his stomach tying itself in knots. He's not looking forward to the conversation with Rose when he gets home. As he leaves the office, he notices that the wind has picked up and grey storm clouds are looming on the horizon. Great, what an omen.
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As you can see from the beginning of Adam's story, there is a lot to consider when you're creating a virtual team.
I'd like to begin by sharing my definition of a virtual team. This is any team that is in more than one location. This doesn't have to mean that every member of that team is working in a different place. It might be that you have two offices in the same city and team members spread between them. Or you might have some people working from home and others from the office. These people may be working in the same time zones, they may not. For me, a virtual team is any team that communicates virtually at least part of the time.
According to research from Forrester in 2016, 81% of teams are virtual and 60% of these virtual teams are spread across more than one time zone. I'm sure that this figure has increased since this study was carried out. It's also important to understand why you'd want to build a virtual power team.
There are many reasons why this is the most appropriate option. They include expanding your business internationally and delivering projects more quickly, But if you don't spend time creating your virtual power team, there is a good chance they will fail.
I will tell you now that the first time I was a member of a big virtual team, in 2002, my overwhelming emotion was one of frustration. I was one of 30 project managers spread across Europe and our boss was based in London. Once a year we had a face‐to‐face meeting with everyone in one place. Once a quarter we had a telephone conference, although this was usually an opportunity for our boss to speak and present various KPIs and business results. But aside from these large meetings, we rarely spoke to each other. As a team, we didn't communicate, let alone help one another.
I didn't feel appreciated or recognised by my boss. Over time, I became increasingly frustrated and I'm sure the other project managers did too. This led not only to pain and frustration for us, but also for our manager.
This experience taught me that over time, virtual teams can lose their centre of gravity. People can get lost in space. This leads to a decline in the team's overall performance. It made me question how you could retain this ‘gravity’ and cohesion over time and even improve a team's performance exponentially as you do so. Before I come onto this though, I'd like to talk to you about why global teams fail.
What Causes Global Teams to Fail?
There are four main reasons why global teams fail. In fact, these are four reasons why any virtual team will fail, not just one that is global.
1 They fail to build trust – when you're creating a virtual team you need to make more of an effort to build trust between everyone. They can't bond while using the coffee machine. You need to find ways to build trust despite the distance.
2 They can't overcome communication barriers – in virtual teams you have different barriers to overcome. There is the distance and the technology. But there are also potential issues surrounding goal setting, particularly in relation to decision‐making and handling conflicts.
3 The goals of the individual and the team aren't aligned – sometimes there is a team goal that has been cascaded and not worked out from the bottom up. That means an individual's goal might not align with the team. Or, as is often the case, people within the team have their hidden agendas, whether that's something to facilitate their career or their bonus scheme. If it's not completely aligned with the team's goal, it will lead to issues.
4 The vision and goal of the team isn't clear – if the vision and goal has been cascaded, there is a much higher probability of a lack of clarity. By contrast, if people within the team work out the vision and goal together then they identify with it and this is one of the keys to the success of virtual power teams.
What Do All High‐Performing Teams Have in Common?
Over the years, I have developed a highly effective method called ‘Virtual Power Teams’, which comprises 10 Big Rocks. These are the 10 key success factors for retaining the gravity in your team and unleashing the virtual team's power.
I want you to imagine that your virtual team is a human. The first part to consider is the head. This is the logical, cognitive element and it's where you'll find the first three of the 10 Big Rocks that are essential to every virtual power team's success.
These rocks are:
1 Personality in focus
2 The Strengths Matrix
3 Interdependent goals
Personality in focus – this means you need to consider the personalities of every person you include in your team. If, as a manager, you don't believe this is important for remote teams you're making a big mistake. Later on in the book I'll give you an exercise that can help you get to know your team members quickly and intimately. It's important to know how to achieve this when you're managing a remote team. So, the lesson is not to ignore personality when you're choosing your team or recruiting, but instead to put personality in focus.
The Strengths Matrix – this is all about exploring and identifying the key strengths and natural talents of each team member. All too often people can feel anonymous and feel as though they're being treated as a resource. By identifying people's strengths and making everybody else aware of them, you'll make every person in your team feel like a hero who has a special talent that's vital to your success. This is about helping everyone in the team understand that they're not anonymous, but that they're understood. That they've been chosen to be part of this bouquet of skills and with this mix of talent we can achieve anything.
Interdependent goals – goal setting is very important in virtual teams. This rock is about making sure that everyone has their own goal and that everyone is clear on what they need to do to deliver. But more than that, the team will be organised and managed in such a way that they all have the freedom, within budgetary and time constraints, to decide how best to deliver on that goal. Micromanagement is not an option. This is about empowerment. It's about allowing people to set and choose their goals, not simply delegating tasks.
With these three rocks that make up the head of your team, you're aiming for clarity about who your team members are and what goals you're all aiming to achieve.
The next part of the body that I want you to consider is the skeleton and muscles. This is the dynamic part of the body, and therefore of the team. The next three rocks are:
1 Meetings and agenda
2 Knowledge management
3 Regular feedback
Meetings and agenda – this means deciding which online meetings and conferences you need to have as a team. You may have a core leadership team, as well as extended teams, and you need to be clear on how often they will meet and what format these meetings will take.
Knowledge management – this is about how we manage knowledge. It ties in with the Strengths Matrix, but rather than being about skills it's about the knowledge or expertise that individual team members have. I'll talk more later about how you can define knowledge champions or knowledge custodians within your team.
Regular feedback – this can sometimes be scarce in regular teams,
