As we will see later on, Virtual Distance can cause havoc with financial results, innovation as well as other important aspects of work. But first it’s important to understand what contributes to this sense of separation among us. This chapter introduces you to specific facets of Virtual Distance and provides a foundation on which solutions can be developed to increase performance, improve trust, enhance innovation, and get better bottom-line results from the virtual workforce.

Virtual Distance is an easy concept to grab hold of at first. Everyone has some direct experience with either low Virtual Distance or high Virtual Distance. The thought experiment in Chapter 1 revealed one way to get to know Virtual Distance. But Virtual Distance has an underlying and identifiable structure that’s important to understand. It is this structure that allows us to directly measure it. It’s like the “dynamics DNA” of the virtual workforce. So let’s take some time to walk through the Virtual Distance Model to better understand the forces at work that make us “feel” far apart.

Virtual Distance contains three major pieces:

These three parts are represented in the Virtual Distance Formula which we introduced in Chapter 1 but show again here in Figure 2.1.

According to a recent Stanford University study, one out of every five professionals has never met their boss.¹ Imagine, 20 percent of the workforce begins each day with basically no idea about who they report to aside from the occasional phone call, maybe a bio and picture on a web site, and a lot of e-mails. What’s even more astonishing, according to the same research, is that over half of those that have never met their managers, don’t think they’ll ever meet. So they start each day without any expectation that they’ll ever see their boss in person.

This lack of an anticipated future encounter may produce behaviors that are not what the leadership wants. For example, one of the most difficult things to do is to say “no” to a manager, ask for a raise, or to bring a problem to the table under any circumstances. And it becomes even more difficult if there’s no prospect of ever meeting them. So leaders that expect issues to be raised and made visible by far-flung resources are indeed facing a kind of blindness instead because, in many instances, those they expect to point out problems are not likely to do so.

Some think that being virtual makes it easier for people to speak their minds.² But this can also be highly misleading and even detrimental to work. According to Bradner and Mark (Chapter 1), just the “perception” of distance causes dysfunctional behaviors like deception and less cooperation.

So if many believe that they might never or at best rarely see their manager, and also have a hard time saying “no” or pushing back in any way, then it’s no surprise that physical distance gets in the way of problem solving, innovation, and other critical outcomes in the global world.

There are three components of physical distance included in the Virtual Distance Model:

It’s tricky because when we’re geographically distant, our innate social skills are unavailable. For example, when someone we’re talking with face to face doesn’t look us in the eye, we suspect they may be hiding something. This inherent suspicion, which is usually quite accurate, results from our “normal” communication mode when we derive understanding through visual cues like facial expressions and body language. But when we can’t see them, it’s not possible for us to use the senses we’re born with to decode someone’s intentions or sincerity. And when we can’t accurately decipher others’ behaviors, we don’t react naturally or even appropriately.

A lack of physical proximity makes us all a bit uncomfortable. For example, a high-ranking military official who had used virtual teams to implement a major organizational transformation said, “Virtual presence is actual absence.” After having worked with people he wasn’t close to, he’d grown pessimistic about the value of such a workforce compliment.

However, in our original research as well as our current consulting practice, we’ve encountered many people who feel that meeting just once, or at critical times, can help minimize the effects of geographic gaps. One research participant said, “While working face to face is the best, relations with distant-location people can build up over time. The key to relationship building is to build up trust between the parties. I find that even one meeting face to face can be an enormous help to establishing a good rapport with others.”

In summary, geographic distance contributes to a sense of being far away because, in fact, one is far away. So we cannot expect that people will be able to work through communication problems the way they would if they were face-to-face. And in today’s modern workplace, it’s often impossible or even undesirable to get together some, if not most, of the time. But, as we’ll see a bit later, the effects of geographic separation can be overcome by fixing problems in the other aspects of Virtual Distance.

For example, if one person is located on the East Coast of the United States and another is working in Beijing, China, the time difference between them is at a maximum because they are literally 13 hours apart. One person is probably sleeping while the other is working—under “normal” circumstances, that is. We say this because sometimes, to overcome time zone differences, managers schedule meetings that occur in the middle of the night for some. While working this way might help to solve problems in the short term, over the long haul, regularly scheduling meetings that upset people’s normal paces (body clocks, etc.) can weaken team relations and have a negative impact on performance and innovation.

For example, at a large financial services company, software application development was done using resources separated by multiple time zones. There were people based in New York, South America, eastern Europe, India, and China. When one had questions for the other, they’d communicate via e-mail and then have to wait 24 hours for a response. Productivity suffered and frustration soared, especially under tight deadlines. Days and sometimes a week or more could pass before a single issue was resolved satisfactorily. Project momentum faded, and it was delivered late and over budget.

