Checklist 1.1.	Type of Virtual Team
Checklist 1.2.	Assessing Critical Success Factors
Exhibit 2.1.	Aligning Social Presence and Information Richness to the Technology
Checklist 3.1.	Suggested Topics for Cultural Training
Checklist 3.2.	Team Culture Profile
Checklist 3.3.	Team Leader Considerations to Ensure That Culture Is Used to the Team’s Advantage
Checklist 3.4.	Keeping a Personal Journal
Checklist 4.1.	Competence Audit
Checklist 4.2.	Individual Competence
Checklist 4.3.	Planning Developmental Actions
Checklist 5.1.	Identification of Sponsors, Stakeholders, and Champions
Checklist 5.2.	Agenda for Validating a Team’s Charter
Table 5.2.	Team Norms
Checklist 5.3.	Technology Planning
Checklist 5.4.	External Boundary Spanning and Communication
Table 5.5.	Documentation and Storage Guidelines
Checklist 5.5.	New Team Member Orientation
Checklist 5.6.	Outcomes for First Team Meeting
Checklist 5.7.	Outcomes for Second Team Meeting
Table 6.1.	Team Member Role Assessment
Checklist 6.1.	Assessing Team Member Competence
Checklist 6.2.	Individual Competence Inventory
Checklist 6.3.	Planning Developmental Actions
Checklist 7.1.	Trust Behaviors
Checklist 7.2.	Trust Log
Checklist 7.3.	Trust Audit
Checklist 7.4.	Defining Your Team’s Trust Radius
Checklist 8.1.	Facilitation Tips for Various Types of Technology
Checklist 9.1.	Transition Point Health Check
Checklist 9.2.	Team Composition Quick Check
Checklist 9.3.	Process Observation

PREFACE

When we wrote the first edition of Mastering Virtual Teams in 1999, we had no idea that our timing for the book would coincide with the start of an era of geopolitical and economic factors that would “flatten” the world. It was only in reading Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005) that we realized the scope of the convergence of megatrends that shaped a workplace where virtual collaboration had become the norm, not the exception. Consequently, Mastering Virtual Teams has had exposure in numerous countries and companies and among countless academics, students, and practitioners who operate in the virtual world that Friedman describes. His triple convergence of workers, workplace, and work processes necessitated multiple forms of communication and collaboration and the escalation of tools and methods for virtual teams. In the handful of years since our book was first published, we have moved from a few of us working on virtual teams once or twice a year to most of us spending some part of every day in a virtual experience. Surely, the next generation of workers will not use the term virtual and will be amused by the “olden days” when work was accomplished each and every day between people face-to-face and when the newest miracle of communication in the workplace was the fax machine.

With that said, communication and collaboration are still the two most important factors in team success. The virtual environment fundamentally continues to transform the ways in which teams operate. Technology introduces a critical variable that radically changes the choices for, and the effectiveness of, communication and collaboration. For example, many of us have struggled through at least one boring and nonproductive videoconference in which the images lagged behind the audio to the point of distraction, and many of us have sent an e-mail or voice mail message in an emotional moment and had it misinterpreted by the recipient.

Crossing geographical boundaries also affects the ways in which virtual teams communicate and collaborate. The preference in some cultures to consider the individual first and then the team may make someone who has grown up in a more collective or group-oriented society feel uncomfortable with the independence of teammates. The practice of “saving face” in some cultures can make a slightly negative e-mail message about a team member’s work a terribly embarrassing experience. Significant differences in time zones often make virtual team meetings inconvenient for some team members.

Although we have the technological capability to work across time and distance and we dream of teams that leverage technology into competitive advantage, the fact is that we still need new competencies and practices to do these things. Leading and working in virtual teams require much more than computers and technology. Success or failure depends on the attainment of competence in and implementation of practices that facilitate working effectively virtually. It is no longer enough to just understand that technology or national culture affects teamwork; successful team leaders and members need tools, techniques, and decision-making strategies that work in a virtual environment.

Who Will Benefit from This Book

This book was created to provide the how-to for people who work in or lead virtual teams. It is targeted at people from large and small organizations as well as at individuals who work independently and need straightforward and down-to-earth advice to make their virtual teams successful. Readers from all cultures and all types of organizations can benefit from this book.

