The Power of Virtual Distance A Guide to Productivity and Happiness in the Age of Remote Work

Praise for The Power of Virtual Distance, Second Edition

"It wasn't all that long ago that working over virtual distances was considered a groundbreaking new concept. The authors' first book on the topic, published in 2008, had to be devoted to explaining how to navigate this new style of working. As is often the case, what was once groundbreaking has now become mainstream and routine. Yet, challenges remain, both in how to reap the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls of virtual distance. In The Power of Virtual Distance, Second Edition, the authors address these challenges head on with data from more than 55 countries and over 1,400 case studies across 36 industry sectors. This book is required reading for anyone trying to understand the continuing evolution of the workplace in the digital age."
—IRVING WLADAWSKY-BERGER, IBM VP Emeritus; MIT Research Affiliate

"Lojeski and Reilly bring us something that readers of business books so rarely get—no nonsense, practical guidance built from rigorous predictive metrics. The Power of Virtual Distance, Second Edition pinpoints how to manage both real, psychological, and emotional distance when interacting with digital communication technology—between people sitting thousands of miles apart or people simply sitting right across the same table! It gives all of us who struggle working with talent that's mediated by electronic devices—no matter where they're located—a roadmap for how to do this right!"
—PATRICK J. MCKENNA, author of First Among Equals

New research on the hidden costs of virtualization and how to manage them

The world of work is becoming increasingly virtual. This means much more than the rise of remote work, which comes with its own set of costs and benefits. The challenges of the Digital Age give rise to Virtual Distance—a new phenomenon that profoundly changes how we think and feel about the relationships to each other, ourselves, and the world around us. The transition to a "virtual" workforce—whether in-person or remote—creates real and quantifiable challenges to collaboration and innovation.

The Power of Virtual Distance, Second Edition shows—through new findings from more than 1,400 studies spread across 55 countries that traverse more than 36 industry sectors over the past 15 years—that there are substantially increasing and damaging costs to companies as well as people's personal sense of purpose, as we move deeper into the depths of doing work virtually. The authors then offer scientifically proven methods for measuring these costs and go further to provide predictive solutions on how to manage them into the future.

Wherever your organization is in its understanding of Virtual Distance, this book will show you how to manage the new risks to productivity and human well-being that arise with digital work. With this book, you'll learn how to reignite meaning into the workplace, fully accounting for the costs of virtualization and leading your teams to new heights.

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.