Director
Toko Consultants Private Ltd.
New York, New York and Ngee Ann City, Singapore
If you want to work globally but don't want to spend all of your time on the road, you need to develop a consistent pattern of travel. The goal is to let your overseas clients and customers know when you're available to them in person. That way, it's easier for them to remember when they'll see you next, and it's easier to coordinate schedules.
For three years, I traveled from New York to Tokyo and Singapore every month. Now I make that trip every other month. I'm a legal, accounting, brokerage, and tax consultant in charge of negotiations for a Japanese company that owns a large, upscale mall in Singapore. The mall has 115 tenants, including Cartier, Chanel, and Tiffany & Co. My husband and I lived in Singapore until five years ago, when his company relocated him to New York. That's when I began making those monthly treks to Asia.
I've managed to cut my travel time in half by regularly chatting with and emailing people in other offices about what's going on. I find that casual conversation is the best way to detect issues. I also have a key person to whom I listen carefully. By "key," I don't necessarily mean "high level." That person is someone who is very observant and very good at detecting smoke where there may eventually be fire. She serves as my eyes and ears in Singapore. Above all, she tells me immediately when she suspects that something isn't quite right.
If you need someone to act as your eyes and ears, make sure that person will pass the hot iron quickly. And if that person raises a concern, you must respond promptly. You have to maintain the momentum of the communication if you want it to be effective.
Tokuko Kimura Chapin (toko@pacific.net.sg) works for the Singapore branch of Toshin Development Co., which owns and manages a 770,000-square-foot mall: Takashimaya Shopping Centre at Ngee Ann City, in Singapore. Chapin is a consultant to its senior managers in all aspects of operation and is in charge of negotiations with tenants, legal and financial professionals, government agencies, and others. She has logged more than 1 million miles on United Airlines.
Cofounder and Chairman
Global Business Network
Emeryville, California
I'm chairman of a small consulting firm that helps big companies think about the future. A lot of my work involves meeting with CEOs or other members of a company's senior team. Much of that requires face-to-face contact, but many interactions can be done electronically, using videoconferencing equipment in my home office.
My setup cost $11,000. The price of that equipment has fallen dramatically in the past couple of years. The first time that my equipment saved me a trip to Europe, it paid for itself. What's more, I no longer need a team of technicians to place a videoconference call. My monitor is a 32-inch TV screen, next to which are two small boxes. The camera sits on top of the TV. I sit in an armchair beside the coffee table.
The equipment has improved communication at least as much as it has diminished travel, and it has made contacting people easier -- which means that I communicate with them more. In the long run, though, there may be a sting in the tail of this technology: It may eventually increase my travel load, because the easier it is for me to communicate, the more global my reach can be. And the more people I interact with, the more demand there will be for my physical presence.
Peter Schwartz (schwartz@gbn.org) most recently coauthored "The Long Boom" (Perseus Books, 1999), with Joel Hyatt and Peter Leyden, and "When Good Companies Do Bad Things" (John Wiley & Sons, 1999), with Blair Gibb. He is cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network, a business consultancy that specializes in scenario planning.
Vice President, Workplace Operations and Research
Sun Microsystems Inc.
Palo Alto, California
I'm responsible for setting up Sun Microsystems's offices in a way that makes them conducive to the work that people do. A big part of my job is understanding how people can work together across long distances without having to travel. No matter how good technology is, it goes to waste if the technicians don't understand how people meet. People get a lot of important information from the gestures and facial expressions of others. We arrange teleconferencing equipment to make all attendees -- both local and remote -- appear as if they're sitting at one long table. To do that, we set up a video monitor at one end of the table, so that if you're sitting at a conference table in one location, you see in the monitor an image of the people in the other location sitting across the table from you.
We also discovered that people listening to a speaker from a remote location often feel remote. Presenters attempt to counteract those feelings by giving those in remote locations printouts of their overheads. Bad idea. Instead, give everyone printouts. That way, both local and long-distance groups are looking at the same information, and everyone can understand what's going on.
Eric Richert (eric.richert@eng.sun.com) heads the division of Sun Microsystems that creates workplaces for the company. He is responsible for innovation, research, development, design, construction, IT deployment, and services associated with those offices.
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