who have helped us in our ongoing work on Virtual Distance and related areas. Our sincere thanks to our Managing Editor at Microsoft, Daniel Rasmus. Dan was instrumental in helping us to establish a relationship with Wiley and helped us bring our ideas to life via this book. In addition, our Managing Editor at Wiley, Tim Burgard, was a constant source of help and support working with us whenever we needed him, helping us to shape this work, and coaching us on ways to best bring our concept to the general business audience. In addition, there were many friends and executives whom we collaborated with prior to and during our writing of the book. They include Charles House, the Honorable Jerry MacArthur Hultin, Karan Sorensen, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Dr. Warren Axelrod, Sandy Lionetti and Alfred Bentley. We would also like to thank Dr, Martin Westwell for helping us to expand our thinking on how Virtual Distance affects our mental processes and brain functions. We thank all of our colleagues at Stevens Institute of Technology and the Institute for Innovation and Information Productivity. In addition, we thank those individuals who have supported our efforts over the long term including Dr. Edward Friedman, Dr. Alan Maltz, Anupam Gupta, Augie Campos-Marquetti, Roy Nicolosi, Vin Siegfried, Rita Stringer, Dr. Edward Stohr, Dr. Niv Ahituv, Professor Bernie Skown, and Patrick McKenna. In addition, we thank some of our personal friends including Dr. Mary Jo Wilson, Ellen Pearlman, Heidi Bertels, and David Mogel Esq. Finally, we thank Mary Ellen Connell, Nick Pera, Ann Bamesberger, Ian Gover, Edel Keville, Guido Petit, Kevin Judge, Anthony Weicker, Michael LoBue, Peter Koen, Patty Leutchen, Janice Hutt, and Piet Hut with whom we have worked over past years and with whom we look forward to future collaborations. This book would not have been possible without these and hundreds of other people with whom we have talked, collaborated with, and who believe that people’s well-being is the most important element in the virtual work equation.
Introduction: The Road to Virtual Distance
In 2002, anecdotal evidence was mounting that people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their work and employers. This news came at the same time that the most sophisticated and easily accessible communication tools, designed to increase collaboration all over the world, were being adopted. The widely accepted belief at this time was that information and communication technology (ICT) had unlimited benefits to corporations and individuals alike. It was well reported, for example, that information technology (IT) had accounted for a major increase in productivity. Between the years 1974-1995 labor productivity growth averaged 1.4 percent per year then rose to nearly 3 percent on average between 1995 and 2006.1 Why, then, were individuals and teams struggling with significant communications problems and experiencing decreased satisfaction with work when, in theory, the opposite should have been true? This question began a journey that we continue to travel today. It led us to the discovery of Virtual Distance and its incredible impact on our work and personal lives.
The first step on this journey was to see what information we could find concerning virtual teams and related subjects, including “computer-mediated communications” and dozens of other tangential topics. We found that there was very little research available on real-life workplace factors in global enterprises. Information about the worldwide organization and virtual work technology’s effects on it, at least from a practitioner’s point of view, was lacking.
So we decided we would do our own research. Over the course of our first year and a half of research, we conducted dozens of interviews with mostly three categories of people; C-level executives overseeing IT or business strategy; managers and individuals involved in virtual teamwork; and outsourcing managers. They came from a wide range of industries including financial services, pharmaceutical, management consulting, telecommunications, and consumer goods. We focused on three key questions:
1. What did leaders consider virtual work? This seemed a fundamental question since there was no common understanding of what virtual work actually meant and, therefore, no effective way to deal with related issues. For example, when we first started, we asked, “What do you consider to be virtual work?” Many equated virtual work with outsourcing. One manager said, “Well, for us, virtual work means that we have a lot of outsourcing relationships. And I can tell you that many of them are not working.” But usually later in the conversations, the people we spoke with came to the conclusion that virtual workers included anyone connected to the company and to each other, by a laptop or other mobile computing device. As one manager put it, “I guess you could say that the entire company is made up of virtual workers, even though we have a policy that mandates everyone come into the office every morning. Many people ‘talk’ to each other using only IM [instant messaging] or e-mail, even if they physically sit in the office next door.”
2. How was management affected by working with virtual teams? The answer to this question invariably reflected drastically increasing challenges. For example, one executive from a large financial services company told us, “I have thought about this a lot. I am not sure how to assess if I trust someone or not in a virtual environment. So I am constantly worrying about where my team is on any given project. I am trying to use old markers to evaluate virtual workers, and this does not work.” Another manager from a major pharmaceutical company said that “since I don’t have direct responsibility for some of the people I am managing, in addition to the fact that I rarely if ever meet them, it is very hard for me to give an accurate assessment of their performance. This is a huge challenge.”
