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