This book offers theoretical and conceptual information about working in and leading virtual teams as the foundation for more practical strategies. It contains many practical tools, including checklists, tables, and worksheets. It also answers some basic questions and offers strategies and techniques that are especially important for people who are new to virtual teams, for example:

• What types of virtual teams are there, and how does the type of team I work on affect how I work?

• How does a virtual team differ from a traditional team?

• How do I start a virtual team; what are the steps and important considerations?

• What are the technological options open to me, and how do I select the most appropriate ones?

• How do I select a technology that matches my team’s task, organizational culture, and team member experience?

• How do the various aspects of national, organizational, and functional cultures affect virtual team performance, and what can I do about them?

• How do I manage the interaction of culture with selecting and using technology, building trust, and team dynamics?

• What are the competencies I need to develop in order to work in or lead a virtual team?

• What is my role as a virtual team leader?

• What is my role as a virtual team member?

• How do I build and maintain trust among team members when we can’t see one another?

This book also provides more advanced information in the areas of team dynamics, virtual meeting facilitation, and working adaptively. It answers questions such as these:

• How do I plan for and facilitate a virtual team meeting?

• How do I leverage technology to make virtual meetings more effective than face-to-face ones?

• How do the dynamics of virtual teams differ from those of traditional teams?

• What are the other team variables, and how can I influence them?

• How can I design team interventions?

• What styles and leadership practices work in an adaptive and virtual environment?

Both of us work in or consult to bottom-line and results-oriented organizations in the public and private sectors. This affects the ways in which we view leadership and the roles of leaders and team members. Although it is likely that our biases will emerge at times and that our North American cultural perspective will show, we have tried to maintain broad and balanced cultural and organizational perspectives.

How to Use This Book

Mastering Virtual Teams has three parts. In Part One, “Understanding Virtual Teams,” we define and explore the complexities of virtual teams. We present the important factors that make a virtual team different from a traditional one. In Chapter One, we describe different types of virtual teams and present a set of critical success factors. We offer team leaders and members recommendations for action to ensure that these success factors are in place. In Chapter Two, we sort through the myriad of information about technology, integrate it, and offer practical guidance about the different technological options available to virtual teams. We provide guidance about what works best in different situations and present criteria to evaluate the usefulness of each technology for a particular team. In Chapter Three, we examine the ways in which national, organizational, and functional cultures affect the performance of virtual teams. We also investigate how culture can be used to leverage performance and, on the darker side, how it can be used as an excuse for nonperformance. Part One provides a foundation for understanding the pragmatic advice in the remainder of the book.

In Part Two, “Creating Virtual Teams,” we present the nuts and bolts and the intricacies of starting a virtual team. This part provides straightforward suggestions, checklists, and worksheets about startup strategies that make virtual teams work. In Chapter Four, we introduce a set of myths and realities about leading virtual teams. We translate these into seven areas of competence that are critical for virtual team leaders. Each type of competence is accompanied by recommendations for developmental activities. A competence assessment is also offered as an individual development planning tool. In Chapter Five, we present a step-by-step process for starting a virtual team. This includes directions, checklists, agendas, worksheets, and techniques for obtaining sponsors, chartering the team, conducting team orientation meetings, team building with different cultural groups, developing team norms, using technology, and planning communication. In Chapter Six, we present two critical roles for virtual team members: autonomy and collaboration. We build a set of team member skills around these two roles and offer competence assessment tools and recommendations for personal development. In Chapter Seven, we cover the critical element of building trust in a virtual team environment. We also describe how trust can be affected by national culture and by the use of technology. This chapter presents a variety of tools, checklists, and exercises that are useful in building and maintaining trust.

In Part Three, “Mastering Virtual Teams,” we offer more advanced information for virtual team leaders and members. In Chapter Eight, we give recommendations for facilitating virtual team meetings. This includes methods for planning and running virtual meetings and for using technology so that the virtual meeting has the potential to surpass a face-to-face meeting. In Chapter Nine, we present a model of team development and team dynamics for virtual teams. We recommend strategies for tracking and diagnosing a virtual team’s effectiveness and provide interventions for dealing with typical problems of virtual teams. In Chapter Ten, we present a model for working and leading in adaptive and unpredictable situations. We also present eight practices that are factors in the success of virtual teams.

