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By Ellen Pearlman

Strategic Thinkers: Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly

Credentials:
--Lojeski is CEO of Virtual Distance International (VDI), a consulting firm specializing in measuring and managing the impact of virtual distance in the workplace, she holds undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and recently completed her Ph.D. at Stevens Institute of Technology where her dissertation, "Virtual Distance: A New Model for the Study of Virtual Work," won the award for Best Dissertation of 2006.
--Reilly is a Professor of Management at the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management at the Stevens Institute of Technology and CTO of VDI. He also is the coauthor of "Blockbusters: The Five Keys to Developing Great New Products."

Big Idea: An increased reliance on electronic communications is disrupting corporate performance, innovation and employee satisfaction. Virtual distance is just as likely to be found among collocated team members as between distributed workers.

Book: "Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise," published by Wiley, April 2008

What is Virtual Distance?

Less than half of the American Workforce is satisfied with their jobs, according to a recent study done by The Conference Board. There are different reasons for this dismal finding, but according to Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard Reilly in their book "Uniting the Virtual Workforce," virtual distance is one of the major contributors to this dissatisfaction.

Most of us are familiar with the term virtual workforce brought about by our ability to work anywhere, anytime, due to our use of computers and electronic communications devices. What's less widely known is the term "virtual distance," coined by Doctors Lojeski and Reilly to mean "the psychological distance created between people by an over-reliance on electronic communications." Why should we care about virtual distance in our organizations? Because when it is high, performance, innovation and people suffer. Research conducted by Lojeski and Reilly has demonstrated that when virtual distance increases there is a:

• 90% decrease in innovation effectiveness
• 83% fall off in trust
• 80% plummet in work satisfaction
• 65% decrease in role and goal clarity
• 50% decline in project success (on-time, on-budget)
• 50% drop in leader effectiveness

Likewise, when virtual distance is managed properly and is kept relatively low, everyone benefits. Specifically, innovation behaviors increase by 93 percent, trust improves by 83 percent, job satisfaction is better by 80 percent, role and goal clarity rise by 62 percent, and project success is better by 50 percent.

During extensive interviews with C-level executives overseeing IT or business strategy, managers and individuals involved in virtual teamwork and outsourcing managers the authors discovered common issues affecting collaboration, communications and the development of trusting relationships in the virtual workplace. These issues fell into three distinct categories: location-based troubles, day-to-day operational problems and relationship-based challenges. The authors labeled each of these categories:

• Physical distance (related to geographic location, time zone differences and organizational distances between people in different groups)
• Operational distance (communications problems often caused by a lack of a shared context; difficulty coping with multitasking and information overload; technical problems that are not fixed in a timely manner; and an uneven dispersion of people at headquarters or in remote locations)
• Affinity distance (caused by differences in values, social position, lack of relationship connections from past work and an absence of commitment to the team)