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Karen Sobel-Lojeski
April 8, 2015
I once asked a former U.S. Navy admiral in charge of a fleet of aircraft
carriers how he felt about collaborating with people through email, computers,
smart phones, etc. In response, he told me the following story:
I would never send a rookie pilot to land a fighter jet on a carrier deck in
the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean on a new moon. It s pitch
black. You can t see your hand in front of your face. The pilot has all of his
instruments at the ready. He always knows his exact altitude, speed, and
distance from the ship. But he doesn t have the one crucial thing he needs to
land safely. He doesn t have any depth perception. And that s how I feel when I
talk to people online I have no depth perception.
Like the fighter pilot armed with all the technology he would seemingly need to
land safely onto the carrier, today s workforce has more than enough tools to
send information back and forth to people all over the world. But those tools
and the use of them do not necessarily constitute collaboration.
Collaboration implies more than just passing data back and forth in an attempt
to develop what is often a non-descript deliverable that can be as forgettable
as the interactions themselves. Genuine collaboration is achieved through
ongoing meaningful exchanges between people who share a passion and respect for
one another. Trading ideas and taking risks on behalf of others and the
organization is key. Ultimately, new innovations and critical problem solving
are realized through relationships.
However, today s keyboard-tapping workers have very little context around who
their counterparts are, how they feel about things, or what they hope for in
other words, what motivates them. Without a panoramic perspective, it s
difficult to form a sense of common purpose. In fact, when a seemingly
intelligent screen is the only frame in sight, people often default to decoding
messages based on what they know, filling the contextual void using their own
experience to color in the blank backgrounds behind their co-workers. But this
can create distorted perceptions about other people s values and beliefs,
causing collaboration conundrums.
Today s global workforce is often blind to the bigger picture, other than being
able to identify themselves as a dot in a social network map or a box on a
bulky org chart. This lack of shared context between team members and with
the business itself is at the heart of a rapidly growing phenomenon called
virtual distance.
Virtual distance is a sense of psychological and emotional detachment that
begins to grow little by little and unconsciously when most encounters and
experiences are mediated by screens on smart devices. It s often assumed that
the usual suspects are to blame: physical separation or time zone gaps. But
they re not. Physical distance can certainly add to virtual distance; however,
the main issues come through more subtle circumstances.
The virtual distance model is made up of three factors: physical distance,
operational distance, and affinity distance. Physical distance is essentially
geographic distance. Operational distance builds when there s a lack of shared
context that can produce unwanted noise in the system such as
miscommunications that can irritate people, or technical problems, like your
Skype connection failing, or a conference call with a bad connection. Affinity
distance comes from a set of ever-flowing undercurrents that can stop deep
relationships from taking root. For example, you may not understand what your
colleague values in his or her work, and vice versa. Or, you and others may not
recognize that you share the same future or fate. This can result in the
unintended consequence of avoiding the effort to build richer, longer-lasting
relationships, because in the absence of meaningful mutuality, the motivation
to do so may never manifest.
My colleagues and I have measured high levels of virtual distance around the
world. The data clearly demonstrate that uncontrolled virtual distance can
result in unintended and unwanted effects. For example when virtual distance is
relatively high:
Innovative behaviors fall by over 90%
Trust declines by over 80%
Cooperative and helping behaviors go down by over 80%
Role and goal clarity decline by 75%
Project success drops by over 50%
Organizational commitment and satisfaction decline by more than 50%
Virtual distance generates a shift in how people feel about themselves, other
people, and the way in which they see themselves as part of, or separate from,
the larger organizational landscape. In the absence of shared context, the
connectivity paradox emerges: the more people are connected, the more isolated
they can feel. And isolates among isolates do not collaborate, instead they
simply comply with management edicts. But compliance is not the same as
collaboration. So, like pilots circling around in the dark, much of today s
workforce is lost in transmission because they don t want to risk crashing on
the carrier deck.
But this doesn t have to be the case.
To restore true collaboration, leaders must continuously restore shared
context. A simple example would be to make sure that all team members know what
the local time is for each participant on a call. If it s late for one member,
the leader can acknowledge that whatever to-do list results from the call, they
can start it in the morning. Believe it or not, this small thing bringing the
time of day into context and acting accordingly can help a team member feel
respected. It also shows other team members that the manager is compassionate,
which makes everyone feel more at ease. Revealing shared context and making
appropriate adjustments can have a profound impact on performance.
When leaders learn to lift the veil of virtual distance, people are able to see
in others what matters most what inspires them to act on behalf of others
their mutually shared humanity.
In one organization whose mission was to work on behalf of children s health,
we measured virtual distance and found it to be high on affinity distance
that is, people weren t forming very good relationships. It s an interesting
case, because all of the employees were in one building, but spread across two
floors. Most leadership might assume that because people were co-located ,
there would be no issues with virtual distance. However, it happens with people
who sit right next to each other as much as it does between far-flung
employees. Once the virtual distance was revealed, the C-level executives took
action, putting strategies in place to increase social connections by regularly
showcasing team member contributions. For example, senior management publicly
recognized one individual s work that had resulted in helping one of the member
hospitals to save a child s life, tying his efforts directly back to the
company s mission. Recognition came in the form of an email announcement, a
newsletter post, and the manager verbally congratulating the team member during
a regularly scheduled call. Had it not been for the virtual distance training
the manager had enacted, that employee would never have gotten any of the kudos
he deserved.
In another example, a virtual distance analysis conducted at a large financial
services institution also revealed a high level of affinity distance. This
particular problem was traced back to a $3 million dollar loss caused by a
significant project delay. To ensure the situation would not happen again,
executive management put a process in place to assure that when project teams
were formed, they pulled from a diverse group of people, who had never worked
together before but were acquainted. These weak ties facilitated faster trust
formation. This approach also helps employees build wider social networks
throughout the organization by reducing virtual distance between individuals
and with the business itself from the outset. Projects that used this and other
virtual distance heuristics were much more successful than projects that paid
little attention to virtual distance dynamics.
Over time, by implementing these and other virtual distance management
strategies, this organization reaped significant benefit by reducing virtual
distance and increasing financial performance, which led to a rise in stock
price and shareholder value.
For leaders, the very first step in reducing virtual distance is to become
aware that it s strongly embedded everywhere screen-based interactions occur
between people sitting side-by-side with thumbs thumping while meeting for
lunch or amongst team members scattered across the globe with only a glowing
screen to keep them company. To address it, leaders need to develop
techno-dexterity, which is the ability to act deliberately when communicating,
understanding which message to deliver when and through which channel
(face-to-face, phone, email, video, etc.). For example, you would never fire
someone by video chat, though it may sometimes be appropriate to meet a new
client that way. Before you send a message, you should always ask yourself:
What do I want the receiver to do after I convey this message? If you realize
you just need a simple reply, then email may be best. If, on the other hand,
you want a more detailed explanation, it s probably better (and faster) to get
that via phone. By thinking about the who, what, when, where, and how of
messaging and by including how much context the other person might need to
fully understand your message, you will reduce virtual distance and improve
performance.
To establish closer confidences that fuel genuine collaboration, leaders need
to reduce virtual distance and stimulate a shared sense that everyone is in the
same boat or at the very least that there even is a boat.
Dr. Karen Sobel-Lojeski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Technology and Society at Stony Brook University.