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2015-03-18 09:39:57
Keith Ferrazzi
From the December 2014 Issue
Virtual teams ones made up of people in different physical locations are on
the rise. As companies expand geographically and as telecommuting becomes more
common, work groups often span far-flung offices, shared workspaces, private
homes, and hotel rooms. When my firm, Ferrazzi Greenlight, recently surveyed
1,700 knowledge workers, 79% reported working always or frequently in dispersed
teams. Armed with laptops, Wi-Fi, and mobile phones, most professionals can do
their jobs from anywhere.
The appeal of forming virtual teams is clear. Employees can manage their work
and personal lives more flexibly, and they have the opportunity to interact
with colleagues around the world. Companies can use the best and lowest-cost
global talent and significantly reduce their real estate costs.
But virtual teams are hard to get right. In their seminal 2001 study of 70 such
groups, professors Vijay Govindarajan and Anil Gupta found that 82% fell short
of their goals and 33% rated themselves as largely unsuccessful. A 2005
Deloitte study of IT projects outsourced to virtual work groups found that 66%
failed to satisfy the clients requirements. And in our research, we ve
discovered that most people consider virtual communication less productive than
face-to-face interaction, and nearly half admit to feeling confused and
overwhelmed by collaboration technology.
There is good news, however. A 2009 study of 80 global software teams by
authors from BCG and WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management indicates that
well-managed dispersed teams can actually outperform those that share office
space. Similarly, an Aon Consulting report noted that using virtual teams can
improve employee productivity; some organizations have seen gains of up to 43%.
So how do you create and lead an effective virtual team? There s a lot of
advice out there, but through our research and our experience helping
organizations navigate collaboration challenges, we ve concluded that there are
four must-haves: the right team, the right leadership, the right touchpoints,
and the right technology. By following simple high-return practices for each,
managers can maximize the productivity of teams they must lead virtually.
The Right Team
Team composition should be your starting point. You won t get anywhere without
hiring (or developing) people suited to virtual teamwork, putting them into
groups of the right size, and dividing the labor appropriately.
People.
We ve found that successful virtual team players all have a few things in
common: good communication skills, high emotional intelligence, an ability to
work independently, and the resilience to recover from the snafus that
inevitably arise. Awareness of and sensitivity to other cultures is also
important in global groups. When building a team, leaders should conduct
behavioral interviews and personality tests like the Myers-Briggs to screen for
all those qualities. If you inherit a team, use the same tools to take stock of
your people and assess their weaknesses; then train them in the skills they re
lacking, encourage them to coach one another, and consider reassignment for
those who don t make progress.
Size.
Teams have been getting larger and larger, sometimes even exceeding 100 people
for complex projects, according to one study. But our work with companies from
large multinationals to tiny start-ups has taught us that the most effective
virtual teams are small ones fewer than 10 people. OnPoint Consulting s
research supports this: Of the virtual teams the firm studied, the worst
performers had 13 members or more. Social loafing is one cause. Research
shows that team members reduce effort when they feel less responsible for
output. The effect kicks in when teams exceed four or five members. As groups
grow, another challenge is ensuring inclusive communication. The late Harvard
psychology professor Richard Hackman noted that it takes only 10 conversations
for every person on a team of five to touch base with everyone else, but that
number rises to 78 for a team of 13. Thus to optimize your group s performance,
don t assemble too many players.
Roles.
When projects require the efforts of multiple people from various departments,
we devise appropriate subteams. Our approach is similar to the X-team strategy
advocated by MIT professor Deborah Ancona, who defines three tiers of team
members: core, operational, and outer. The core consists of executives
responsible for strategy. The operational group leads and makes decisions about
day-to-day work but doesn t tackle the larger issues handled by the core. And
the outer network consists of temporary or part-time members who are brought in
for a particular stage of the project because of their specialized expertise.
Ferrazzi Greenlight worked with a large multinational manufacturing company to
help a dispersed team make better cross-division decisions, particularly when
product output from one area fed others. The group was composed of more than 30
members a mix of HQ, operational, and divisional leaders, some of whom reported
to others. While many had knowledge vital to the work at hand, a fair number
were included on an honorary basis. By the time we were asked to help,
teammates openly acknowledged that they were in disarray and unable to achieve
their financial goals. We brought everyone together for a face-to-face summit
and then broke the group into smaller constituencies to brainstorm short-term
wins. Those subteams continued to meet virtually after all parties were back in
their respective offices. One group, made up of five divisional GMs, latched
onto the goal of greater cross-selling and had a near-immediate success story:
As a small, narrowly focused team, they were able to recognize that a plentiful
stabilization agent used in ice cream could be repurposed to replace a scarce
agent needed by other customers, including makers of hairstyling products and
fracking fluids.