New to the Third Edition

The third edition has a number of new components. Given the reality of Moore’s law, we updated the technology section to include instant messaging and personal computing devices. We have added more worksheets and checklists and updated some of the existing ones based on our experience. We have also deleted the specific references to particular companies and their practices and now focus more on ideas, concepts, tools, and methods. This is a reflection of that fact that many companies that were lauded in the 1990s are no longer on top or no longer exist. It is also a reflection of feedback that readers found the checklists and tools much more useful than the examples. Finally, we added a new section in most of the chapters, “Near Virtual Disaster.” These stories of lessons learned are based on firsthand knowledge of problems that occur in a virtual world that did not occur in the real world. The rapid maturing of virtual teams has created a new and different set of problems and opportunities for digitized disasters.

Acknowledgments

Part of what made writing this book so enjoyable was the wonderful support of colleagues, family members, and friends who believed in us and provided ongoing encouragement throughout the writing process. Our husbands, Clay Durr and Robert Snyder, helped proofread and critique many drafts of the manuscript. Clay was also responsible for much of the research and content in Chapter Two.

Blythe Handy contributed countless acts of thoughtfulness and assistance. Jan Moore, Dale Crossman, Debbie Morris, Nikki Adams, Mark Linaugh, Lorence Harmer, Tammy Patrick, Kristan Murphy, and the many colleagues at Whirlpool have been a source of support and caring throughout all three editions of this book. Special thanks go to Dave Whitwam, chairman and CEO of Whirlpool, who offered motivation, interest, and support. We also want to thank Robert Quinn, of the University of Michigan, for his encouragement and advice and Dan O’Neil, John Mankins, and John Newberg for information on NASA’s Virtual Research Center.

Both of us are blessed with wonderful families. Thanks go to Deborah’s mother, Jackie Klotz, who has expressed nothing but pride in our accomplishments, and our brothers and sisters, Susan Peacock, Mike Klotz, Steve Klotz, Janet Dunn, Linda Tennant, and Diane Rudash, and their families, who provided laughter and fun when we needed it most.

The people at Jossey-Bass define true virtual teamwork. In particular, we thank our editor, Neal Maillet, who helped us get this third edition up and running.

We would also like to thank the people who reviewed the manuscript and contributed their valuable comments and recommendations: Sam Garnett, Danny Mittleman, and Gail Greenstein, among many others.

Please feel free to contact us at dduarte2@ix.netcom.com and Nancy_T_Snyder@ whirlpool.com.

February 2006

DEBORAH L. DUARTE
Arlington, Virginia
NANCY TENNANT SNYDER
Benton Harbor, Michigan

THE AUTHORS

DEBORAH L. DUARTE assists leaders, teams, and organizations in creating environments that promote superior performance. She works with a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 companies that span a number of industries, including entertainment and media, financial services, high technology, telecommunications, durable goods, pharmaceuticals, and industrial products, and from leading government and not-for-profit agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the United Nations (UN). Her work with virtual teams integrates approaches from a broad range of disciplines, including organizational behavior, social psychology, computer-supported collaborative work, and anthropology. Duarte holds a doctorate in organizational behavior from the George Washington University. She is coauthor, with Nancy Tennant Snyder, of Strategic Innovation: Embedding Innovation as a Core Competency in Your Organization (Jossey-Bass, 2003). She has written or cowritten numerous articles on virtual teams and is a frequent speaker on the topics of virtual teams, project management competencies, and change in organizational culture. She is assistant professor at the George Washington University in the Human Resource Development Program in Washington, D.C. She lives with her husband, Clay Durr, in Incline Village, Nevada, and in Arlington, Virginia.

