Karen Sobel Lojeski – författare

LEADING THE VIRTUAL WORKFORCE World markets are unsteady, unemployment is on the rise, housing foreclosures are up, asset values are down, and the political landscape is shifting. Under such tumultuous conditions, people often look to leaders to soothe battered nerves. But in today's rough and tumble environment, there are reportedly few leaders the average person relies upon. Over 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in the midst of a major leadership crisis. And over 75 percent of executives from around the world are seriously concerned about whether businesses can develop good leaders for the future. And yet not one leadership book squarely addresses the issue of the changed workforce, the virtual workforce, and why old leadership models just don't work—until now. Leading the Virtual Workforce builds off the ground-breaking concept of Virtual Distance introduced in Sobel Lojeski's seminal first book, Uniting the Virtual Workforce. And in never-before-published interviews, leaders from IBM, Merck, Western Union, Alcatel-Lucent, HP, AT&T, and more share detailed case studies about what's different about leadership today and how to become a great leader in the Digital Age. Leading the Virtual Workforce covers: The most common myths about leadership for today's virtual workforceWhy old leadership models need to be reshaped for a new eraWhat great leaders do differently to thrive in the globally connected enterpriseA new leadership model custom-built for today's workforce realitiesAdvice from the greats for those looking to advance their leadership and management effectiveness for the virtual workforceThe virtual workforce is a relatively new phenomenon. The Virtual Distance Model provides the quantitative data and predictive power needed to understand how new behaviors, born out of the Digital Age, impact performance, innovation, and other critical success factors. And now the time has come to reshape leadership models to best serve worldwide organizations in the twenty-first century. Leading the Virtual Workforce does just that—paving the way for future leaders to create unmatched competitive advantage and performance improvements in the growing world of virtual work.

LEADING THE VIRTUAL WORKFORCE

World markets are unsteady, unemployment is on the rise, housing foreclosures are up, asset values are down, and the political landscape is shifting. Under such tumultuous conditions, people often look to leaders to soothe battered nerves. But in today''s rough and tumble environment, there are reportedly few leaders the average person relies upon.

Over 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in the midst of a major leadership crisis. And over 75 percent of executives from around the world are seriously concerned about whether businesses can develop good leaders for the future. And yet not one leadership book squarely addresses the issue of the changed workforce, the virtual workforce, and why old leadership models just don''t work—until now.

Leading the Virtual Workforce builds off the ground-breaking concept of Virtual Distance introduced in Sobel Lojeski''s seminal first book, Uniting the Virtual Workforce. And in never-before-published interviews, leaders from IBM, Merck, Western Union, Alcatel-Lucent, HP, AT&T, and more share detailed case studies about what''s different about leadership today and how to become a great leader in the Digital Age. Leading the Virtual Workforce covers:

The most common myths about leadership for today''s virtual workforce Why old leadership models need to be reshaped for a new era What great leaders do differently to thrive in the globally connected enterprise A new leadership model custom-built for today''s workforce realities Advice from the greats for those looking to advance their leadership and management effectiveness for the virtual workforce

The virtual workforce is a relatively new phenomenon. The Virtual Distance Model provides the quantitative data and predictive power needed to understand how new behaviors, born out of the Digital Age, impact performance, innovation, and other critical success factors. And now the time has come to reshape leadership models to best serve worldwide organizations in the twenty-first century. Leading the Virtual Workforce does just that—paving the way for future leaders to create unmatched competitive advantage and performance improvements in the growing world of virtual work.

LEADING THE VIRTUAL WORKFORCE

World markets are unsteady, unemployment is on the rise, housing foreclosures are up, asset values are down, and the political landscape is shifting. Under such tumultuous conditions, people often look to leaders to soothe battered nerves. But in today''s rough and tumble environment, there are reportedly few leaders the average person relies upon.

Over 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in the midst of a major leadership crisis. And over 75 percent of executives from around the world are seriously concerned about whether businesses can develop good leaders for the future. And yet not one leadership book squarely addresses the issue of the changed workforce, the virtual workforce, and why old leadership models just don''t work—until now.

