Page 244 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

developing your Virtual team � 223

` zeV BArsky

Zev is no stranger to the world of commercial communication
technology and performance management. Earlier in his career he
managed a team for an electronic entertainment company, AirPlay
Network, Inc., which designed and produced interactive mobile and
Web games for organizations such as Sony, CBS, NBC, the National
Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA),
and Facebook. At the same time he was building a complete cus-
tomer support organization for the company. He’s also been a senior
manager for America Online, heading up interesting initiatives and
teams responsible for developing performance management metrics
for AOL’s 6,000 internal call center employees, creating and imple-
menting a new management structure at seven internal and two inter-
national call centers, and developing a leadership process program for
call center management staff.
When we caught up with him, he had assumed the leadership for
the design and implementation of a strategic customer service ap-
proach for LEGO Universe, which is an entirely new business model
for a company started 94 years ago in the shop of a Danish carpenter
named Ole Kirk Christiansen. The word LEGO is an abbreviation of
two Danish words that together mean “play well.” The company of
2010 hopes the youth market will soon spend a lot of time playing well
in the LEGO virtual global online community.
Zev has operational teams on three continents in six locations. “I
report to a woman who sits in London. I’m experiencing both ends—
managing remotely and being managed remotely,” he points out. 4
His role is to manage the consumer services experience in its en-
tirety for the game. How does he build his global team? “We spend a
lot of time playing video games,” he told us, “and really enjoying it.”
It turns out that building community is a key leadership role for
virtual teams, and it involves setting expectations and the tone for
building those relationships. Zev, located in Colorado, made sure,
for example, that everyone in the LEGO Universe who needed to