Keep all chiefs around the same fire

Familiarity with the local office's culture and priorities, coupled with an understanding of corporate objectives, can help remote workers keep multiple managers on the same page, says EDS's Laroy.

"You'll never see it on a job description, but keeping everyone on the same page is a survival skill," he says. "I've got three different people whom I introduce as my boss, but only one of them has direct responsibility for my career. Still, I have to deal with them all effectively."

He keeps them all in the loop on all his activities. "If I e-mail one manager, I'll copy the others," Laroy says. "The mistake you have to avoid is dealing separately with managers and having different conversations on the same issue. It's almost suicide."

Study the local culture, learn the native language

Translation and negotiation skills are critical for employees who have multiple managers, says Tim Waire, vice president of business performance improvement and IT at Constellation Energy Group's generation group in Baltimore.

"Sometimes managers' goals are at odds with each other, and you have to negotiate," he notes. "You're forced to wear the hat of the business that wants to move forward with their business plan, but you have to do it in the context of the corporate strategic plan."

For example, when corporate IT recently set an ultra-aggressive schedule for upgrades to Constellation's enterprise suite of financial applications, Waire had to negotiate system downtime that was workable for his business unit but still met corporate IT's timeline. Had he not been totally familiar with the workflows, reporting processes and other business requirements of the local group, negotiating a schedule that was workable for all parties would have been impossible.

"It's a lot more of a business and negotiation function than a pure technology function," Waire says of his role as a line-of-business IT executive. It's also an ideal jumping-off point to a role on the business side or even the corporate CIO's office, he says.