The Right Leadership
A recent study of engineering groups showed that the best predictor of success
for managers leading dispersed teams is experience doing it before. That said,
we ve seen even novices excel by practicing some key behaviors that, while also
critical in face-to-face settings, must be amplified in virtual ones:
Fostering trust.
Trust starts with respect and empathy. So, early on, leaders should encourage
team members to describe their backgrounds, the value they hope to add to the
group, and the way they prefer to work. Another practice, utilized by Tony
Hsieh and Jenn Lim at their entirely virtual organization, Delivering
Happiness, is to ask new hires to give video tours of their workspaces. This
allows colleagues to form mental images of one another when they re later
communicating by e-mail, phone, or text message. Remember too that relationship
building should be an ongoing process. While employees who are in the same
office commonly chat about their lives, virtual teammates do so much more
rarely. Try taking five minutes at the beginning of conference calls for
everyone to share a recent professional success or some personal news. This is
probably the easiest way to overcome the isolation that can creep in when
people don t work together physically.
Encouraging open dialogue.
If you ve established trust, you ve set everyone up for open dialogue, or
observable candor a behavior that professors James O Toole and the late Warren
Bennis described as a foundation of successful teamwork. Our own recent study
of 50 financial firms confirmed that leaders of dispersed groups, in
particular, must push members to be frank with one another. One way to do this
is by modeling caring criticism. When delivering negative feedback, use
phrases like I might suggest and Think about this. When receiving such
feedback, thank the person who offered it and confirm points of agreement. A
tactic for conference calls is to designate one team member to act as the
official advocate for candor noticing and speaking up when something is being
left unsaid and calling out criticism that s not constructive. On the flip
side, you should also occasionally recognize people for practices that improve
team communication and collaboration.
Clarifying goals and guidelines.
Management gurus from John Kotter to Chip and Dan Heath acknowledge the
importance of establishing a common purpose or vision, while also framing the
work in terms of team members individual needs and ambitions. Explain to
everyone why you are coming together and what benefits will result, and then
keep reiterating the message.
Specific guidelines for team interaction are equally vital; research shows that
rules reduce uncertainty and enhance trust in social groups, thereby improving
productivity. Agree on how quickly team members should respond to queries and
requests from one another, and outline follow-up steps if someone is slow to
act. Virtual teammates often find themselves saying, I thought it was obvious
that or I didn t think I needed to spell that out. So also insist that
requests be specific. Instead of saying Circle back to me, state whether you
want to give final input on a decision or simply be informed after the decision
is made. If you have a conference call about project details, follow up with an
e-mail to minimize misunderstandings.
Also make it clear that multitasking on calls isn t OK. According to a recent
study, 82% of people admit to doing other things from surfing the web to using
the bathroom during team calls. But virtual collaboration requires that
everyone be mentally present and engaged. Explain your policy, and when the
group has a virtual meeting, regularly call on people to share their thoughts.
Better yet, switch to video, which can essentially eliminate multitasking.
Delivering Happiness finds that using video also reinforces one of the company
s core values: having fun. At the start of videoconference calls, participants
pretend to make direct eye contact as their images appear side by side
on-screen, much like the opening of the hit 1970s TV show, The Brady Bunch. New
agenda items are often introduced with music for example, to lead into a
discussion on driving the firm s long-term growth, the emcee might play Stayin
Alive by the Bee Gees, causing everyone to burst into dance. The fun and
camaraderie match anything coworkers experience in person while ensuring that
people are engaged in the conversation and focused on the specific tasks or
topics at hand.
The Right Touchpoints
Virtual teams should come together in person at certain times. Here are the
stages at which it s most critical:
Kickoff.
An initial meeting, face-to-face if possible and using video if not, will go a
long way toward introducing teammates, setting expectations for trust and
candor, and clarifying team goals and behavioral guidelines. Eye contact and
body language help to kindle personal connections and the swift trust that
allows a group of strangers to work together before long-term bonds develop.
This is when you can assess team dynamics and work to bridge specific gaps for
example, by assigning an achievable task to a pair of dissimilar colleagues,
allowing them a small win as HBS professor Teresa Amabile calls it together.
Onboarding.
