There are many terms for virtual, distributed, far-flung, non-collocated, remote (get the idea?) teams. And lots of clever phrases for same: "working together apart" (sub-title of Enterprise Networking by our old colleagues Ray Grenier and George Metes); The Distance Manager (by other colleagues, Kimball Fisher and Mareen Fisher); and, a phrase I took my issue with directly to the author, "the boundaryless organization," popularized by Jack Welch.
What's my beef with that phrase? Organizations need boundaries for fiscal, governance, and practical reasons. Without them, everything is just one big mush.
But (and to the point of this post) today I found a new one that I like: Managing without walls, which came across in an article by Shyamal Majumdar in India's Business Standard online. Think about it: when we take down walls, whether physical, organizational, psychological, or emotional, we let in a lot more light. A very good way to manage, indeed.