In summary, temporal distance specifically contributes to the sense that we’re not well coordinated and can’t establish any kind of predictable or regular rhythm. Therefore, solving temporal distance requires managers to establish reliable assurance about when things are going to happen, where, and so forth. Only then can those who feel far away based on time displacements begin to experience more closeness by anticipating work schedules that prove to be dependable.

Organizational distance is widespread these days because many are required to work across organizational boundaries with people who don’t belong to the same organization and who are perceived to be outside “inner circles.” When one belongs to one group and another to another group, people sometimes divide the world into an “us” versus “them” or “in-group” versus “out-group” mental model. It’s the Yankees versus the Red Sox, only in a virtual work context.

If this kind of attitude develops, it can quickly fuel distrust and erode productivity. In the long term, organizational distance can deepen group biases. For example, those in the “in-group” think that everyone, including those in the “out-group,” perceives the world the way they do when in reality, that’s highly unlikely. Left unattended, organizational distance intensifies these false beliefs because it’s almost impossible to accurately confirm or disconfirm any notion about others in virtual workspaces. As a result, collaboration roadblocks often lead to team failure.

For instance, in 2004, NASA launched a project to develop the Orbital Boom Sensor System, which was designed to inspect the heat-shielding tiles for damage once the shuttle was in orbit. The complex project had a strict, hard deadline—a spring 2005 launch. The NASA team in Houston subcontracted the development of a key piece of equipment, the integrated boom, to a Canadian firm. Organizational distance went unmanaged and remained high throughout the project, resulting in a loss of trust and communication. This played out when the Canadian firm fell behind schedule but never let NASA know. Because all of the pieces had to come together at the same time for the shuttle to make the launch date, the result was a project in crisis. Fortunately, the problem was resolved through the efforts of a contracting officer who served as a personal liaison or “boundary spanner” between NASA and the Canadian company. His personal relationships with people in both organizations helped to reduce some of the organizational distance that had developed, and the project was completed on schedule.

In summary, organizational distance creates an impression of space because of differences in formal associations. We find people feeling as though they’re not part of the same team even though they’re assigned to work together toward the same ultimate goal. Solutions to reduce organizational distance are based on the creation of a common group identity which can be shared-regardless of where team members reside or who they directly report to.

However, operational distance is a bit more fluid than physical distance because it’s not tied to a specific place or time—it’s made up of a mix of troubles that plague us from moment to moment. Operational distance, once identified, can actually be more easily controlled by team members or through management intervention.

To understand how operational distance arises, we need to take a closer look at four key issues:

When these kind of things happen to people, they often think the other person just doesn’t “get it,” which causes them to discount the other person or cut him out of a particular picture altogether when in fact, the reason for the miscommunication may have had nothing to do with the person’s skill or abilities at all. These kinds of daily reactions, ensuing assumptions about others, and the resulting changes in behavior increase cognitive disconnects leading to increased frustration and anxiety to the individual and lower productivity for the organization.

A number of dynamics are at work in virtual workspace communications. As we’ve mentioned, often there aren’t enough face-to-face encounters (especially across great geographic distances). When we don’t share a common physical space, we don’t share a common context in terms of our environment. And if we’ve never met, there’s no way to know if we share a mental context either. And yet a shared context is the single most important part of meaningful exchange.

One of the best metaphors we’ve heard about the lack of a shared context among virtual team members was told to us by a former admiral from the United States Navy. At the time we spoke to him, he held a civilian post and worked on many virtual teams. But in the Navy he commanded a fleet of carriers, upon which fighter jets would land. He described his experiences with virtual team communications using the following story:

When we try to communicate virtually and don’t share a common context, we’re basically flying blind with respect to what others are trying to convey. Without a sense of where the person is (uneven environmental factors such as varied temperatures, lighting, sound, or physical comfort, etc.) or what they might be thinking (differences in worldviews, variations in preexisting assumptions, their current “mood,” etc.), it’s almost impossible to interpret his intended meaning.

But even when we’re physically close, communications distance can grow. One of our favorite stories about “same place” communication distance was told to us by a woman who worked in an insurance company where the cubicles were no more than 12 inches apart. Her boss sat right next to her and, unbelievably, would actually e-mail her questions instead of just turning around and talking to her directly. He did this constantly, creating a psychological gulf between them that felt to her like “a huge valley between mountain ranges.”

In summary, communications distance turns into a feeling of disconnectedness when there’s a lack of shared context and when a less than optimal communication mode is used repeatedly. Therefore, the way to close communications distance involves developing common ideas about the places and ways in which we work as well as more selectively using various kinds of communications tools and techniques.

