Karen Lojeski Sobel

Uniting the Virtual Workforce. Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise

Karen Lojeski Sobel

Praise for Uniting the Virtual Workforce «Uniting the Virtual Workforce offers much-needed guidance on how to navigate the largely unmapped territory of virtual work environments in the global economy. The authors do an outstanding job of presenting how organizations should address the challenges of virtual workforces so as to reap the huge potential benefits of increased growth, productivity, and innovation.» -C. Warren Axelrod, PhD, Chief Privacy Officer and Business Information Security Officer, U.S. Trust, and author of Outsourcing Information Security «Lojeski and Reilly bring us something that readers of business books so rarely get-no nonsense practical guidance on how to manage distance, especially where it most often serves as an impediment to working effectively.Ê If you interface with widely dispersed team members who rarely see one another and communicate by virtue of impersonal electronics, you may expect to find this book provocative, counterintuitive, and above all, exciting. It gives all of us who have to struggle, while working with talent stretched across distance, hope, that maybe there are ways to do this right!» -Patrick J. McKenna, author of First Among EqualsÊ «A must-read for global corporate executives who manage geographically dispersed job sharing teams. Practical strategies for preventing productivity loss and optimizing innovation. The authors pull no punches in showing the real downsides to the virtual work phenomenon; they have done a great service for us all.» -Jeff Saperstein, author of Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy «Uniting the Virtual Workforce charts the course for competing in the twenty-first century by tapping into the powers of virtual work. Any manager who ignores the virtual workforce is underperforming, and any company or organization that does not appreciate virtual work is already at a competitive disadvantage. Karen and Dick have tapped into a key ingredient in the recipe for global growth.» -Jerry MacArthur Hultin, President, Polytechnic University, and former Under Secretary of the Navy «Authors Sobel Lojeski and Reilly have provided a useful primer for the harried executive striving for productivity improvements while seeing the workload expand and the workforce disperse. Using conceptual definitions of Physical, Operational, and Affinity Distance to describe the multifaceted dimensions of building teams of people to work effectively together, the authors construct a very powerful set of metrics for a manager to improve the capability of his or her workgroup, no matter where it resides or how it is composed. The book is rich in anecdotes and specific studies that illustrate the concepts in an engaging, pertinent, and easy-to-understand manner. In an age of outsourcing, offshoring, and decentralizing groups of people who have to get things done together, reading this small book will repay itself many times over.» -Charles House, Director, Media X Lab at Stanford University, and former Director of the Societal Impact of Technology, Intel Corporation

Leading the Virtual Workforce. How Great Leaders Transform Organizations in the 21st Century

Karen Lojeski Sobel

Leading the Virtual Workforce How Great Leaders Transform Organizations in the 21st Century Praise for Leading the Virtual Workforce «Strong leadership in the best of times is difficult to achieve, but in today's rapidly changing business environment, leaders are tested in many new ways. Once again, Lojeski has a fresh take on what it takes to lead today's widely dispersed workforce.» —Ellen Pearlman, former editor-in-chief, CIO Insight magazine «Karen Lojeski has distilled the essence of the leader's role in 'managing' virtual teams. Her very relevant case stories illustrate that to be successful, the authentic leader must be able to create context and a collaborative lexicon for virtual knowledge sharing and must work diligently to build the social capital that is so vital to the success of virtual work groups. Karen's key contribution in this and her previous book, Uniting the Virtual Workforce, is the 'discovery' and clear articulation of her theory of the Virtual Distance Index, which leaders can use to measure and manage the process of virtual teamwork.» —Dave Davison, Chairman, Virtual Visuals Inc. «I agree entirely with Karen when she says that today, more than ever, effective leaders are desperately needed. She skillfully defines the dislocation and demarcation of leaders from followers through the 'Virtual Distance,' and yet paradoxically calls leaders to 'stoke the flames of innovation and cooperation in a complex, interwoven world.' This gives rise to her exploration of the Virtual Distance Leader. As Karen points out, the twenty-first-century leader must, amidst the conditions of pressure, change, and transformation, bring human endeavor and action to value and meaning for others.» —Adrian Machon, Director, Executive & Leadership Development, GlaxoSmithKline