Page 90 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

presence � 69

will do what leaders have always done: use the tools at hand to get
the job completed. It’s figuring out the best ways to be “present,” as
Senge thinks of it, with workers who are half a world away, whether
that’s through regular face-to-face meetings, telepresence technology,
or e-mail. If you’re Bill Avey, you establish that presence in many
ways, but it always includes developing a personal relationship. “You
can’t always talk about work,” he says. On Monday he’ll ask people
how their weekend went, and on Friday afternoon he’ll ask them what
they’re doing over the weekend. He shares that kind of information
about himself too. “Somehow you have got to inject the watercooler
on to the telephone.”
Bill, for whom telepresence through Halo is a way of life, believes
that nothing totally takes the place of actual presence.
“If you never go to dinner, you don’t know about people’s personal
lives,” he says, “and if you never know about their personal lives, you
never make those connections.”
When working cross-culturally, this is even more important.
“People take pride,” Bill says. “You know, every time I go to Guadala-
jara they’re going to take me to La Distillere. And they’re so proud of
it and it’s part of the experience.” When you are working around the
world, he believes, the rules aren’t exactly the same. “I’ve got to believe
that people that are closer and develop relationships are always going
to be at an advantage over those that aren’t.”
“Going to dinner” seems symbolic of the idea of developing per-
sonal relationships in whatever way possible. For Bill Avey, and for so
many others we’ve interviewed, those relationships form the backbone
necessary for effectively leading a mobile workforce.

` summAry

If you are a successful manager of a geographically dispersed work-
force, we don’t have to tell you that leading it is far more than master-
ing the available technology. It is also very much about reducing the