Today we have a guest post by James Ware.  James is the co-founder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program.

We all know there is a virtual explosion of distributed/mobile/flexible work occurring across theeconomy, including large organizations, small businesses, and free agents/entrepreneurs. In fact, our research suggests that fully 15% of the U.S. workforce now spends one or more days a week outside a corporate facility. We project that number to grow beyond 25% within five years.Yet managing mobile workers and distributed teams is an enormously difficult challenge. When your staff is working at great distances from each other, keeping them focused on their tasks and connected with each other and the larger organization often seems nearly impossible.

We've written previously about the "anywhere office" and the growing desire, if not need, of most knowledge workers to tune in and log on from anyplace at any time. But being connected technically is actually only a small part of the solution.

The most frequent objection we hear from managers concerned about the possible loss of shared knowledge and corporate culture when workgroups start operating more virtually is the fear of reduced accidental meetings at the coffee pot or in the hallways. They worry that distributed teams will suffer from a reduction in the serendipity that so often leads to important business breakthroughs--those unplanned, spontaneous conversations between people who don't interact normally in the course of doing their jobs.

More importantly, however, is the need to keep team members focused on common goals. One CEO several years ago posed essential questions about leadership of a distributed workforce:

"How do I know that our 5,000 employees spread out all over the globe are focused minute by minute on doing the things the company needs them to be doing? How do they know in the moment that they are making the decisions and taking the actions we want them to? And how do we know what they're thinking?"

There is no simple answer to this fundamental challenge, but here are four basic principles for connecting distributed team members with each other and the organization at large:

Use Highly Participative Approaches in Distributed Work Environments

People who are involved in decisions affecting their work are much more likely to go along with them. That doesn't mean that you have to get 100% buy-in before doing anything; just being asked about their views will go a long way towards satisfying most people, even if in the end their manager doesn't agree. It's primarily a matter of valuing staff ideas and acknowledging their individual perspectives.

Define and Publish Formal Policies and Procedures for Distributed Work

As soon as you allow employees to work remotely you are opening a can of worms, including legal issues, financial disputes, and potential misunderstandings. Legally, when an employee who is working at home trips over a rug and breaks an arm, is he or she eligible for workers' compensation? Who will pay for the home office furnishings, the telephone that is being used for work, or the Internet connection? And when is the employee expected to be accessible to other employees and management?

It is critically important to treat employees consistently--in all matters, of course, but particularly as they move into flexible work programs. Nothing will stir up employee anger or legal action more quickly than the discovery that some of them are receiving different levels of financial support or being held to different work schedules.

Establish Explicit, Tangible Measures of Individual and Team Performance

This is the single most important thing you can do to keep distributed team members aligned with company goals and each other. Formal performance and productivity measures (here are some tips on being a productive workshifter) serve several important functions:

• They establish clear guidelines and common expectations about how each distributed employee will be measured and rewarded.
  
  
• They help create an atmosphere of accountability in both directions and across the organization.
  
  
• They provide senior management with clear evidence of how cost-effective (or not) the distributed work arrangements are.
  
  
• They help shift the dominant management culture away from managing time spent on tasks to focusing on the results produced.
  

 "Managing by walking around," which was a common rule of thumb in the 1980's and 90's, has deep common-sense appeal in that it encourages managers to be visible and to interact regularly with their subordinates.  In that context, however, "interact" generally meant face-to-face communication (though it also often included peering, uninvited, over employees' shoulders to scrutinize their work).

But clearly that kind of interaction just can't happen in a distributed environment. It's absolutely essential to replace such close-in monitoring of employees' actions with a focus on the results they produce.

Develop Formal Agreements about Regular Interaction

One of the inevitable consequences of working in a distributed team is that members just don't see each other or their managers as often as they do when they are co-located. Yet we all know that more frequent interactions generally lead to higher levels of trust and greater comfort with other team members.

But with distributed teams frequent face-to-face interaction just isn't feasible. However, there are several critical points in the life of a team when being together in-person can make a huge difference:  at the very beginning, as the team converges on a design solution, and as it winds up its work and disbands.

For managers of distributed teams the bottom line is really very simple: Make the invisible visible for team members--be proactive in reaching out and paying attention to the personal/social side of your team's members, no matter where they are physically.

For more information on connecting and engaging distributed teams, read the full whitepaper.