Kids of the Internet Generation

A few years ago, one of us was at a neighbor’s house watching a member of our future workforce in action. She was about 14, sitting in front of her computer, talking on the phone with a couple of her friends through three-way calling, as they browsed a Web site together. Every few seconds, she would respond to one of the five instant messaging chats that she had open on her screen. I thought to myself, “This girl knows how to work in a virtual team.”

Team Building

Team building as a whole is generally looked at as a non-essential or a waste of time. In most teams, it is just ignored. In others, varying degrees of effort are made to build a sense of camaraderie. These range from exchanging digital photographs of each other to playing interactive games.

Managing a Virtual Organization

In this section, we will discuss best practices for virtual teams. We also will talk about the tools available for use by virtual teams as well as some of the techniques we’ve seen employed for team building within virtual teams. We’ll include a brief discussion of situations where virtual meetings might be preferable to face-to-face interactions.

Show Me the Money

In 1988, this author received a promotion with a caveat—move from Atlanta (low cost of living) to the San Francisco Bay Area (high cost of living). But in the 1980s, that was the sort of thing that employees did to climb up the company ladder. My wife and I discussed the ins and outs for several weeks before I finally accepted the Bay Area job. To sweeten the deal, HP paid for my move, with inducements such as the following:

Establishing Trust

Many of the myths and challenges described previously stem from the fact that there is not a strong established trust relationship within a team. If managers feel that their employees can work independently and deliver on their commitments without constant supervision and micromanagement, then people might feel less need to meet face-to-face. If employees feel that their work is visible, that their peers understand and value their contributions, and that their managers provide support and encouragement during all phases of their projects, then the employees might not feel that they have to be sitting next to their bosses in order to climb the corporate ladder and to be successful. One manager, Joe Gerardi, explained the importance of building a trust relationship.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Conventional wisdom often cites that individuals cannot advance their career without putting in daily face-to-face time with their managers; thus, members of virtual teams are inevitably less successful at career development than their co-located colleagues. Virtual team members lose out on the informal interactions that typically occur in the lunchroom, in the hallway, at the water cooler, and on the golf course; therefore, they are essentially out of sight, out of mind. Furthermore, conventional wisdom postulates, it is impossible to get the attention of upper management without these interactions, and people believe that if you want to advance, you will move to the companies selected “center of the universe” where the largest concentration of employees reside. This chapter will discuss the potential drivers behind the following myths that focus on this potential out-of-sight, out-of-mind dynamic, and will document some of the techniques that we’ve observed that help reduce the potential impact of the reduced face-to-face time that is inevitable with the implementation of virtual teams within an organization.

A Virtual Ecosystem

Just as e-business began as a specialized and separate operating and delivery model in companies and has since become a standard way of doing business, virtual teams, organizations, and business models will be the way that things are done. Once we reach a fully virtual business ecosystem, we see two major roles emerging: (1) highly specialized, efficient, and optimized content providers, and (2) customer focused, value-added integrators.

The Challenges of Virtual Teams

We wanted to get a perspective on the challenges of virtual teams from people who prefer working face to face rather than in a virtual setting. Greg Todd has had roles as a manager and an engineer on virtual teams. Joe Gerardi moved from Georgia to California to manage a team based on the West Coast. Joe comments in general about virtual teams as well as the challenges around meetings and people management. He also shares his views on how culture and tools can act as an enabler or barrier to the success of virtual teams. He considers himself about three-fourths of the way into the tolerate stage of the virtual team maturity curve.

Applying Tools for Maximum Impact

Early on, we mentioned that technology won’t solve all problems related to virtual teams. In fact, basic meeting management and project management skills and techniques are actually more important than trying to use the most sophisticated tools. For example, if you don’t have a meeting agenda with specific topics to discuss, identified decisions that need to be made, and owners for action items, the best virtual meeting tool is not going to automatically do those things for you. At the same time, if we didn’t have the tools we have today, virtual teams would not be possible, and the speed of business would be driven by how many face-to-face meetings we could squeeze into our schedules. Identifying and using the best tools for each situation is a key to maximizing the effectiveness of every virtual team. In many cases, people often start by selecting a tool, try to use it for every situation, and end up frustrated or confused. This is not surprising, since it’s like going to the kitchen, pulling out a bag of flour, and thinking, “Now what can I do with this?” rather than deciding you want to bake some bread and what you really need is bread flour. Let’s look first at what we want to do and then identify the most appropriate tool for that task.

Impact of Culture, Affiliation, and Shared Goals

As we mentioned in Section 1, technology provides only a portion of the solution for addressing the challenges of virtual teams. Team and organizational cultures are key indicators of the potential success of virtual teams, while shared goals provide a way to unify the group. Team affiliation, as we will see, plays a lesser part in ensuring the success of virtual teams but is a reality of the complex organizational structures we see today and evolving in the future.