Leading the Virtual Workforce builds off the ground-breaking concept of Virtual Distance introduced in Sobel Lojeski''s seminal first book, Uniting the Virtual Workforce. And in never-before-published interviews, leaders from IBM, Merck, Western Union, Alcatel-Lucent, HP, AT&T, and more share detailed case studies about what''s different about leadership today and how to become a great leader in the Digital Age. Leading the Virtual Workforce covers:

The most common myths about leadership for today''s virtual workforce Why old leadership models need to be reshaped for a new era What great leaders do differently to thrive in the globally connected enterprise A new leadership model custom-built for today''s workforce realities Advice from the greats for those looking to advance their leadership and management effectiveness for the virtual workforce

The virtual workforce is a relatively new phenomenon. The Virtual Distance Model provides the quantitative data and predictive power needed to understand how new behaviors, born out of the Digital Age, impact performance, innovation, and other critical success factors. And now the time has come to reshape leadership models to best serve worldwide organizations in the twenty-first century. Leading the Virtual Workforce does just that—paving the way for future leaders to create unmatched competitive advantage and performance improvements in the growing world of virtual work.

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

This revised second edition presents 15 years of data on Virtual Distance metrics and their predictive impact on organizational success factors shedding new light on how to correct for communication challenges that often show up as a foggy set of digital disconnects where the vitality of the virtual workforce often gets lost in transmission.This still-evolving Digital Age conundrum continues to present new complications. The rise of remote work which rests on an increasing reliance on electronic communication and the overall growth of virtual interactions has led to the escalation of a phenomenon called Virtual Distance. Virtual Distance, which influences our behavior through three components Physical Distance, Operational Distance, and Affinity Distance affects not only how we relate to others thousands of miles away but even to co-workers sitting right next to each other!  Perhaps even more problematic, Virtual Distance causes measureable malfunctions in teamwork, innovation, leader effectiveness and overall performance. But it doesn’t have to be this way.The Power of Virtual Distance offers specific, proven and predictable solutions that can reverse these trends and turn Virtual Distance into a unification strategy to capture untapped competitive advantage.Surprised? The Power of Virtual Distance, 2nd Edition is a must-read for leadership who want to understand the true and quantifiable costs of the virtual workplace.  For the first time ever, readers can take the guesswork out of managing the virtual workforce by applying a mathematical approach derived from the extensive Virtual Distance data set:  The Virtual Distance Ratio.   The Virtual Distance Ratio can precisely pinpoint the particular impacts of Virtual Distance on the organization’s critical success factors.  Beyond business metrics, Virtual Distance solutions also detail ways to restore meaningfulness and well-being into people’s experience of work, enhancing life lived in the Digital Age. The Power of Virtual Distance reveals an updated set of data, including the first award-winning analysis, collected from an extended range of executives to individual contributors, that represent situations and solutions in more than 36 industries in 55 countries across the globe. Readers will get a “first look” at the data and its revelations on how to be less isolated and more integrated.Helping managers globally, this book:  Offers new, real-world case studies and a chance for readers to participate in thought experiments to help with personal performance, group synergy and by extension, relationship dynamics of all kindsDemonstrates (with statistically significant trend analyses) that Virtual Distance is growing at exponential rates in every corner of communities worldwideOffers expert advice on how to manage the “unintended human consequences” of today’s digital technologiesCompanies that successfully harness the power of Virtual Distance demonstrate better performance. The second edition of The Power of Virtual Distance is a valuable, one-of-a-kind resource for everyone – from the C-suite to human resource professionals; from divisional leaders to project managers.  Everyone in the organization can benefit by discovering how to improve financials, innovation, trust, employee engagement, satisfaction, organizational citizenship and other key performance indicators.  And perhaps best of all, by following the prescriptions on how to reduce Virtual Distance, the entire workforce will have the tools they need to bring about a revival of meaning, purpose and an enlivened sense of “humanhood” back into everyday work and everyday life.

This revised second edition presents 15 years of data on Virtual Distance metrics and their predictive impact on organizational success factors shedding new light on how to correct for communication challenges that often show up as a foggy set of digital disconnects where the vitality of the virtual workforce often gets lost in transmission.

This still-evolving Digital Age conundrum continues to present new complications. The rise of remote work which rests on an increasing reliance on electronic communication and the overall growth of virtual interactions has led to the escalation of a phenomenon called Virtual Distance. Virtual Distance, which influences our behavior through three components Physical Distance, Operational Distance, and Affinity Distance affects not only how we relate to others thousands of miles away but even to co-workers sitting right next to each other!  Perhaps even more problematic, Virtual Distance causes measureable malfunctions in teamwork, innovation, leader effectiveness and overall performance. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Power of Virtual Distance offers specific, proven and predictable solutions that can reverse these trends and turn Virtual Distance into a unification strategy to capture untapped competitive advantage.

Surprised? 

