Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise

4

Mapping Virtual Distance

Virtual Distance, as we saw in Chapter 3, can have a significant impact on organizational performance and individual job satisfaction. But it’s difficult to know where to start in terms of addressing Virtual Distance problems more directly without more information. For example, we can take a survey and know that in the aggregate, Virtual Distance contributes to lost revenues, lower innovation, or reputation damage. But to fix it and manage it into the future, we need to know more about the exact location of Virtual Distance problems.

It’s kind of like thinking about air traffic. We know that at any given point in time there are lots of planes in the air. But to avoid problems like near misses, air traffic controllers need to know exactly where each plane is, how high it’s flying, what other planes are in the nearby vicinity, and so forth. With this information, they can safely guide planes into and out of the airport and keep track of them as they make their way to their final destinations.

Managers are like the air traffic controllers in terms of Virtual Distance. While it’s important for them to know whether Virtual Distance is prevalent by surveying the situation and looking at their Virtual Distance Indices, much like the air traffic controller needs to know that there are “x” number of planes in the sky, it’s also important they’re able to see exactly where Virtual Distance problems are, for example, the exact location of a plane in relation to ...