Virtual Rambling...

With so much talk in the industry about organisations being agile, virtual teaming can be seen as an aspect of the agile organisation. Many authors have noted that virtual teams are developed as strategic responses to the increasingly competitive market place (Crossman & Kelly, 2004; Townsend et al, 1998).

Whilst virtual teaming provides benefits like cost saving, quicker responses to market etc, we all know that traditional face-to-face teams will always be there. I am of the opinion that virtual teams should only be used for short-term engagements where the organisation is taking advantage of an opportunity. As someone who has been in 2 virtual teams, I have seen (or should I say experienced) the “side-effects” of virtuality on team members. These effects include feeling isolated, lack of response to urgent queries (it turns out we don’t all have the same sense of urgency – maybe it has to do with culture), communication dynamics (these are exacerbated by language, accent, pronunciation which all lead to various interpretations of what is being communicated) etc. There is a lot of literature on how managers can overcome these effects but perhaps organisations are unaware that leading a virtual team is different from leading a traditional team and therefore leaders are not being effectively equipped for the challenges of this type of team. Furthermore, team members should also be trained on virtual team etiquette – I must look into the development of this.

In the words of Andrew S. Grove (of the Intel Corporation)…Adapt or die…You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organisation that is capable of responding to unpredictable events. It is from this view that I believe organisations should include virtual teams as part of the organisation’s architecture.

This post refereces the following author(s)
Crossman, A. & Lee-Kelly, L. 2004. Trust, commitment and team working: the paradox of virtual organisations. Global Networks. Vol.4 Issue 4

The Making or Breaking of a Virtual Team

For a virtual team to be successful the systems and structures in the organisation must be friendly towards it. Furthermore the infrastructural requirements which provide financial and operational incentives should be established (Rad & Levin, 2003)

The systems which need to be established up-front include:
- Team Member Selection,
- Training,
- Rewards Systems,
- Performance Evaluation,
- Establishing ROI metrics.

The structure in a virtual team should have enough discipline to get the project completed with minimal red-tape (Flannes and Levin, 2001).

A virtual team structure should promote the following:
- Task accomplishment;
- Sharing and Processing of Information;
- Leadership;
- Establishment of Social Relationships

Virtual teams are possible only because of recent advances in computer and telecommunications technology. These technologies define the operational environment of the virtual team and thus come together to form the infrastructure of virtual teamwork. (Townsend, DeMarie & Hendrickson, 1998).

There are three categories in which these technologies can be classified, i.e.
- Desktop Video Conferencing Systems - the core system around which the rest of virtual team technologies are built
- Collaborative Software Systems - collaborative software is designed to augment both types of group work activity and to empower teamwork processes
- Internet/Intranet systems - provide an important communicative and informational resource. They allow virtual teams to archive text, visual, audio, and numerical data in a user friendly format.

These three technologies provide an infrastructure, across which the virtual team will interact and provide technological empowerment to the virtual teams' operation (Osterlund, 1997).

It has been interesting learning about the systems, structure and infrastructure requirements of virtual teams. In my opinion the three are interdependant i.e. infrastructure enables the systems and structure which will make or break the virtual team. For organisations to be successful in the implementation of such teams, in my view, this is the information they should give the most attention to.

This post references the following authors:
· Gibson, C.B., & Cohen S.G. 2003. Virtual teams that work: creating conditions for virtual team effectiveness. Jossey.Bass
· Townsend A., DeMarie S.M., Hendrickson A.R. 1998. Virtual Teams: Technology and Workplace of the Future. Academy of Management Executive. Vol 12. No 3
· Rad, P. & Levin, G. 2003. Achieving Project Management Success using Virtual Teams. Florida. J.Ross Publishing.Osterlund, J. 1997. Competence management by informatics in R&D: The corporate level. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Vol 44 No 2