Can distributed workgroups work without tears? Lessons learnt from coordinating a dispersed organization

We present the practical lessons gleaned from managing a remote workgroup that is fully distributed. Info-India´s coordinators are dispersed all over the globe, with its activities being conducted and coordinated exclusively via the Internet. After briefly discussing the structure of Info-India, we focus on how it functions as a distributed workgroup. Using Info-India as a case study, we demonstrate how the structure and communication of a distributed organization can be geared to support the achievement of its goals. Our experience shows that the success of such an enterprise depends on an intelligently chosen, flexible organizational structure, which, in keeping with the fluid, non-hierarchical culture of the Internet, must emphasize a functional organizational hierarchy as opposed to the more conventional pyramidal organizational hierarchy. The lessons learnt from this exercise, we believe, provide valuable insights about effective communication strategies at a time when conventional modes of communication are undergoing rapid transformation, and also highlight techniques that will be useful for running “officeless” organizations of the future