Page 78 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

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themselves as totally “present” with their work teams will become
closer and closer to reality. That is, science will discover the means for
people to perceive they are almost, but not perfectly, actually in the
same room with others located anywhere in the world and, theoreti-
cally, anywhere in the universe.
But wait—is that as far as it might go? Just almost? Will we ever
actually totally experience ourselves as copresent with others even if
they are a thousand miles away? We think the answer is yes. If holo-
grams (remember Princess Leia from Star Wars: “Help me, Obi-Wan
Kenobi; you’re my only hope”?) have now been experimented with
by CNN news, as they were during the 2008 election, why can’t we
imagine a meeting room full of holograms? Science is becoming in-
creasingly hard for thinking people to underestimate, and leaders in
every endeavor—military, business, politics, education—do so at their
own risk.
Just as technology—video, voice, print, instant messaging—will
converge, so will social and physical sciences. Psychology, sociol-
ogy, and learning will team up with physics, chemistry, and biology
to draw people located at a distance so close together that they will
believe they are actually shaking those hands, passing that bottle of
wine, and hugging the employee who just lost a relative. One day this
will be true, and at that point, instead of calling it “telepresence” we
may as well just call it “presence” because we will, indeed, be there.

` presenCe—the present

We know that scientific advancements will bring geographically
distant workers ever closer perceptually, make communications ever
easier, and make technology ever more invisible. With the manager-
employee relationship, geographical distance will become less and less
of a barrier. As we have seen above, managers will, however, always
need to attend to psychological, communication, social, trust, and
other leadership issues with their mobile workforce.