Virtual teams - are they working hard or hard work?
Spiralling travel costs, environmental considerations and the threat of terrorist attacks are some of the factors that have encouraged organisations to reduce non-essential business travel, but this alone does not explain the rise of virtual teams - it is the potential business benefits that are driving their growth. Apart from the significant savings in time and travel costs, supporters of virtual teams report many project-related benefits, including faster time to market, quicker decisions, greater flexibility and improved productivity. A research manager in a global pharmaceutical company described how he was able to reduce the cycle time to deploy a solution from 11 days to 8 days by using virtual teams. This enabled him to deliver more deployments at lower costs, with typical team cost savings of 30 percent on each deployment.
Individual team members believe that they can use the downtime saved from travelling for important innovative, creative work that really adds value and improves their job satisfaction. A US telecomms marketing manager explained how he had been asked to travel to Europe to do a one hour sales pitch to a European marketing team meeting. He suggested joining the meeting by video conference, saving two days of his own time and over £5,000 in expenses. Virtual teams promise important benefits for both team members and managers. However, new skills, management styles, processes and working practices are essential to make virtual team working effective across distance, time zones and cultures. Industry experience indicates that the biggest barriers to effective virtual team performance are: • virtual teams try to operate like traditional project teams • managers try to lead in the traditional way • team members don't see each other often enough • team members have different priorities • the activities of the team are not visible to the rest of the organisation. These are issues that managers and team members must tackle to operate effectively.
Team composition: Different types of team are emerging, including: • Executive teams sharing responsibility for managing across boundaries • Project teams responsible for developing products or services or completing other projects • Community of practice teams developing informally to share knowledge and experience. The team structure can be fluid, depending on the stage of the project. Individual members are likely to have different levels of involvement and some may participate in a number of teams. Teams may form and reform continuously, adapting to priorities and responsibilities. Virtual teams, like any team, will probably be multi-disciplined. However, they can also include temporary or permanent members from outside the organisation such as independent research organisations, suppliers, consultants, partners and customers, helping to extend the organisation’s capability through knowledge networks that cross corporate boundaries. The wide-ranging structure and complex reporting relationships found in virtual teams mean that traditional approaches to management are no longer appropriate. As a leading management thinker commented, “Old styles of command and control don’t work in the virtual world.”
Collaboration: Collaboration is at the heart of virtual teamworking, so it’s essential to provide an infrastructure to support effective communication, collaboration and information access for all team members. The technology exists to support virtual working with solutions like: • secure wide area networks • audio and video conferencing • desktop video conferencing • mobile video conferencing • web conferencing • virtual meeting rooms • web portals • document formats such as PDF and XML • groupware • collaboration software such as Outlook and Project • instant messaging • email • knowledge databases.
It’s not just about technology - managers and team members need to understand more about group dynamics and the way people work remotely. For example, it’s important to distinguish between hot and cold meeting tools. Hot tools like video conferencing bring a face-to-face dimension to virtual meetings, so it is a more appropriate tool for sessions that require discussion and more complex decision making. Cold tools like telephone or email, on the other hand, are ideal for routine group communications or information sharing. Here’s advice from a marketing manager in the videoconferencing business, “People have to understand how to use collaboration tools, so training may be important. It’s essential to design and integrate tools that fit the team environment, rather than forcing the team to adapt its behaviour to the latest software.”
Before a virtual team can work effectively, it’s essential to train people in how to work remotely - the style is different from face-to-face meetings. That means building trust among team members by delivering on promises, encouraging openness about what is expected of teams, and ensuring acceptance of other members and their strengths. This can be achieved by engaging the team in setting expectations about their behaviour and performance, and determining as a team, how they address and resolve conflict.
Community: Building a sense of community in the team is key to overcoming barriers like this, as a US-based marketing director explained, “Members and managers have to work at creating community across distances because it doesn’t happen naturally the way it does in an office. There’s no virtual coffee machine in cyberspace.” Despite the operational benefits of virtual meetings, some face to face meetings will be an essential part of the process, because people react differently. A live kick-off meeting to bring everyone together, introduce the concept of virtual team working, agree processes, and share experience is a good starting point, with occasional live meetings to maintain team spirit. Encouraging more regular informal interaction between team members can also help to build community. This can help to give team members a wider perspective and ensure that they don’t just take account of local interests. The aim is to get members to share ownership of a project so you can draw on skills in different countries and pool experience.
Communications: Managing a virtual team encompasses the whole spectrum of communications and project management. Because of the complexities of team composition and distance, a formal communications structure is more important than it would be in a traditional team operating in the same location. Team members need to agree how and when to communicate. That means establishing a good information flow and agreeing to shared objectives. It’s vital to record and share all the key decisions and commitments to action so information sharing should be built into the organisation's strategic plan. It must be easy for team members to contact each other. A marcomms manager in a global company commented, “We use directories to help people outside Europe identify other team members. We also encourage people to share calendars, and remind everyone of their time zones, so other members know when they are available. Recently we put a code of conduct in place that states how quickly people should respond to each other.” A knowledge base can help to reduce unnecessary communications by placing all important information in a secure portal, with alerts to team members when new information is available. The knowledge base can also provide useful induction material for new team members, so it’s useful to record the context, as well as the actual decisions. Communications can also play a part team in maintaining team spirit. Members working remotely report that they feel an email from a manager or team leader to say thanks, or a conference call to make it more personal can help team members feel that their contributions are recognised. Encouraging and providing feedback on all team activities is vital.
Management style: Managers of virtual teams frequently ask, “How can I get things done through others when I'm remote and have no line authority? How can I trust people when I can’t see them? Regular face-to-face meetings are impractical, it’s finding a way of managing effectively and finding the right balance of control and autonomy in the way we all work together.” Commentators report that the “command and control” style of management doesn’t work in a virtual environment. Issues are determined by expertise within the group, not by traditional corporate hierarchy. Listening, patience and sensitivity are key to a more consensual style of management that allows everyone to have a say. A good virtual manager will set objectives, bring people in, eliminate distractions, steer the direction, set clear roles and control participation. As one manager explained, "You have to accept that your people are remote and learn to manage that way. It's clear that I had not kept the balance of control and autonomy up to date in my team. They have more experience now and were quite capable of making decisions, but I had not changed the way I managed them. Now team members make local decisions themselves much faster." Managing in a virtual environment means designing processes and creating structures that will allow the team to function effectively. Key actions include: • train members and managers in new team working strategies • change the culture of organisation to support new structures and processes • shape reward systems to reflect the new virtual structures • embed IT systems to support teams • make sure team members have resources they need before meetings start • introduce new management, measurement and control systems • mentor team members to get best results.
Hard work or working hard? Virtual teams have already proved that they are working hard, cutting time to market, improving decision making and reducing travel costs. However, experience also indicates that organisations have to invest time and effort to make virtual teams work effectively. As a European marketing manager stressed, “Simply bringing together people from remote locations and calling them a virtual team without training, support and infrastructure will not produce results. It takes a process of change for both managers and members to make virtual teams work hard.”