NANCY TENNANT SNYDER has two decades of experience in organizational and leadership development. She is currently the corporate vice president for leadership and core competencies for Whirlpool Corporation. In this capacity, she is responsible for creating and implementing corporate strategies that facilitate globalization and leveraged learning, shared culture, leadership, and operational and core competencies. She also heads the David R. Whitwam Center for Leadership and Lifelong Learning, Whirlpool’s Corporate University. She is a faculty member of the Business School of University of Notre Dame, teaching courses in business strategy and vision. She has held executivelevel positions at Kaiser Aluminum and has consulted in the areas of globalization and organizational culture change with a number of private and public organizations. She is the author of numerous articles and the coauthor of the best-selling book Strategic Innovation: Embedding Innovation as a Core Competency in Your Organization (Jossey-Bass, 2003). She holds a doctorate in organizational behavior from the George Washington University. She and her husband, Robert, live in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Morgantown, West Virginia.

PART ONE

UNDERSTANDING VIRTUAL TEAMS

CHAPTER ONE

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR VIRTUAL TEAMS

In today’s business environment, organizations must adapt quickly or die. Gaining competitive advantage in a global environment means continually reshaping the organization to maximize strengths, address threats, and increase speed.¹ The use of virtual teams has become a common way of doing this.² The formation of virtual teams allows organizations to draw talent quickly from different functions, locations, and organizations. The goal is to leverage intellectual capital and apply it as quickly as possible. The methods that organizations use to manage this process can mean the difference between success and failure.

Consider the example of a team in a global consumer products firm. This product development team, with members from around the world, had just completed the development of a new product. When the team unveiled the product to the senior staff of the organization, it included a description of the way the team worked. The presentation showed an icon of an airplane, with the entire team of twenty-two people traveling from country to country. The team members had continually moved from site to site for activities such as status reviews, design meetings, and prototyping sessions. The cost of the travel was tremendous, not only for hotels and airline tickets but also in terms of the human costs of being away from home and lost work time and productivity. In addition, talent from other parts of the organization was not leveraged in this effort—if you were not “on the plane,” your ideas were not heard.

Contrast this with most other organizations that form world-class teams, with membership from many different locations and functions, to quickly address customer problems, develop products, and deliver services. These teams often operate virtually, without the physical limitations of distance, time, and organizational boundaries. They use electronic collaboration technology and other techniques to leverage the best talent where they might reside, lower travel and facility costs, reduce project schedules, and improve decision-making time and communication.

Organizations that do not use virtual teams effectively may be fighting an uphill battle in a global, competitive, and rapidly changing environment. Organizations that will succeed in today’s business environment have found new ways of working across boundaries through systems, processes, technology, and people. They will make technology a valued partner in developing and delivering competitive solutions.

Understanding how to work in or lead a virtual team is now a fundamental requirement for people in many organizations. Many who began their career leading teams in a face-to-face environment find themselves leading teams virtually, sometimes not seeing team members face to face more than once or twice a year. This presents the challenge of translating what worked in an in-person environment to a virtual one.

It is also now increasingly common to encounter people who lead or work on virtual teams who do not have a great deal of experience working on teams face to face. Most of today’s large consulting firms do a large majority of their work virtually. Consultants who join these firms may never have the opportunity to work on or lead a traditional team in a face-to-face environment. They are immediately placed in situations that are more virtual than traditional. In this case, these individuals may not even have baseline experience to draw from—and on the other hand, they also may not have bad habits to unlearn.

The fact is that leading a virtual team is not like leading a traditional team. People who lead and work on virtual teams need to have special skills, including an understanding of human dynamics and performance without the benefit of normal social cues, knowledge of how to manage across functional areas and national cultures, skill in managing their careers and others without the benefit of face-to-face interaction, and the ability to use leverage and electronic communication technology as their primary means of communicating and collaborating.

