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INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 FACTORY DAYS By Lisa Bergson Managing, Somehow, by Remote Control Here I am in Taiwan. It's late at night, I'm dead tired, and my computer is possessed by the devil. Who said business travel is fun?
Lately, though, I have to admit to having some control issues. You see, a pickup in overseas sales, combined with the need to promote my new business, Tiger Optics, keeps me on the road much of the time. So, while far from absentee, I am increasingly absent. (That's not to be confused with absent-minded, although recent events, like forgetting my passport on the way to Asia, would tend to indicate otherwise.) OUTSIDE LOOKING IN. Part of the dilemma is that my business lacks a general manager to stand in when I'm away. Like most small companies, we have division heads who know their areas, but we can't afford someone just to oversee day-to-day operations -- at least not yet. "I can't be Ms. Outside and Ms. Inside," I carp to my people. To their credit, however, they are demonstrating more and more judgment and teamwork when it comes to solving problems in my absence. Adept at firefighting, my newly hired production manager, Rich Flocco, is systematically addressing a key vendor's quality problems while I'm in Taiwan preparing for a major meeting. "You've got a plan, and that's half the battle," I tell him over the phone. "I'd say that's 90%, and the rest is execution," he replies, with characteristic bravura. Whatever. I can focus on the meeting tomorrow, confident that he's covering that one. ALL WORK, LITTLE PLAY. Rich and my savvier managers e-mail me with updates and leave voicemails or call my cell phone if anything urgent comes up, like resolving a particularly thorny severance or finalizing an urgent contract. Yet, some of my staff still associate travel strictly with vacations. I wince when they tell me to have a good time. It's hard for them to fathom what it's like to manage while contending with different time zones, diets, languages, cultures, and packing and unpacking over working days that stretch well into the night. In their imaginations, time away from the humdrum is fun and glamorous. And, yes, sometimes it is. Mainly, I find it takes a good bit of focus, energy, and discipline to pull off a successful business trip and manage on the fly. While traveling, my goals are to stay on top of the really critical issues, monitor fires, and keep tabs on day-to-day operations. I track orders, shipping, and cash on a daily basis, and keep lists of other items for follow-up. That way I can use the limited phone and e-mail time most effectively. Technology helps. When I'm in a convenient time zone, I take advantage of the breaks between meetings and during road trips to call the plant. As a rule, I try to talk to each of my direct reports at least every other day and connect with other staffers on an as-needed basis. I also attempt to let people know I haven't forgotten them. This week, I managed to catch up with one of our young scientists, who defended his thesis last Friday, and there are two birthdays I still need to acknowledge. If I can't get to them by phone, I'll at least try to e-mail. WAITING GAME. I say "try" because the technology is far from reliable. As I write this, I'm at a large, full-service hotel in Taipei, where it took a day to activate e-mail. I tried four different access numbers for Compuserve and nothing worked. After spending over an hour on the phone with my IT guy, we managed to kluge together a means for me to download and then cut and paste replies into a separate, slow ... very, very slow ... file to send. I finally gave up and went to bed. When I do connect with my folks from overseas, something wonderful happens. I think I may have discovered a secret advantage in managing from afar. My staff becomes more responsive. It's as though they can hear me more clearly without all the "noise" of daily contact. Without all the to-do lists with action items to check off at follow-up meetings, with no time for endless debates over what we should or shouldn't be doing, my requests seem to take on a new clarity and weight. Or maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  Lisa Bergson is President and CEO of both MEECO and Tiger Optics. Before joining MEECO in 1983, Lisa Bergson worked as a business journalist at BusinessWeek and freelanced for many business publications. You can visit her companies' Web sites at www.meeco.com and www.tigeroptics.com, or contact her at lbergson@meeco.com Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | SEPTEMBER |
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