Travel Delays Highlight the Need for Virtual Team Strategies
February 22, 2008 by Jason Montero
Flights delayed for hours by Northeast storms – CNN.com 02/22/2008
We’ve been seeing headlines like this all winter, and we see them EVERY winter; even cavemen knew it was going to snow in winter. But the difficulties imposed on business travel have gone beyond the inevitability of weather delays (which aren’t even always weather events according to CNN 5 Things Airlines Won’t Tell You About Weather Delays), they are compounded by a floundering U.S. Airline industry. Consider this report from the AP wire released earlier this month:
2007 Airline Delays 2nd Worst EverFeb 6, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — A quarter of domestic flights failed to arrive on time in 2007 — the industry’s second poorest performance on record — and analysts say it is likely to get worse. More than 26 percent of commercial flights in the U.S. arrived late or were canceled last year as rising passenger demand and an industry preference for smaller planes intensified congestion in the skies and on runways. The air-travel logjam, reported Tuesday by the Department of Transportation, comes as a growing number of air traffic controllers near retirement age — a trend the controllers’ union says will magnify the problem.
Pile on top of all this lost time and frustration the rising cost of travel and it seems pretty clear that something, somewhere has to give. Putting into place some simple virtual office and virtual team strategies can not only serve as a business continuity plan when you or one of your people is stuck on the tarmac in the snow, they can also increase your organization’s communication and collaboration abilities while decreasing the amount of required travel every day.
Let’s face it, at least the cavemen adapted the way they worked to deal with the changes in their environment – it’s called evolution people. Isn’t it time we came in out of the cold?
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