According to Tom Allen from MIT, after a distance of greater than 50 ft, our chance of communicating and co-operating more than once a week is less than 10%. Something most of us probably see with the teams that we currently work with everyday. Ian Fleming reminds us of this fact with a pocket book on Virtual teams published this year in the U.K. Over the last few years I have looked at several books on managing and working with virtual teams, but what can you expect from a hundred page pocket book, I wanted to find out. Certainly a book of this size is not going to give you a lot of actual how to’s, but rather will be organized around lists, and this book is no exception.
The book starts out with dangerous assumptions people often make about virtual teams, some of the better assumptions are: Don’t make the mistake of simply transferring what you know about teams to these new virtual situations a lot more is involved. Good to list this as a dangerous assumption, BUT he doesn’t tell us what those differences actually are, but some of this can be pulled out from the rest of the book. Another good assumption is: Don’t assume Virtual teams are all about technology. Cooperation and working together are key; with less emphasis on technology. I would have to agree with this one. Perhaps coming from Silicon Valley where everything must be solved with technology, this is something I do not often read, many writers seem afraid to say that technology doesn’t solve everything.
A good suggestion from the book that you usually don’t see, since everyone thinks you should be able to work in a virtual team, is to think hard about whether or not it is for you. To be honest with yourself about whether or not you prefer to know your colleagues very well or you prefer to discuss things face to face, if you do, you will not like being on a virtual team. Whether or not making this choice will help your career may be the long-term question however?
There is heavy emphasis in this book that the Big Challenge in a virtual team is building trust between people who do not know each other and rarely meet. I would whole heartedly agree. Trust means people do what they say they are going to do. The author suggests that an initial meeting face to face gives you the chance to start building relationships and trust. I would agree with this but would say not to make it a stumbling block to getting started; there are other ways to start building trust long distance which the author does not go in to. For example, depending on what type of work is being done; having some type of daily deliverable for the first several days is a good idea, even if it is a schedule or some part of the work plan that is delivered every day. Daily communications, not just by email by instant message or phone also starts to build trust if nothing else just a couple of minutes to see if there are any questions, or check in and review what was done for the day. It starts to build that trust of delivery, x was due today and they delivered, y is due today and they delivered, etc., and so on and so on.
Mr. Fleming also introduces us to the concept of Swift Trust which is defined as something specific for temporary virtual teams. Those virtual teams brought together for a short time for a specific purpose. Members must move quickly to set goals and operate as if trust was already in place. It seems many virtual teams can operate under the Swift Trust concept if they are put together for a very specific short term goal, and other virtual teams can operate under the concept that trust must be earned and built over time and can be easily lost.
This book on Virtual teams is the first book in a long time which actually recommends that it may be faster to pick up the phone to get something accomplished. In this day and age, most people do not like to pick up the phone and talk in real time; it is more difficult, so this comment is refreshing. I would argue on one point that Mr. Fleming does make. He categorizes email as real time communications. I would argue that email is not real-time, but asynch communications. You have to wait for someone to answer you; you are at their mercy and on their time to provide you an answer to your questions, you also have to hope they understand what they are asking. Many times it takes way too much time; you have to explain everything you already know and define I only need an answer to this narrow item. Many times it can just be faster to pick up the phone and it usually doesn’t cost all that much with the proliferation of VoIP services.
Virtual Teams Pocketbook
© Ian Fleming 2006
Published by: Management Pocketbooks Ltd. Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants S024 9JH, U.K.