3. What were the most salient organizational and strategic implications resulting from virtual work? This question almost inevitably caused the interviewee to take a pause. One reason was that they realized that since virtual work was so prevalent, it was difficult to know where to start. Many thought that the issue of selecting the “right” business model was most difficult as typified by the response from a telecommunications executive, “Hierarchy becomes obsolescent in this environment. It used to be that you could delegate work down through the organization, and while this is still true to some degree, how do you coordinate and delegate to people that you do not have captive, those that work in virtual environments over whom you have very little control?” Another important issue was raised by the chief information officer at a major bank. He said, “Some of the technologies we use (to get the work done) are so esoteric that above a certain level in this organization, senior executives have no idea what we are doing. So you are entirely on your own based on the principles that, in general, save the company money. In general, get the job done. In general, try to promote cooperation with colleagues. This is a global corporation with over 100,000 employees. We couldn’t possibly understand what every person is doing.”
Through these interviews, vivid patterns emerged around issues creating barriers to effective collaboration, communications, and trusting relationships in the virtual workplace. We categorized these findings into three groups: location-based issues like far-flung workers who never meet each other, day-to-day operational problems like too much multitasking and frequent miscommunications, and relationship-based challenges whereby people just weren’t feeling as though they were connecting at a personal level.
When we stepped back and looked at all three areas, it became evident that each one represented a certain kind of distance. The issues related to location were clearly tied to physical distance. The daily trials and tribulations that constantly challenged people, like having to respond to too much e-mail and other distractions, created a psychological distance between co-workers. We called this operational distance. The last area we called affinity distance. Affinity distance stemmed from deep relationship divides caused by cultural disconnects and social issues that prevented people from getting closer to one another emotionally.
We realized that, when put together, all three issues combined to form a new phenomenon in the age of virtual work. We named this phenomenon Virtual Distance.
After we had named Virtual Distance, we wanted to find out to what extent it was interfering with collaboration on a larger scale. So we created an instrument, the Virtual Distance Index, to test for it. After three months, we had collected several hundred responses and, after analyzing the data, we found that indeed Virtual Distance existed across a wide spectrum of institutions among hundreds of project team members across dozens of different industries within various functions in the organization. We also found that Virtual Distance was just as likely to be found among collocated team members as between distributed workers. From these findings we were able to construct the Virtual Distance Formula shown in Figure 1.
FIGURE 1 The Virtual Distance Formula
Physical distance accounts for locational aspects, operational distance represents the many issues that disturb team members day to day, and affinity distance includes the myriad facets of fundamental relationship dysfunction across teams and organizations. In the research we conducted then, and in the many companies we work with today, we see that the majority of organizations are grappling with a combination of all three factors in varying degrees.
Once we had an idea about how far and wide this phenomenon had spread, we wanted to know the impact Virtual Distance was having on performance. So, in addition to collecting data on the Virtual Distance Index itself, we asked about other factors like the ability to deliver projects on time and on budget, and whether innovation problems were arising. From these answers we could see that Virtual Distance was having a major impact. Statistically, the correlations were very strong between high Virtual Distance and fall-offs in financial success and innovation. We discovered that trust, clarity around roles and goals, and people’s willingness to help one another all suffered tremendously as Virtual Distance grew, and it was through these dynamics that corporations were feeling the financial sting and innovation pain of Virtual Distance.
Since we began our research, there have been growing signs that work satisfaction continues to decline. According to a recent study done by The Conference Board, less than half of the American workforce is satisfied with their jobs, representing a 61% decline over the past two decades.2 And we now know that Virtual Distance is one of the major contributing factors to this troubling trend.
It is our hope that this book will engender a better understanding of Virtual Distance and the impact it has on people and performance in today’s workplace, and then provide some tools for minimizing its impact going forward. We begin with a look back and discuss how and why distance has always played a major role in organizational history and why it needs to be redefined in the Digital Age.
NOTES
1 The Congressional Budget Office, Labor Productivity: Developments since 1995, www.cbo.com.
2 The Conference Board, U.S. Job Satisfaction Declines, The Conference Board Reports, www.conference-board.org.
Part One
MEETING, MEASURING, MAPPING, AND MANAGING VIRTUAL DISTANCE
1
Redefining Distance
Imagine a time traveler from the 1960s instantly transported to 2008. They would see some truly astonishing things going on: people working and collaborating across cities, time zones, and even continents; messages sent to anyone, anywhere, anytime without using the U.S. mail; other people attending meetings virtually from their offices, hotels, or even homes; and the ability to easily keep in touch with coworkers in the oddest places like air terminals, trains, cars, and golf courses. The world of work in the twenty-first century is a very different place than it was 40 years ago, and we don’t just mean dressing business casual.
