Virtually There?

In fact, local group interaction is quickly becoming one of the most valuable uses of WebEx for this TI team -- even among people who are sitting in the same room. Portions of both of the company's Dallas facilities are outfitted for wireless network connectivity. So these days, when Miller, Maestas, and other local members of the mobility team gather for a meeting, they bring their laptops, make their wireless connections, power up WebEx, and take a personal view of the document under discussion. "It's usually so hard to crowd around a screen to see what people are talking about," says Maestas. "With four laptops, everyone can see the screen. We can share control of the screen and annotate as we go along. At the end of the meeting, everyone has the same version of what we worked on. There's no more confusion."

Consultants: New Behaviors for New Technologies

Some of the the most advanced users of learning and collaboration tools are at the top consulting firms. At Accenture, for example, employees have become virtual maestros of virtual work. They use Centra along with videoconferencing, eRoom online work-flow software, the company's corporate intranet, and their myLearning.com portal. The technology is impressive, but what's most impressive is the way that Accenture's power users have devised small social cues to make sure that virtual work goes as smoothly as face-to-face sessions. They've figured out what it takes to smile, to interrupt, even to yawn online -- which is why the technology works as well as it does.

Joanne McMorrow is someone who has had to think about how she works in order to make technology work. Three years ago, she transitioned from consulting with clients to working on internal knowledge-management projects. "I went from being 100% face-to-face on the consulting side to being 100% virtual in the knowledge-management practice," McMorrow says. Accustomed to jumping on a plane every Sunday night to be at client sites by Monday morning, she had to adjust her habits to join a new team that was spread across multiple cities; face-to-face meetings were a rarity. "It was a drastic change," she says. "You have to be more explicit with colleagues about certain things when you're working virtually."

Now, after changing roles a second time to become a marketing manager in Accenture's human-performance group, McMorrow says she has the virtual routine down pat. She uses Accenture's Knowledge eXchange to share documents and track progress of her group projects, NetMeetings and her telephone to participate in team meetings, and myLearning.com to take courses and track her personal-learning budget. Throughout her workday, McMorrow makes sure to verbalize to colleagues when she's shifting mental gears, when she's stepping away from her desk during a long virtual meeting, and when she needs more feedback. Once a quarter, McMorrow attends an in-person meeting of the entire "people enablement" practice in order to solidify personal connections.

McMorrow's work-style transition is a good illustration of what's involved in successful long-distance collaboration, says Accenture's Zeigler. "There are two important questions," he says. "Who's going to collaborate and for what purpose? And how does the collaborative environment fit into the way people do their work?" According to Zeigler, these are the same issues that companies face when they roll out a virtual strategy enterprisewide. "Take our e-learning strategy," he explains. "MyLearning.com allows employees to sign up for, track, and take courses online. They can also sign up for in-person courses at various locations around the world. Which one they choose depends on the business purpose of the course."

When Accenture consultants search the portal for a course, they can search by service line to view recommendations for the industries in which they consult or by career level to see what courses other consultants are taking. If consultants choose a service-line course, they're likely looking for content-specific knowledge -- which means that they're likely to take the course online. But if they choose a course according to career level, perhaps they are searching for tools that their peers find most useful in their own jobs or for the types of assignments that have been most enriching to their careers -- which would be best translated face-to-face. "In this particular case, the teaming and interpersonal skills learned by taking the course in person are as important as the content gained," explains Zeigler.

Bankers: Less Paper Means More Backers

Any new technology has its share of skeptics. And when that technology shapes how people work, resistance can be intense. With virtual work, one way to overcome resistance is to focus on everyone's favorite enemy: paperwork. More electronic collaboration means less paper documentation.