In the rush to compete globally, companies are asking their employees to be effective across distances seldom before mastered. They are counting on innovations in communications technology to tie everyone together.
Technology is also viewed as a means of enhancing competitiveness and erasing distances in situations involving mergers and acquisitions, downsizing and other wholesale change efforts. Streamlined teams are being called upon to work with a coordination that allows a few people armed with laptop computers, e-mail, video conferencing and frequent flyer memberships to do the work of a department.
The team's leader may be in one building, with teammates in buildings nearby or, just as likely, in adjacent provinces, countries or on different continents.
Many managers responsible for such teams have found that distance remains a very real dimension in human relations. Despite the benefits of electronic media and jet travel, distance can be a major impediment to effectiveness. Telephone conferences find teammates struggling to get on the same page even though goals and strategies have been agreed upon for months. Conflicts between distant group members seem to just materialize and then escalate, defying explanation. Under such conditions of open conflict, teammates at sites separated by even a few miles talk in terms of "us" and "them". The usual flood of unexpected issues that face any task-oriented team are particularly unsettling for distributed teams.