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

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Redefining Distance

Imagine a time traveler from the 1960s instantly transported to 2008. They would see some truly astonishing things going on: people working and collaborating across cities, time zones, and even continents; messages sent to anyone, anywhere, anytime without using the U.S. mail; other people attending meetings virtually from their offices, hotels, or even homes; and the ability to easily keep in touch with coworkers in the oddest places like air terminals, trains, cars, and golf courses. The world of work in the twenty-first century is a very different place than it was 40 years ago, and we don’t just mean dressing business casual.

It is technology, of course, that has made all of this possible. Nobody, not even the best science fiction writers, envisioned how the way that we work would change or how rapidly the changes would occur. In some respects, it may seem that we have eliminated distance as an impediment to working effectively. After all, we can instant message our colleague in China while we’re both looking at the same PowerPoint slides. Or, even better, we can have face-to-face contact using new high-definition videoconferencing.

But any funeral plans for the “death of distance” are premature. While our technology allows us to communicate in amazing new ways, distance is still an important issue. Most people think of distance as geographic separation, but it turns out that geographic separation is only part of the distance equation. Distance can have ...