Geographically dispersed teams

✍ Scribed by Michael E. Kossler; Sonya Prestridge

• Book ID: 102449762
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Weight: 395 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1093-6092
• DOI: 10.1002/lia.4070160204

✦ Synopsis

Imagine the following scenario. You are a manager for the Swiss-owned company, International Asset Management. IAM is a worldwide financial services organization with revenues in excess o f f v e billion dollars. It's Monday morning and you're planning your team's quarterly video conference. There are eight people on your team: one in New York; one in Chicago; one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; two in London, England; one in Munich, Gennany; one in St. Petersburg, Russia; one in Tokyo, Japan; and you are located in Los Angeles. In front of you, spread out on your desk, are the E-mail responses you received in reply to your question, "When would be a good time to have a meeting?" You've got eight different responses-no big surprise there. But when you take into account the differences in time zones, you know some people are going to have to get up early, some will have to stay up late, and someone will have to get up in the middle of the night in order to have the meeting. As you sit there drumming your fingers, you find yourself longing for the good old days when all of your teammates were located in the same place, not spread out across the world!

This scenario is not far-fetched. In fact, as a result of acquisition, downsizing, merger, and globalization, more and more individuals are finding themselves leading or working with people who are dispersed not just across the United States but around the world. This is changing the traditional notion of what a team is. No longer do people need to be in the same place, or co-located, in order to be considered a team. Members may be scattered around the world, interacting across space, time, and organizational boundaries.