It is technology, of course, that has made all of this possible. Nobody, not even the best science fiction writers, envisioned how the way that we work would change or how rapidly the changes would occur. In some respects, it may seem that we have eliminated distance as an impediment to working effectively. After all, we can instant message our colleague in China while we’re both looking at the same PowerPoint slides. Or, even better, we can have face-to-face contact using new high-definition videoconferencing.
But any funeral plans for the “death of distance” are premature. While our technology allows us to communicate in amazing new ways, distance is still an important issue. Most people think of distance as geographic separation, but it turns out that geographic separation is only part of the distance equation. Distance can have several meanings. It can refer to separation in time, separation between two points in space, or emotional separation. Our research with virtual teams began with the notion that geographic separation created emotional distance between coworkers. We quickly realized, however, that geographic separation was only one and not even the most important element in creating a sense of distance. We coined the term Virtual Distance to refer to the psychological distance that results when people interact mainly through electronic media—no matter where those communications originate and end. Virtual Distance can vary depending on many factors, real as well as perceived. We will discuss these in detail in Chapter 2, but first, let’s consider why the “death of distance” myth creates a slippery slope that is at best woolly when it comes to understanding human behavior.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
In the 1970s, Thomas Allen, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), conducted a study on communication patterns. He visited seven different research-and-development laboratories and asked scientists and engineers to indicate the people they communicated with and how frequently they communicated. Allen then measured the distance between the desks of all of the people in each organization. He found that the probability of communicating with someone became lower as the distance between the desks became higher. Discovering this linear relationship was hardly surprising; what was surprising was that distance mattered only for the first 30 meters. After that, the probability of communication fell to almost zero. This relationship held even after Allen corrected for organizational factors such as group and disciplinary affiliation. In short, if your coworker was in another building, he might as well have been 3,000 miles away.1
Of course, you are probably thinking that Allen’s work was done before the Internet existed. But as those of us who were working in the 1970s remember, we did have a device called the telephone. So what Allen found cannot be entirely explained away by information and communication technology (ICT), like that used for the Internet, e-mail, instant messaging (IM), or SecondLife and other virtual worlds.
Let’s consider a more recent study that looked at how the effects of “perceived distance” influenced the interactions between two people. The first study randomly assigned people to one of two conditions. In the first condition, people were told that they were communicating with a partner who was a few miles away, in the same city. In the second condition, people were told that the partner was in a city 3,000 miles away. The results showed that the perception of distance had a significant effect on the subjects. When subjects thought their partner was far away, they were less likely to cooperate with them, more likely to deceive them, and less likely to be persuaded by them. This was true whether the interaction was via IM or videoconferencing. In reality, the partner was in the next room, so it was simply the cognitive interpretation or feeling of distance that produced these results.2 So much for technology bringing about the “death of distance”!
Physical or geographic separation is clearly an important factor in the kinds of relationship that we develop with others. But why does thinking that someone is far away change our behavior? One reason is that we expect future interactions and especially face-to-face meetings to be unlikely if someone is 3,000 miles away. If we behave in a disagreeable way, we’re not likely to be confronted in person. Therefore, there is less consequence and meaning ascribed to interactions that are not physically near.
A second reason is emotional sensitivity. Consider the following scenario: Imagine you’re in a control room monitoring rail traffic. The computerized system allows you to view obstacles on the tracks and to control switches. In a location 100 miles away, you see that one of the trains is approaching the left side of a fork in the track at top speed. On the left side, five rail workers are fixing the track. On the right side, there is only one worker. You must decide whether to switch the train to the right side or leave the train heading toward the five workers.
This is a rather unpleasant moral dilemma, but research shows that most people would throw the switch and save five lives at the cost of one. But now consider a modified version of the scenario: Imagine that you are on a bridge watching a train hurtling toward five workers just over a ridge. If the train doesn’t stop, the workers are sure to die. You happen to notice a large man standing precariously on the bridge watching the train. If you sneak up on him, and push him off the bridge, he will fall to his death onto the track. But, because he is so big, he will stop the train. You must decide whether to push him over or allow the five workers to die.
This second dilemma is even more unpleasant, but the consequences of the choices are identical. In this case, research shows that few people would choose to push the big man to his death, even though it would save five lives.
Modified versions of these two scenarios3 have been used to study moral and ethical behavior. In an attempt to understand why people react so differently to these two scenarios, researchers at Princeton University used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to show that the first scenario activated areas of the brain typically involved in making logical, impersonal decisions, such as choosing a route for a trip. But the second scenario activated an entirely different area of the brain—one that is activated when strong emotions are involved.