Virtual Teams LO4782

JOE_PODOLSKY@HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com
Wed, 10 Jan 96 17:52:48 -0800

Replying to LO4737 --

Since you asked, here's something I wrote recently on the general
topic of virtual teams.

Joe Podolsky

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Joe's Jottings #46 (12/6/95)

Information Technology - Master or Tool?
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Last Wednesday (11/29/95), the _Wall St. Journal_ published a
column called "Work & Family by Sue Shellenbarger. The headline
over the column shouted, "Too Many Gadgets Turn Working Parents
into 'Virtual Parents'." Shellenbarger quoted advice from
several consultant and several advertisements about how to raise
children in today's cybercommunity. For example: "...advice
from adland: Business travelers can dine with their kids by
speakerphone or 'tuck them in' by cordless phone. (If anyone
suggested to my kids (says Shellenbarger) that they cuddle up
with a cordless phone, they'd probably throw it across the
room.) Separately, a management newsletter recommends faxing
your child when you have to break a promise to be home, or
giving a child a beeper to make him feel more secure when left
alone."

Shellenbarger is appalled by this advice. She says that,
"High-tech gear fails families when they try to use it: 1) As a
substitute for warm human contact...2) As a Band-Aid for too
much absence...3) As a stand-in for adults...using it as a
baby-sitting service."

"The trick for working parents," she says, "is to find the
middle ground - where technology enriches our ties with
children, rather than underscoring separations."

This, of course, is an excellent message on the life side of the
work/life quality scale, especially appropriate for families
where the parents (or worse, only one parent) have demanding,
engrossing jobs.

But it seems to me to be equally important on the work side
also. Where's the right balance between technology-enabled
virtual, global teams, and face-to-face contact?

One way to test the idea is to look at an extreme. There's a
new magazine out called _Fast Company_. The premiere issue has
an article by William C. Taylor called, "At VeriFone, It's a
Dog's Life (And They Love It!)." It's mostly an interview with
the CEO of VeriFone, Hatim Tyabji. VeriFone is best known for
the little box in most retail stores that verifies credit cards,
and it's a player in all sorts of electronic commerce
applications. More interesting for this essay, VeriFone, a $360
million company growing 20% a year, is the current archetype of
a virtual company. While it's corporate offices are nominally
in Redwood City, California, its real home is in cyberspace.

They have projects literally around the world, from the Bay Area
to Bangalore. Everything is done by e-mail; paper is literally
banned. Tyabji says, "We are insensitive to distance and
time...I don't give a damn where people are as long as they can
access e-mail." And, to emphasize that point, one-third of the
VeriFone staff is traveling at any one time. Tyabji himself,
travels 400,000 miles a year. And even when VeriFone people are
at home, they're not together. For example, it's CIO lives in
Santa Fe, NM, and the head of human resources lives in Dallas.

But, in spite of this dependence on IT, Tyabji stresses that
"running...and growing any enterprise is 5% technology and 95%
psychology...leadership is human. Leadership is looking people
in the eye, pumping the flesh, getting them excited, caring
about their families." He says, "Don't expect effective on-line
communication without extensive face-to-face communication...The
more we use technology, the more we need to travel."

Taylor prompts Tyabji, "What you're saying is that e-mail is not
just an information system, it's a social system. It transmits
the values of the company."

And Tyabji responds, "Exactly! Not many people think of it that
way, but that's exactly what it is. I resonate with that big
time."

The result is that VeriFone people are always on-line, and are
often away from their home as well. The tone is one of urgency,
the dominant ethic at VeriFone. So, Taylor asks, "What kind of
commitment do you expect from your people?"

Tyabji replies, "We expect people at VeriFone to go above and
beyond the call of duty - not because they are forced to, but
because they want to. The people who join this company change.
Their pace of life changes. Their intensity changes. Their
emotional level changes...We are very clear about the quid pro
quo of life at VeriFone...In return for all the freedom we
offer, is a tremendous emphasis on accountability...You perform,
you can do anything you want. You don't perform, you're out...

"(But) in addition to being a really tough, results-oriented
culture, we are also a culture of caring. We do things for
employees that most companies don't even think of doing..."
Tyabji describes their VeriKid program where children of
employees can live for a while with other VeriFone families in
other parts of the world, and the VeriGift program where
employees pool their unused vacation time to donate to sick
employees who would otherwise have to go on unpaid leave.

Taylor then asks, "But (your company culture) raises some thorny
issues. There are fewer and fewer boundaries left between
business and personal life...When people join VeriFone, are they
signing up for a job, or are they signing over their lives?"

Tyabji answers, "It's a profound issue for us. The distinction
between life at VeriFone and life outside of VeriFone, between
professional and personal - that distinction in our company is
blurred. We work very hard to blur it...All I can say is that
every person has to come to terms with himself or herself in the
context of this new environment..."

This, of course, as Shellenbarger implies, is not a situation
unique to VeriFone. Start-ups and consulting firms all try to
create this kind of work/life stew. Even in more older,
structured companies such as HP, high performance teams and
customer service and support operations try to harness the
energy of the whole person, not just the employee.

So we are back to the age-old question, is technology our master
or our tool?

And the answer, of course, is that it is both, that information
technology, like all other technologies, just gives us more
choices. As always, how we choose is up to us.

IBM publishes a monthly magazine for IT managers called _Beyond
Computing_. In its November 1995 issue, Anne Coluori, president
of the IBM user group Share, writes about virtual teams. She
suggests that team participation and results of the team are a
function of commitment. "Commitment," she says, "comes from the
conviction of team members that they are making good use of
their time and energy...The bottom line for teams - virtual or
otherwise - is that any team in which members feel they are
wasting their time is in danger of extinction. The upbeat
opposite is a team in which members feel that they are learning,
contributing, and working toward mutual goals."

We each decide, consciously or not, how to live our lives, how
to integrate all aspects of our lives, how to participate in the
ever-larger society in which we live. We each decide about what
commitments to make. Through those commitments , we determine
how we grow and what we learn. Commitment and self-interest are
inextricably linked.

Information technology is here to stay. We, as IT
professionals, not only should use information technology well
as part of our own overall quilt of commitments, but also might
well act as advisors and role models for others. It's a tough,
but worthwhile task.

--
Joe Podolsky
  podolsky@corp.hp.com