Types of Virtual Teams

There are many different configurations of virtual teams. One of the central themes of this book is that the task affects how a virtual team is managed. Although virtual teams can undertake almost any kind of assignment, team leaders and members need to have a solid understanding of the type of virtual team they work on and the special challenges each type presents. What these teams have in common with all teams is that team members must communicate and collaborate to get work done or to produce a product. Virtual teams, unlike traditional ones, however, must accomplish this by working across distance, time, and organizational boundaries and by using technology to facilitate as their primary means of communication and collaboration. There are seven basic types of virtual teams.³

• Networked teams

• Parallel teams

• Project or product development teams

• Work, functional, or production teams

• Service teams

• Management teams

• Action teams

Networked Teams

A networked virtual team consists of individuals who collaborate to achieve a common goal or purpose. Such teams frequently cross time, distance, and organizational boundaries. Typically, there is a lack of clear definition between a network team and the organization, in that membership is frequently diffuse and fluid, with team members rotating on and off the team as their expertise is needed. Team members may not even be aware of all the individuals, work teams, or organizations in the network.

Examples of this type of virtual team are often found in consulting firms and in high-technology organizations. For example, one virtual team received a request from a client to quickly research and identify a set of best practices for managing the implementation of a large supply chain project. Although the consultants did not have all the answers themselves, they were able to tap into their network of external partners and internal and external databases and provide a set of best practices for the client within a few days.

Organizations that develop technological products can also use networked virtual teams. Many research and development organizations use networked teams for many activities because the specialized expertise to solve new problems or engage in complex discovery processes usually never resides in a single organization or location. Team members for these types of teams are often drawn from many different nations, think tanks, universities, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. Team members from different organizations come in and out of the network as their expertise is needed to make recommendations.

Parallel Teams

Parallel virtual teams carry out special assignments, tasks, or functions that the regular organization does not want to or is not equipped to perform. Parallel teams are also used when expertise does not reside in one location or in one organization. Such teams frequently cross time, distance, and organizational boundaries. A parallel team is different from a networked team in that it has a distinct membership that sets it apart from the rest of the organization. It is clear who is on the team and who is not. The members of a parallel team typically work together on a short-term basis to make recommendations for improvements in organizational processes or to address specific business issues. Virtual parallel teams are becoming a fairly common way for multinational and global organizations to make recommendations about worldwide processes and systems that take a global perspective.

One consumer goods company used a virtual parallel team to make specific recommendations for a global customer loyalty system. Team members came from around the world and were supplemented by participants from an external consulting organization. After its recommendations were made to the CEO, the team dissolved. Much of the work of this team involved data collection and analysis by individual team members. The collaborative work was often accomplished in audioconferences at 7:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time (to accommodate people from all time zones) by using e-mail to communicate and pass on “static” information, a team Web site for documenting progress, and instant messaging for real-time communication. Like many people who work on parallel teams, the team members had other projects and accountabilities.

Project or Product Development Teams

Virtual project teams and product development teams can also cross time, distance, and organizational boundaries. Team members conduct projects for users or customers for a defined but extended period of time. A typical result is a new product, information system, or organizational process. The difference between a project team and a parallel team is that a project team usually exists for a longer period of time and has a charter to make decisions, not just recommendations. A project team is similar to a networked team in that team members may move on and off the project as their expertise is needed. It is different from a networked team in that membership is more clearly delineated from the rest of the organization, and a final product is clearly defined.

Most product-focused technology and scientific organizations are well versed in the use of project or product development teams. The use of virtual teams expands the opportunities to leverage expertise from wherever it resides to develop products and services that have competitive advantage.

Work, Functional, or Production Teams

Virtual work, functional, and production teams perform regular and ongoing work. Such teams usually exist in one function, such as accounting, finance, training, or research and development. They have clearly defined membership and can be distinguished from other parts of the organization. Many work or production teams are now beginning to operate virtually and to cross time and distance boundaries. Many organizations now have business centers that operate globally around the clock, and work teams that service customers may exist in most time zones around the world.

It is has become commonplace for people on virtual work teams to telecommute from home. They have access to workflow processes over the firm’s intranet, which allows them to work as a group on development activities. Team members usually meet face to face once or twice each year for a conference.

Service Teams

Service and technical help teams are now usually distributed across distance and time. Network and technical support are usually continuous operations, with technicians and call center personnel located around the world taking turns dealing with network problems and upgrades. The staff “follow the sun” and are situated so that one team is operational at all times. Each team works during its members’ daylight hours and transitions work and problems to the next designated time zone at the end of the day.

