The structure of this book is not new; i.e. one page or a page and a half per idea, but it fits very well for busy managers. I have recommended other books about virtual team management that give ideas that can be quickly implemented, “101 Leadership Actions” is definitely one of those books. You could pick up the book and open up to almost any page and find and an idea that you can implement in part or in whole for your virtual team, but you probably will not want to go through the book in that manner. Perusing the table of contents first will tell you where to start.
I found the first useful suggestions for my own work with virtual teams in the very first chapter, with something so simple that I can’t believe it I have done it before, or thought of it in such a simple manner. Leadership Action #10, Identify the Benefits of Virtual Teams, in and of itself does not sound new until upon reading further the suggestion is made to have the team itself think of why working virtually is going to make them a better team; why not being co-located is going to make them a better team. Often virtual teams which come together for a specific project may do this type of team start-up process, but think of the virtual team that develops more gradually; most development is done in one US city and then they hire an offshore person who works alone in another country, and then they add another one several months later and so on. These teams often have a harder time of thinking of themselves as virtual and it would be a great quick question to ask during a conference call status meeting, So what does everyone think the benefits are for our team now that we are virtual? It puts the responsibility on everyone to think of what the benefits are, not just the manager. Some suggestions that are made that will be helpful are actual helpful for any type of team, not just a virtual team, such as #18 “Regularly redesign your meeting structure”. Which suggests moving the team agenda around so those persons who speak always at the beginning of a meeting know they can tune out after their turn, or those who always speak at the end can sleep during the first half of the meeting. It is a great and simple suggestion to shake things up once a while so people stay awake. To give you an idea of the number of actions which you may find useful from this book, below is a chart of the number of actions I thought I could put to use or put to better use within the teams that I manage:
| Chapter | # of useful actions |
| Strategy and Virtual Teams | 1 |
| Structure and Virtual Teams | 2 |
| The Practices of Virtual Teams | 6 |
| The Tools of Virtual Teams | 2 |
| Managing Virtual Teams | 3 |
| Technology and Virtual Teams | 2 |
| Systems and Virtual Teams | 0 |
| Total: | 16 |
The result is that I found 16% of the actions immediately useful, not bad for a book that took maybe a couple of hours to read. You may find more or less similar results. Note #80 and #86 are two very useful actions which I continually stress to managers of virtual teams and they cannot be repeated often enough; #80 “Make the Transition from Managing Time to Managing Projects” and #86 “Use the Phone More Often”. I would recommend this book to anyone managing a virtual team as a good resource which will provide immediate ideas that can be incorporated to make your virtual team run better.
101 Leadership Actions for Creating and Managing Virtual Teams
By Ollie Malone, Ph.D
Copyright © 2004