Of course Csikszentmihalyi himself wrote that these were just approximations. But what he described as the limits of consciousness in 1990 is being further studied by neuroscientists today.

Dr. Martin Westwell³ discovered that interruptions from too much electronic communications disturb us most when we’re engaged in difficult or “cognitively demanding” tasks like problem solving.⁴ And yet, it is problem solving, which requires intense thought, that’s at the center of building competitive advantage. So when people get to the point that they’re tasked to the max, especially at inopportune times, companies may be thwarting their own innovations and future success.

According to Westwell, multitasking and information overload impede the brain’s executive function, the part which decides what’s meaningful and what’s not; what to pay attention to and what to ignore. When overloaded, we can develop autistic-like behaviors because our own internal executive function is unable to discern background noise from things that are truly important. When this happens, our decision-making and innovative skills suffer.

In summary, too much multitasking creates a sense of distance between us. However, as you’ll see in Chapter 3, this matters most when Virtual Distance is high in other areas. Solutions to reduce over-activity rest with the individual. People need to make better decisions about what to work on, when, and set boundaries for themselves on how much time they’ll spend on any given endeavor. Managers also have a role to play by actively taking notice of when team members are overburdened and remove things from their plates or else Virtual Distance will increase.

Readiness distance produces a “mind drift” in team members when technical issues preclude them from getting work done. If the problem lasts more than a minute or so, they begin to psychologically separate from those who are also waiting, and if it persists, projects can be temporarily derailed. In some cases it can lead to lasting and more permanent problems.

For example, at a large pharmaceutical firm headquartered in the northeastern United States, readiness distance created high levels of Virtual Distance. It began when an initiative was launched to reorganize global operations into a single hierarchal unit. During the transition, the head of Australian operations needed a conference call facility to conduct meetings with his teams in Australia and the Far East. To put such a communication line in place under the new structure, he had to work with the technical staff in the United States.

But when he asked them to carry out his request, the U.S. technical manager informed him that, “We are closed during the hours you want to have your meetings, so we can’t support you. You’ll have to change the time of your meeting to get conference lines.”

In disbelief, the Australian executive e-mailed back, “But those are our daytime work hours. We’ve got to be able to get conference calls during those hours!” The technical manager replied, “Well, we‘re not a 24/7 shop and I’ve got no budget to pay someone to be here for you at that time. Without support, we can’t set up a line.”

This readiness distance interjected Virtual Distance between the Australian leader and the U.S. headquarters at precisely the wrong time—when high levels of cooperation were needed most. Only intervention by the most senior executives in the United States eventually fixed the situation, but the damage was done. The relationship between the Australian executive and some U.S. counterparts was never fully repaired, and a lasting Virtual Distance ensued.

In summary, readiness distance rises when things don’t work and there’s little to no support or cooperation. The solutions to readiness distance revolve around ensuring that the right foundational structures are in place and that individuals are ready when they’re needed most.

Companies like the pharmaceutical organization described in the last example had a large population of headquartered personnel. When they began their globalization effort, many outside of that environment felt that their views were not considered. And among the people in the headquarter location, some admitted they defended points of view that probably didn’t reflect the group as a whole.

In summary, distribution asymmetry creates a sense of being far away from others either by virtue of isolation or too many people residing in one place where there’s a lot of power. Resolutions to distribution asymmetry are not always easy to find. However, the effects of distribution asymmetry are often mitigated by reducing Virtual Distance in other areas.

Affinity distance (see Figure 2.4) is what develops when we don’t establish the kinds of personal relationships that satisfy our social needs. When this facet of Virtual Distance is high, a powerful psychological wall bars effective collaboration.

In business relationships, it’s affinity that holds teams together despite location, nationality, or organizational affiliation. The absence of affinity, or a weak affinity, has the strongest influence on Virtual Distance. When people can’t attach themselves to one another, then work suffers. There’s no reason, for example, to commit wholeheartedly to any given initiative. Managers and individuals alike often tell us they have trouble motivating those whom they don’t see or aren’t directly in their span of influence or control.

And most of the time it’s because there’s no affinity in the group. Therefore, reducing affinity distance is the most important undertaking for team members and management. When successful, the other two Virtual Distance issues, physical and operational distance, are also reduced.

There are four relationship dynamics that come together to create an affinity vacuum:

Affinity is difficult if not impossible to establish if some or all of our values are out of sync.

