How to make distance work work

Olson, J. S., & Olson, G. M. (2014). How to make distance work work. interactions, 21(2), 28-35.

Summary

Olson and Olson focus this article on the stresses and issues that come with distributed teams. In their analysis of how distributed teams work they provide practical advice for individuals, managers and organizations to be successful in working across distance. The authors have been conducting research in this field for more than 20 years and have a wealth of knowledge form which to make their recommendations. This article fits nicely into the themes of managing complexity and collaborative leadership. Managing complexity due to the unique nature of working across distance, time and culture. Collaborative leadership in that there is a lot of discussion about communication, communication technologies, data sharing, and computational infrastructure.

Experience

Distributing work is the nature of my organization. What’s nice about this article is that it provides some practical advice for how address the potential issue that come up when working with people in both a distributed fashion and across distance. Our teams are rarely co-located, so this article provides a nice framework to keep in mind when working with the teams we do every day.

KEYWORDS: distance, collaboration, communication, technologies, data sharing, culture, time zones