On our last Management Board meeting, we have decided to become a virtual company. Within a year. It was a quick decision. We want to get rid of our offices, do remote management of our staff who will be sitting at any place of the world. One year to go, that could be May 4, 2009. Goosebumps on my skin. It won’t be simple.
I will introduce our organization at a later stage. As a global network organization, we have been working virtually since our beginning. But we maintained a small office, with one permanent employee. I myself, as a CEO, visited our office only once every six weeks for 2-3 days. My management board sits in Netherlands, Austria, Israel, Canada, Norway, Albania; I live in Berlin, Germany but I am on the road most of my time. Other network partners are distributed over all time zones.
So, I know a bit about virtual work: I use Skype more than my mobile phone (I still have a landline, but I don’t use it a lot). I don’t have a Blackberry yet because my notebook is always with me (latest acquisition: Fujitsu-Siemens S6410, a great machine) but I know I will have a Blackberry in a few months (or upgrade my HTC mobile in a way that it does all a Blackberry does). I have tested a lot of collaboration platforms; I am a member of many online communities. I am blogging since more than a year, I am twittering, have an account on Facebook, LinkedIn and half a dozen of other applications. I have outsourced web development to India using ODesk.
Still, we aren’t strict in the way we work virtually. We overuse e-mail instead of more convenient collaboration tools. We do not share files on a common server. We have been using our office for meetings.
Lot of things to do. It is about tools but it is more about people. And it is about change. It will require all of us to work differently. A real journey. You will be part of this journey. At the end, we will not only move into virtuality. We will also be offering services related to the people side of virtual work.
Welcome to the journey.
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