For instance, we were involved in a project for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The objective was to find out how communications in New York City could be improved between a combination of federal, state, and city agencies to avoid future disasters. Interestingly, we found that cultural distance stemming from different organizational values (e.g., secrecy versus openness) between agencies charged with coordinating future security was entrenched in bureaucratic structures. In fact, this was the most serious obstacle to developing open and effective relations.⁵

Varied work values among team members also cause problems through something as simple as differences in communication styles. For instance, a client in Europe had difficulties over e-mail with North American counterparts because of the meaning attributed not to the words but to the writing style itself. The Europeans wrote short, to-the-point messages that the North Americans misinterpreted as harsh and even rude because they wrote in a more friendly and conversational style.

In summary, cultural distance is at the top of the list when it comes to escalating affinity distance and stunting healthy relationship growth in the virtual workforce. Fixing cultural distance consists of developing shared value systems and re-imagining values in light of others that may appear to be different but, in many ways, are much the same.

Similarly, status differences exist within organizations; those with higher formal status tend to be more politically powerful and influential. The further away on a “status scale” people are from one another, the further away they may perceive themselves to be in any given collaborative effort. This generates social distance within an organizational context.

Deemphasizing formal status and fanning contributions of team members by building up their social capital within the team is vital. In the virtual workforce, companies are usually trying to get people to think of each other as peers and behave in a cooperative manner. But most companies still use titles and hierarchies in order to delineate who is most important. When formal status is emphasized, as opposed to the contributions each team member makes to the group effort, major productivity issues can arise.

A case in point appeared at a major bank based in New York. Many of their information technology (IT) divisions use resources from different countries where formal status is very important. One way in which respect is shown to superior classes is by agreeing with everything they say, no matter what the person in the lower class really thinks. The answer to every question asked by a higher class person is “yes.”

This practice found its way into the bank, and given this behavior, those lower in title and position rarely speak up about work problems. Since they hardly ever bring anything to management’s attention, it often happens that projects fall behind schedule and over budget. In one case, social distance problems caused a multimillion-dollar project to be scrapped and wiped out all the savings the organization hoped to realize.

In summary, it’s easy to see how harmful social distance can be and how difficult it is to manage, as it involves identity and ego, two of the most fragile aspects of human psychology. However, when team members feel they’re on a level playing field based on competence and their shared role in the work effort, they’re much more likely to meet goals. So to decrease social distance, managers need to encourage open communications and create meritocracies where individuals and peers share a sense of being valued by the group

When 9/11 occurred in New York, the central communication switches servicing the World Trade Center area had been either destroyed or severely interrupted. Miles away, an emergency response team was gathered in New Jersey. Led by one of the financial officers of the telecommunications provider, a group of senior managers, who’d worked together previously, was quickly assembled on the front lawn of the company’s main campus. Tables were set up, with different teams manning different operational centers. Leaders selected individuals for those teams based mostly on whether they’d worked together in the past—especially during other kinds of crises. In other cases, people who were chosen for critical assignments were referred by trusted colleagues. The company succeeded in getting service back up and running relatively quickly given the gravity of the situation. Low relationship distance was one of the main reasons why people could come together quickly, communicate effectively, and solve problems rapidly.

In summary, relationship distance manifests as a sense of unfamiliarity. When people don’t have any idea of who others are or lack any indirect connections, it’s difficult to establish trust without having to build a relationship from scratch, and as we’ve learned already, our ability to do so in the Digital Age is challenged quite a bit by forces outside of our control, for example, being near or having time to devote to such efforts. The solutions to relationship distance are tied to creating an alert management that can seed teams or groups with people who already know each other or know some of the same people. As we’ll see in Chapter 5, there are also other ways to help people develop social networks.

One of the major problems in outsourcing relationships is interdependence distance. In 2005, a large credit card company had a major security breach when an outsourcing provider sent portions of the work to another outsourcer. While the card company had negotiated a contract that included a governance structure to keep interdependence high between the two parties, there was little in the contract that tied the card company to other outsourcing companies “downstream.” The breach in security was a result of one of these relationships gone awry, where there was no interdependence whatsoever between the customer and the smaller outsourcer hired by the main service provider. As a result, the chief technology architect of the credit card company told a group of financial services executives that the problem was becoming so prevalent that they gave it a name, “Interdependence Risk,” which is now formally used as an indicator of potential financial and reputation exposure in many major financial institutions.

In summary, interdependence distance can hurt companies quite badly because people are too detached from one another—not in terms of physicality but in terms of their connection to a shared vision. Managers need to create a sense of interdependence between team members because it’s often too difficult or unclear from the individual’s point of view.

But the challenge of fixing problems among the virtual workforce doesn’t stop there. It is incumbent upon anyone trying to reduce Virtual Distance to go further and measure the extent to which it is impacting important outcomes. That’s where the Virtual Distance Index and other Virtual Distance metrics come in.