Page 247 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

226 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

or vehicles or office equipment than it is to give up outdated organiza-
tional models. If anything is true today, it is that today’s fanciest La-
serJet printer will be a relic sitting in HP’s printer museum five or ten
years from now. If anything is true today, it is that our ability to work
virtually in teams will be different five or ten years from now as well.
Historically, organizational innovations have come from the ob-
servations of gurus such as Peter Drucker, from business leaders such
as Alfred Sloan of General Motors or Jack Welch of General Electric,
or from entrepreneurs who have developed and used technology to
facilitate change. Now, it seems as if the inventiveness of high-tech
organizations such as HP and Cisco, which provide organizational
solutions that business leaders can’t even imagine, and the adaptive,
viral nature of other shared forms of interaction such as social media
(enabled by emerging technology) are the drivers fueling new organi-
zational forms.
Brian, like the baritone sax he loves to play, can support the overall
ensemble of his team’s work, or he can take the jazz soloist role—
setting the pace and improvising the tune for others to follow. He’s
an R&D project manager leading both a Boise colocated architectural
and technical team, and a virtual team of more than 25 onshore and
offshore people responsible for delivering programming code for HP
projects. Have you ever tried managing software engineers in the
same building, much less managing those sitting in Bangalore, India,
halfway across the world? We, the authors, haven’t, though David has a
team he leads that is located in Lithuania. (Michael has trouble leading
a horse to water, much less making her drink.) Brian—who is a veteran
virtual team leader with a long track record of stellar productivity—
excels at it. The following are some of the ways he does it.

strategic Communications
Bangalore’s time zone is 11½ hours ahead (12½ hours during winter
months) of Boise’s, so team meetings generally split the time differ-
ence between the two locations. There are two extended team meet-
ings between the two locations every week, and Brian also has a