Surviving in a Virtual World

When I started working for Shell in 1982, everyone I interacted with was in the same building or a simple car ride away.
I started international travelling in 1993. The trips were a bit special, and fun. I think this was because there were still no mobile phones, no telecons, and no expectation of keeping up with e-mails while away. It was also still pretty unheard of to have reporting lines cross country boundaries.
In 1999, I had a team of people reporting to me from all around Europe. Suddenly, we were expected to be on a plane the whole time, keeping multiple balls in the air through evenings and weekends. The SEOP travel budget probably set a world record, one which may never be broken.
As I've blogged before, this drove me to a breakdown in 2000. And I'm sure it was the line manager aspect that pushed me over the edge. To be a decent boss, you have to know your staff well, you need a healthy dose of face-to-face contact, supplemented by other communications which are efficient but also deep and honest. It was the constant feeling of failure in this task that dragged me down.
Then from 2005 in GSXX, along with lots of other people, the team is not just European but global. And (thank goodness in one way) the travel budgets make it unrealistic to get much face time with staff. Expectations keep ratcheting up - think of managing the HR processes across boundaries for example. How on earth do we manage? Do we manage at all, or is this an elephant in the room? Are we just systemically failing?
At least in GSXX, I think we have managed, and, on balance, made being a global team a net benefit for us. I can think of a few coping strategies that we have developed which have worked. Maybe by sharing these I can help other teams. And maybe you have your own tips and tricks.
(1) We've been lucky and smart in the choice of people for the team in the locations outside Europe. Either we've had mature, self-sufficient types who can take things in their stride, avoid paranoia yet coach the rest of us about their real needs, or, when we've had less experienced staff, we've been able to buddy them or somehow give them the strong support mechanisms they have needed.
(2) I have learned to share the load around the team rather than take it all upon myself. We can all help, it doesn't have to follow the hierarchy, it is a shared responsibility to make this weird (unnatural?) arrangement work as best we can.
(3) We've put massive effort into team cohesion, and really tried to make the onboarding as painless as possible. Two weeks every year we all meet in The Hague, with an agenda more social than business. hat is so much smarter than me flying around, and that would be the very last sacrifice to the travel budget God. We have a regular weekly call (thanks Asia and US for putting up with horrible hours) and spend time on things like check-ins and celebrations.
(4) At last IT has started becoming our friend not our enemy. Especially, MSN works for me. Somehow an MSN chat manages to get a bit deeper than a phone call, it makes a relationship more authentic and complete, with minimal burden on time and lots of fun too. I'm sure it is not recommended, but even things like a tough IPF/performance discussion I think goes better via MSN than phone. It is a lovely tool - you can be spontaneous but also considered, straightforward but also tangential.
(5) We try to do small things to avoid the remote people feeling second class. In this one I'm sure we could do much more. But, for example, in a team telecon we all dial in from separate rooms in The Hague, so that side discussions can't arise and we are all on an equal footing. Another example is trying hard to keep meetings/telecons to an hour or less. Holding on to the end of a telecon for longer than that is just torture.
(6) We try to embrace difference and inclusiveness whenever we can, celebrating our different lenses.
Having said all that, life was a lot easier in 1982! Probably with globalisation there is no way back, but I do think organisations need to do more to manage this awful imposition on staff. For example, flat organisation structures are great, but team of 12 all based in the same place is probably equivalent in difficulty to make work as a team of 5 all based in different places. So keep such teams smaller.
Also, for all my whingeing about this, when I reflect on the most fulfilling aspects of my Shell career, the ability to work closely in teams of different cultures is probably top of the pops. So in some ways we are blessed... even if we are always tired and poor parents and poor bosses and everything else. There are always two sides to a story.