Management Teams

Management teams can be separated by distance and time. Today, many management teams are dispersed across a country or around the world but work collaboratively on a daily basis. Many companies have executive team members who hold a number of different passports and live in many parts of the world and collaborate on a regular basis by means of audioconferences or videoconferences focused on the achievement of corporate goals and objectives. The United States Army’s chief of staff operates his staff as a virtual team. Staff members communicate regularly via e-mail and use a chat room on an Internet Web-based network to discuss important issues as they arise.

Action Teams

Action teams can also work virtually. Such teams offer immediate responses, often to emergency situations. They cross distance and organizational boundaries. A weather team at a television station is a good example of a virtual action team. During a weather emergency, action team members are distributed in the field. The meteorologist at the television station uses radar and satellite information to tell where tornadoes may be forming and directs field crew movement toward those locations. The meteorologist analyzes the data that the crews send back and communicates the results and possible implications immediately to viewers.

The way in which NASA works during a mission is an excellent example of a virtual action team. During a flight, mission operations, usually located in Houston, collaborates with the astronauts, with tracking stations around the globe, and with experts, such as engineers and scientists, in different locations, in order to ensure that the mission proceeds as planned.

The Complexity of the Virtual Environment

It is easy to characterize virtual teams using the same categories as traditional teams. However, virtual teams can be much more complex. There are two primary reasons why virtual teams are more complex: (1) they cross boundaries related to time, distance (geography), and organization, and (2) they use electronic technological means to communicate (share information) and collaborate (work together to produce a product).

As the longitudinal distance between team members increases, so do differences in time zones. This makes communicating and collaborating at the same time problematic. Working across national boundaries complicates the situation because differences in language, culture, and access to technology impede effective communication and collaboration.

As members from different organizations join a virtual team, integration of work methods, organizational cultures, technology, and goals make communication and collaboration more difficult. Partners and suppliers often have conflicting goals and organizational cultures. This holds true even when team members come from different functional areas within the same organization. For example, people from marketing and human resources frequently use a different set of work processes than those from more technical areas such as engineering and information systems.

Finally, complexity is increased by the number of different choices for team interaction. Traditional teams typically interact face to face, at least some of the time. Virtual team interactions, however, are almost always mediated by electronic communication and collaboration technology. Interactions fall into four categories: (1) same time, same place (like face-to-face meetings); (2) same time, different place (such as an audioconference or videoconference); (3) different time, same place (such as using a chat room or a shared file on a network); and (4) different time, different place (such as exchanges of e-mail or voice mail messages and podcasting). The selection of technology and choice of interaction vary according to factors such as the type of team, the nature of its task, and the members’ access to technology.

Checklist 1.1 provides a way to categorize your virtual team and to determine the number of factors that affect complexity. Understanding the type of team you work on and its complexity will help you get the most out of the remaining chapters of this book.

CHECKLIST 1.1. TYPE OF VIRTUAL TEAM.

Critical Success Factors for Virtual Teams

The business justification for virtual teams is strong. They increase speed and agility and leverage expertise and vertical integration between organizations to make resources readily available. Virtual teams also lessen the disruption of people’s lives because the people do not have to travel to meet. Team members can broaden their careers and perspectives by working across organizations and cultures and on a variety of projects and tasks.

Although the effective use of electronic communication and collaboration technology is fundamental to the success of a virtual team, virtual teams entail much more than technology and computers. When virtual teams and their leaders are asked about successes and failures, they rarely mention technology as a primary reason for either. Bill Davidow, a former executive with Intel and Hewlett-Packard, comments: “Information and communication technology provides an infrastructure for the corporation to communicate with customers and deliver information necessary for decision making.... If management insists on maintaining a purely functional organization or does not empower workers, information systems will add little value.”⁴

There are seven critical success factors for virtual teams, of which technology is only one. The others are human resource policies, training and development for team leaders and team members, standard organizational and team processes, organizational culture, leadership, and leader and member competencies. These are discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

Of course, all the critical success factors do not have to be in place for virtual teams to succeed. The mere implementation of virtual teams can actually put an organization on the road toward success. Because successful virtual teams require certain conditions, the existence of the teams will, over time, help bring about the infrastructure conditions that make them work.

