Getting Unreal

The manager at a rapidly growing company explains how in the virtual company, air managers and video pinheads rule.

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In the virtual company, air managers and video pinheads rule

In a certain sense, our company started as a virtual -- meaning "less than real" -- company. It was only a handful of people working out of a converted apartment. Decisions? They were made by consensus because everyone talked to everyone else every day about what he or she was doing.

How we yearned to become a real company -- with receptionists and stationery and a corporate logo and a decision-making structure.

And in accordance with the old Chinese curse, we got our wish. We grew -- there were more than 100 of us -- and soon we needed receptionists and a human-resources department and endless meetings to settle what once was decided around the water cooler.

Then we were acquired, and we got a new boss to match our new corporate trappings. He immediately sensed that we were getting fragmented and decided that we needed to move to a place where we could all be on one floor again.

We ended up in four locations in two states. He ended up out the door.

The new new boss took note of our geographical dispersion and announced that we were going to become a virtual company. Because "virtual" is now the opposite of "real world," we figured that our soon-to-be virtual company would institute digital and electronic versions of our tangible activities.

We would have E-mail instead of postal mail. We would have digitized logos on computer screens instead of stationery. We would telecommute instead of drive our 3-D cars up and down the old noninformation (read "asphalt") superhighway.

Then we began to think about actual work or, more precisely, meetings. What was the virtual company going to do about meetings?

First we turned to the telephone.

Now, most of you have been at a meeting in which at least one person is virtual. That's the person who's participating by telephone. (Notice the speakerphone on the conference table.) And you've seen how the speakerphone virtual executive (SVE) becomes the most important person present (virtually speaking) because he or she has to be linked in before the meeting can start.

Everything has to be explained to the SVE. That makes the SVE much more important than if he or she had flown in for the meeting like a real person and knew what was going on.

If you've ever been the SVE, you've likely realized how anonymous you truly are in your iconic representation, a wired box on a tabletop. Perhaps you realized that just after the meeting, when no one remembered to turn you off and the real people nearest you began talking about their love affairs.

Technology, of course, is the great equalizer. Our telecommunications companies have developed virtual technologies that have turned all of us into ignorant boxes on tabletops.

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