Too often, plans for bringing new people onto a virtual team consist of a short
e-mail or conference-call introduction to the rest of the group and a dozen or
more documents that the newcomers are supposed to read and digest. A much
better approach is to give them the same in-person welcome you gave the group.
Fly them into headquarters or another location to meet with you and others who
will be important to their success. Encourage them to videoconference with the
rest of their teammates. We also recommend pairing newcomers with a mentor who
can answer questions quickly but personally the equivalent of a friendly
colleague with an office around the corner.
Milestones.
Virtual team leaders need to continually motivate members to deliver their
best, but e-mail updates and weekly conference calls are not enough to sustain
momentum. In the absence of visual cues and body language, misunderstandings
often arise, especially on larger teams. Team members begin to feel
disconnected and less engaged, and their contributions to the project decline.
So get people together to celebrate the achievement of short-term goals or to
crack tough problems.
Ritesh Idnani, founder and CEO of Seamless Health, a health care start-up that
relies on dispersed teams of managers, is adamant about bringing everyone
together in person at least quarterly. Also, whenever someone new joins the
team, he allocates two weeks for that individual to talk to colleagues deemed
important to know, who can share information about the company and the job.
After that, I ask the person to sit down with me and tell me what he or she
learned, says Idnani. Not only does the new hire gain valuable insights, but
Idnani does too. You end up learning a lot from someone coming from the
outside with a fresh pair of eyes.
The Right Technology
In our experience, even top-notch virtual teams those with the most-talented
workers, the finest leadership, and frequent touchpoints can be felled by poor
technology. We recommend using platforms that integrate all types of
communication and include these key components:
Conference calling.
Look for systems that don t require access codes (helpful for team members who
are driving) but do record automatically or with a single click and facilitate
or automate transcription. The best systems even help monitor the time that
each individual spends talking versus listening. Also consider one-on-one and
group videoconferencing, since visual cues help establish empathy and trust.
Direct calling and text messaging.
By supporting real-time conversation between two remote participants, direct
calls are one of the simplest and most powerful tools in the arsenal. And as
teenagers know, texting is a surprisingly effective way to maintain personal
relationships.
Discussion forums or virtual team rooms.
Software ranging from Microsoft SharePoint to Moot allows team members to
present issues to the entire group, for colleagues to study or comment on when
they have time. Scholars refer to this sort of collaboration as messy talk
and say it s critical for completing complex projects. People can even weigh in
on topics outside their domain and still offer useful input; research has shown
that the best solutions to problems often come from unexpected sources. All
interaction is documented and therefore becomes a searchable database.
When collaboration platforms combine all the elements above, they become the
center of team activities, and using them brings greater efficiency, not extra,
unnecessary work.
John Stepper, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, created the bank s
Communities of Practice electronic discussion forums, in which 100,000
employees now converse with colleagues in similar roles around the world.
Stepper calls this collaboration working out loud. All the activity is open
and searchable, making it easy for existing teams to find subject-matter
experts or review their own work and for ad hoc teams to form around
business-related passions. For example, when Stepper made data on employee
resource use available, a few interested parties self-organized into a virtual
project team to create a system that documents individuals cost savings over
time. As people began to compete for the biggest savings, the company
benefited. What s important is that you re identifying common niches and
connecting people toward some purpose, he explains.
The earliest virtual teams were formed to facilitate innovation among top
experts around the world who didn t have time to travel. Today teams of
physically dispersed employees are more often just a necessity of doing
business. Companies can boost such groups productivity, though even beyond
that of teams who share office space by following the practices we describe
here.
Keith Ferrazzi is the CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research-based consulting
and training company, and the author of Who s Got Your Back (Broadway Books,
2009).
The Dangers of Distance
Geographic separation is just one challenge facing 21st-century work groups.
Karen Sobel Lojeski of Stony Brook University and Richard Reilly of the Stevens
Institute of Technology calculate the virtual distance among teammates by
charting three types of distance:
Physical geographic or temporal separation, or affiliation with different
departments or organizations
Operational variations in team size, the extent of members other commitments,
the amount of face-to-face interaction, or technical skills and support
Affinity differences in culture, rank, or the level of interdependence and
preexisting relationships
When rating teams on a five-point scale in each subcategory, Lojeski and Reilly
found that teams with high virtual-distance scores overall showed drops in:
Trust down 83%
Innovation down 93%
Satisfaction down 80%
Performance down 50%
Even colleagues on different floors in the same building might be considered
physically distant, and operational and affinity distance can certainly affect
colocated workers. But the associated problems are more common and more acute
for virtual teams.