Being There Without Going There: Managing Teams Across Time Zones, Locations and Corporate Boundaries PDF
Preview Being There Without Going There: Managing Teams Across Time Zones, Locations and Corporate Boundaries
Praise For Being There Without Going There “Virtual teaming is becoming a mainstream practice because of the needs of global enterprises to coordinate work activities across boundaries of time, space, and cultures. But many enterprises fail to meet management and employee expectations in virtual collaboration by neglecting critical leadership and management processes. Being There Without Going There provides a comprehensive set of insights into virtual leadership, management, and the enabling technologies required to support this growing workstyle. The authors depart from the usual ‘how to’ approach and embed best practices and principles in the context of an actual fictional account of companies that launch a successful virtual teaming initiative. This technique bridges the gap between theory and practice and makes both the benefits and risks of virtual teaming a reality for the most skeptical business reader.” Michael Bell, VP and Research Director, Gartner Inc. “Technology investments must demonstrate their business value quickly, and in hard dollar terms. This book shows how to use emerging Internet Collaboration Tools to substantially reduce time to market and cost.” Ray Lane, General Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers “This book presents an interesting and thoughtful depiction of the virtual company. Any manager with even a marginal appreciation of organizing through the internet should read it.” Gordon Walker, Professor of Strategy at Southern Methodist University “The global banking industry is under pressure to work more efficiently. This book is a guide on how to get you global IT staff to work as one team and to leverage offshore resources more effectively.” Merritt Lutz, Advisory Director, Morgan Stanley, Chairman MSIT Holdings, Inc. BB TT EEIINNGG HHEERREE WW GG IITTHHOOUUTT OOIINNGG TT HHEERREE BYGEORGE AND KEITH VAN NESS Published by Aspatore, Inc. For corrections, company/title updates, comments or any other inquiries please email [email protected]. First Printing, 2003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright© 2003 by Aspatore Books, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act, without prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 1-58762-319-6 Managing Editors, Robyn Gearey & Alicia Abell Material in this book is for educational purposes only. This book is sold with the understanding that neither any of the authors or the publisher is engaged in rendering medical, legal, accounting, investment, or any other professional service. For legal advice, please consult your personal lawyer. This book is printed on acid free paper. A special thanks to all the individuals that made this book possible. The views expressed by the individuals in this book (or the individuals on the cover) do not necessarily reflect the views shared by the companies they are employed by (or the companies mentioned in this book). The companies referenced may not be the same company that the individual works for since the publishing of this book. BBEEIINNGG TTHHEERREE WWIITTHHOOUUTT GGOOIINNGG TTHHEERREE TTAABBLLEE OOFF CCOONNTTEENNTTSS Preface 7 Chapter 1: The Challenge 13 Chapter 2: The Existing Operation 25 Chapter 3: An Alternative Model 41 Chapter 4: How Indonesian Medical Technologies 49 Works Chapter 5: Communication and Relationships 63 Chapter 6: Guiding Principles 75 Chapter 7: Business Travel 83 Chapter 8: Getting Started 89 Chapter 9: The Home Court First 105 Chapter 10: The New Business Processes 115 Chapter 11: Picking Projects 133 Chapter 12: Early Implementation: Lessons About 139 People and Processes Chapter 13: Managing Across Department and Corporate 161 Boundaries Chapter 14: Managing the Extended Enterprise 177 Chapter 15: Mergers and Acquisitions and Offshore 199 Development Chapter 16: In Summary: How Virtual Should You Be? 225 PP RREEFFAACCEE How would you like to: • Visit clients in three different cities • Work directly with suppliers and partners on two continents • Reduce time to market by 25 percent • Reduce costs by 10 percent • And still make it home in time for dinner? Making these possibilities a reality for you is what this book is about. The world is global. It is no longer possible for companies to build a single campus and manage the entire enterprise from that location. Winningcompanies will leverage better relationships with their customers and suppliers, as well as better use of a global labor force. They will create real access to their field organizations from their 7 BEINGTHEREWITHOUTGOINGTHERE headquarters. As the labor force continues to be made up of dual-income families and aging baby boomers, winning companies will learn to think differently about their labor force. This book is for the executives, managers and employees of those companies. • Executives will see that distributed organizations make money. If you are already running a distributed team, use this book as an instruction manual on how to use processes and technologies to make that distributed organization come together as one team. • Software executives who have struggled to realize the economic benefits of offshore development will learn the steps to make that work. • Line managers tasked with running distributed teams will learn about Internet-based distributed technologies and management processes and how to explain to management why these types of changes require top- level attention. • Employees will learn to show management how to let them participate on projects regardless of where they live and work, allowing them to balance lifestyle with employment. • Highly skilled baby boomers will find a way to seek the alternative lifestyles of semi-retirement while continuing to contribute valuable skills to their companies, stay stimulated and earn a good living. 8 PREFACE • Technologists who already understand the mechanics of distributed teams will be able to use this as a reference source to show management a new state of the possible that can enhance their careers and career options. So what’s different today? During the 1990s, thought leaders behind the Internet revolution promised a digital world, where everything would be automated and you could do and get everything from home. The reality is that we still get caught in traffic commuting to and from work. Every year, businesses spend even more money on travel expenses. Top people in key labor markets still command top dollar while critical positions go unstaffed. All this while companies could solve their cost and time-to-market problems if they could only work more closely with their partners and do more in low-cost labor markets such as India. The original developers missed one critical piece: the person on the other end. Websites permit interaction with content, but not with real people. If the next step in the evolution of communications can occur, great leaps in productivity will follow. The first step in global communications was the printing press. As soon as that was invented, literacy, once the privilege of the wealthy, became available to everyone. The next steps were radio communications, the telegraph and the telephone. Now people could effectively communicate 9
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