Teams usually recognize that they need certain things to succeed, such as high levels of autonomy to do their jobs, standard team initiation processes, structured communication plans, and appropriate electronic communication and collaboration technology for all team members. Organizations that are most successful recognize that while all the factors do not need to be in place at once, there needs to be a plan to ensure that factors are systematically addressed. Many of the processes that organizations formally institutionalize get their start through the “bootstrap” approach of their first virtual teams.

This book is not specifically about preparing the organization for virtual teams. Its focus is on tools and techniques for team leaders and team members. However, team leaders and members influence the implementation of critical success factors that are associated with team success.

Let’s take a look at the critical success factors for organizations. First, complete the diagnostic tool in Checklist 1.2. Your results can direct your attention to the categories of success factors that affect your situation. Although you may not be able to influence all of them, the results can serve to direct your actions when it is possible or help you develop a case to present to management for virtual team resources.

Seven factors affect the probability of a virtual team’s success:

• Human resource policies

• Training and on-the-job education and development

• Standard organizational and team processes

• Use of electronic collaboration and communication technology

• Organizational culture

• Leadership support of virtual teams

• Team leader and team member competencies

Human Resource Policies

Human resource policies should support working virtually. Systems must be integrated and aligned to recognize, support, and reward the people who work on and lead virtual teams.

Career Development Systems. Team leaders can help support virtual team members by providing career opportunities and assignments that are comparable to those in traditional team settings. Applying promotion and career development policies and actions fairly to people who work in virtual settings helps reinforce the perception that working virtually is an accepted career option. Virtual team members often mention the fear that they will be overlooked for promotional opportunities because they are not seen every day. This fear is not unfounded. Managers who lose visual and verbal proximity to their employees often put up the strongest resistance to alternative work and team arrangements. ⁵ Virtual team leaders must ensure that the members of virtual teams have the same career development opportunities as the members of traditional teams.

Rewarding Cross-Boundary Work and Results. Organizational reward and recognition systems often favor individual and functional work. Virtual team members, however, frequently operate in a cross-functional or cross-organizational environment. Changes must be made in the ways in which people are recognized and rewarded. Leaders must develop performance objectives for team members that include working across boundaries and sharing information to support virtual teamwork.

In addition, performance measures must be adapted to reward results. In a traditional office environment, where people are seen putting in effort every day, it is relatively easy to at least partially reward people for effort as well as for results. In a virtual environment, effort is more difficult to discern. When IBM went to a virtual environment, a shift to a reward structure that was based more on results than on effort was a major part of the transition.⁶ Translating measures of performance from a face-to-face environment into ones that work in a virtual environment involves working to make all performance measures focused on outcomes. It is important to note that when measures are changed for virtual team members, they must also be changed for in-house team members.

CHECKLIST 1.2. ASSESSING CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS.

The use of formal and informal recognition of virtual teamwork through “on the spot” awards, bonuses, and other mechanisms can also reinforce the perception that working virtually is valued. You can use Web-based technology, such as setting up a site for virtual team “best practices” and advertising team successes and performance, as a way to publicly recognize people in a virtual setting. You also can use examples of your virtual team’s success in speeches, presentations, and discussions with other team leaders and with management.

Providing Resources and Support for Working Virtually. Create and support policies that provide your team with technical support for working remotely. All team members should have equal and immediate access to electronic communication and collaboration technology, training, and technical support. Many virtual team leaders set a standard for technology and make certain that everyone has access to the same hardware, intranet and Internet connections, and applications. They ask the information systems group to assist in the implementation. Many organizations now have “virtual SWAT teams” that help virtual team members set up their systems to ensure that they have access to the best and latest technology.

Training and On-the-Job Education and Development

Formal training in using technology is vital for success. For example, team leaders at the World Bank believed that underfunded technological training for team leaders and team members was one reason that their efforts to implement groupware did not fully succeed the first time. Money was spent on the technology—machines, applications, and compatibility—but not on teaching people how to effectively use it.⁷

Learning how to use technology is not enough to guarantee success. Team leaders should make certain that they get the training and support they need to be adept at facilitating meetings using technical and nontechnical methods. Training in facilitation skills should also be an integral part of a development curriculum for team leaders and team members.

