Page 264 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

developing your Virtual team � 243

into the Philippines were so slow, even though bandwidths within
Manila were fine. “To FedEx something from Fargo, North Dakota,
to the Philippines took 48 hours,” she says. “It would’ve taken them a
week to download the files with the bandwidth available at the time.”
In a more recent example, her husband was working on a mine site
in a small African country, and the mine had to shut down for a day
so that there could be enough electricity available in the country to
broadcast a major soccer match. Leaders have to really think about
and consider the availability and robustness of technology, especially
when working globally.

time zones
It seems such a small detail to remember that members of the team are
in different time zones, but often leaders, well, zone out. If the team
has people in India, England, and the United States, there is about a
three-hour window when everybody is awake, and it’s not the best of
time of day for everybody. Kit thinks it’s important that everybody
share the pain. Just because there is only one team member in India
doesn’t mean he or she is the one who should be getting up at three
o’clock in the morning every time there’s a meeting, or that someone
should stay at work until nine or ten o’clock at night if she works in
Great Britain. Rotating meeting times so that everybody gets both
the good times and the bad is important. Kit is of the opinion that
“you will build a great rapport with your people if you make it clear
that everybody shares the pain and everybody is on equal footing.”
Otherwise, people will feel as if they are unimportant because they
are the ones always having to make the sacrifices.

set the expectation that Communication Is proactive
People have to believe that there is no such thing as too much com-
munication. People should be communicating constantly. Even video
conferences are easy these days because Webcams are so inexpensive.
So there’s really no reason not to do a video unless there’s a reason not