The Power of Virtual Distance, 2nd Edition is a must-read for leadership who want to understand the true and quantifiable costs of the virtual workplace.  For the first time ever, readers can take the guesswork out of managing the virtual workforce by applying a mathematical approach derived from the extensive Virtual Distance data set:  The Virtual Distance Ratio.   The Virtual Distance Ratio can precisely pinpoint the particular impacts of Virtual Distance on the organization’s critical success factors.  Beyond business metrics, Virtual Distance solutions also detail ways to restore meaningfulness and well-being into people’s experience of work, enhancing life lived in the Digital Age. The Power of Virtual Distance reveals an updated set of data, including the first award-winning analysis, collected from an extended range of executives to individual contributors, that represent situations and solutions in more than 36 industries in 55 countries across the globe. Readers will get a “first look” at the data and its revelations on how to be less isolated and more integrated.

Helping managers globally, this book: 

Offers new, real-world case studies and a chance for readers to participate in thought experiments to help with personal performance, group synergy and by extension, relationship dynamics of all kinds Demonstrates (with statistically significant trend analyses) that Virtual Distance is growing at exponential rates in every corner of communities worldwide Offers expert advice on how to manage the “unintended human consequences” of today’s digital technologies

Companies that successfully harness the power of Virtual Distance demonstrate better performance. The second edition of The Power of Virtual Distance is a valuable, one-of-a-kind resource for everyone – from the C-suite to human resource professionals; from divisional leaders to project managers.  Everyone in the organization can benefit by discovering how to improve financials, innovation, trust, employee engagement, satisfaction, organizational citizenship and other key performance indicators.  And perhaps best of all, by following the prescriptions on how to reduce Virtual Distance, the entire workforce will have the tools they need to bring about a revival of meaning, purpose and an enlivened sense of “humanhood” back into everyday work and everyday life.

This revised second edition presents 15 years of data on Virtual Distance metrics and their predictive impact on organizational success factors shedding new light on how to correct for communication challenges that often show up as a foggy set of digital disconnects where the vitality of the virtual workforce often gets lost in transmission.

This still-evolving Digital Age conundrum continues to present new complications. The rise of remote work which rests on an increasing reliance on electronic communication and the overall growth of virtual interactions has led to the escalation of a phenomenon called Virtual Distance. Virtual Distance, which influences our behavior through three components Physical Distance, Operational Distance, and Affinity Distance affects not only how we relate to others thousands of miles away but even to co-workers sitting right next to each other!  Perhaps even more problematic, Virtual Distance causes measureable malfunctions in teamwork, innovation, leader effectiveness and overall performance. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Power of Virtual Distance offers specific, proven and predictable solutions that can reverse these trends and turn Virtual Distance into a unification strategy to capture untapped competitive advantage.

Surprised? 

The Power of Virtual Distance, 2nd Edition is a must-read for leadership who want to understand the true and quantifiable costs of the virtual workplace.  For the first time ever, readers can take the guesswork out of managing the virtual workforce by applying a mathematical approach derived from the extensive Virtual Distance data set:  The Virtual Distance Ratio.   The Virtual Distance Ratio can precisely pinpoint the particular impacts of Virtual Distance on the organization’s critical success factors.  Beyond business metrics, Virtual Distance solutions also detail ways to restore meaningfulness and well-being into people’s experience of work, enhancing life lived in the Digital Age. The Power of Virtual Distance reveals an updated set of data, including the first award-winning analysis, collected from an extended range of executives to individual contributors, that represent situations and solutions in more than 36 industries in 55 countries across the globe. Readers will get a “first look” at the data and its revelations on how to be less isolated and more integrated.

Helping managers globally, this book: 

Offers new, real-world case studies and a chance for readers to participate in thought experiments to help with personal performance, group synergy and by extension, relationship dynamics of all kinds Demonstrates (with statistically significant trend analyses) that Virtual Distance is growing at exponential rates in every corner of communities worldwide Offers expert advice on how to manage the “unintended human consequences” of today’s digital technologies

Companies that successfully harness the power of Virtual Distance demonstrate better performance. The second edition of The Power of Virtual Distance is a valuable, one-of-a-kind resource for everyone – from the C-suite to human resource professionals; from divisional leaders to project managers.  Everyone in the organization can benefit by discovering how to improve financials, innovation, trust, employee engagement, satisfaction, organizational citizenship and other key performance indicators.  And perhaps best of all, by following the prescriptions on how to reduce Virtual Distance, the entire workforce will have the tools they need to bring about a revival of meaning, purpose and an enlivened sense of “humanhood” back into everyday work and everyday life.