In addition to a formal training curriculum in using technology and facilitation, make certain that the team members have access to continual online training and technical support on other relevant topics such as working collaboratively and working across organizational boundaries. Ask your training department about the feasibility of creating and implementing these types programs for virtual team members. Most organizations who use virtual teams effectively now provide many of their technical and leadership classes through their intranet, so people can select when and where they want to learn. In addition, training, tools, and support are upgraded on a regular basis to ensure that they are state-of-the-art.

Create and implement systems for sharing knowledge across functions, projects, and organizations. Shared lessons, databases, knowledge repositories, and chat rooms are used in organizations that embrace virtual teamwork. Some company Web sites contain places where “lessons learned” are stored. They also have bulletin boards where team leaders can ask questions and receive suggestions from other team leads.

Standard Organizational and Team Processes

Consider developing and implementing standard team processes. The use of standard processes reduces the time needed for team startup and may eliminate the need for unnecessary reinvention of operating practices each time a team is chartered. Practices need to be flexible, however, to promote adaptation to a particular virtual team’s situation. Common standard technical processes, especially for parallel, project, or network teams, might include the following:

• Definitions of requirements

• Estimates of costs

• Procurement

• Team charters

• Project planning

• Documentation and document sharing

• Reporting

• Controlling

It also is a good idea to define the preferred software for each of these major processes. Many organizations use standard project management software packages so that any team, virtual or face-to-face, is familiar with and trained in using that package.

All successful virtual teams have agreed team processes in “soft” areas such as the establishment of team norms, conflict resolution procedures, and communication protocols. Experienced virtual teams also prepare team charters that delineate suggested team norms and communication standards. They use these as starting points to come up with processes suitable for their unique situations. Reinforce and expect the use of both technical and soft processes from the team.

Electronic Collaboration and Communication Technology

As a virtual team leader, you will need to select electronic collaboration and communication technology that meets the needs of your team and the situation. You also will need to ensure that the organization is ready to support your technical needs. Introducing the electronic communication and collaboration technology needed for virtual teamwork, such as desktop videoconferencing, team Web sites, or groupware, requires that four primary organizational conditions be in place:⁸

1. The organization has a well-funded, respected, and established information systems staff whose members are experienced in installing and supporting electronic collaboration technology in many different locations.

2. There is commitment by the organization to keep personal computer systems as up-to-date as possible, regardless of a person’s title or duties. When systems fall behind, the costs of upgrades and the time to introduce them mounts quickly. Productivity may also fall as people spend time attempting to fix their equipment or work around it.

3. The organization has a well-maintained corporate network that has room to expand to meet the needs of more complex systems and users.

4. The organization has a set of leaders who are willing to model the use of advanced forms of electronic collaboration and communication technology.

If your organization is lacking in any of these four areas, you might consider adopting a less complex technology suite. In either case, it is important to select a reasonable set of standards for your team in electronic communication and collaboration technology. Standards should meet the business needs of the team and match its mission and strategy.⁹ A team that needs to communicate and work collaboratively, for example, must have a minimum set of standards for technology. For communication, this includes phones, audioconferencing equipment, voice mail, fax capability, and access to a common e-mail system that allows people to send messages and exchange files and access to the company’s intranet or the Internet. Videoconferencing, calendar scheduling, real-time data conferencing, electronic meeting systems, collaborative writing tools, personal computing devices, team Web sites, instant messaging, and whiteboards can be added if the strategy calls for intensive collaborative work or if sufficient information systems resources exist to make the technology work reliably. Make certain that external partners and suppliers have access to compatible communication and collaboration technology if they are considered part of the team.

Ensure that skill in using the electronic communication and collaboration technology is equally distributed among team members from different functional areas, geographical locations, and partner organizations. Often skill and use of electronic communication and collaboration technology is more prevalent in technical functions, such as engineering and information systems, than in less technical areas, such as marketing, human resources, and finance. If this is the case, there is a risk that team members from less technical areas may be perceived by other teammates as having less status.