Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams (Briefcase Books) (BUSINESS SKILLS AND DEVELOPMENT) - Softcover

Fisher, Kimball

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0071754938 ISBN 13: 9780071754934

Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Get solid collaboration from team members in remote locations

Globalization and new technologies have made team collaboration from distant geographical locations―on the road, from home or client sites, even on the other side of the globe―a routine part of business. Managing these teams requires new skills and sensitivities to maximize team and organizational performance.

Emphasizing pragmatism over theory and offering helpful tips instead of vague observations, Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams helps you bridge the communication gaps created by geographical separation and get peak performance from employees you rarely see. You will learn how to:

• Keep team members in remote locations motivated and involved
• Coach for peak performance via e-mail, telephone, teleconference, and videoconference
• Help widely scattered team members understand their contribution to the business
• Build consensus for decisions among virtual team members
• Learn effective communication and feedback techniques for enhancing team performance

Briefcase Books, written specifically for today’s busy manager, feature eye-catching icons, checklists, and sidebars to guide managers step by step through everyday workplace situations. Look for these innovative features to help you navigate each page:

• Clear definitions of key terms and concepts
• Tactics and strategies for managing virtual teams
• Tricks of the trade for executing effective management techniques
• Practical advice for minimizing the possibility of error
• Warning signs for when things are about to go wrong
• Examples of successful virtual managing
• Specific planning procedures, tactics, and hands-on techniques

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kimball Fisher is a cofounder of the Fisher Group, Inc., and has worked with many companies implementing high-performance management practices across North America, Western Europe, Asia, and Africa. These include Amoco, Apple Computers, Chevron, Corning, Hewlett Packard, Mosanto, Motorola, NBC, Shell, Weyerhauser, and more. He is a popular speaker at conferences on teams, leadership, and organization design and has addressed audiences around the world.

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Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams

A Briefcase Book

By Kimball Fisher, Mareen Fisher

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Kimball Fisher and Mareen Fisher
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-175493-4

Contents

Preface
1. What Is a Virtual Team?
2. Managing Space, Time, and Culture
3. The Seven Competencies of Effective Virtual Team Leaders
4. What Virtual Team Employees Need from Their Manager
5. Bridging Cultural Differences
6. Starting Up (or Refocusing) a Virtual Team
7. Building Trust from a Distance
8. Using Telephonic Collaboration Technologies
9. Using Videoconferencing and Internet-Based Collaboration Tools
10. Improving the Business IQ of Team Members
11. Teaching Finance Fundamentals to Virtual Teams
12. Improving Communication and Feedback Skills
13. Creative Problem Solving for Virtual Teams
14. Managing Performance from a Distance
15. Effective Decision Making over Distance
16. Virtual Team Building
17. Maintaining a Balanced Personal and Work Life
Index

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

What Is a Virtual Team?

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision and the abilityto direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is thefuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

—Andrew Carnegie

Let's consider three common situations involving virtual team management.Meeting challenges like those described here are part of what we discuss in thisbook.

Case One: The Global Team Management Challenge

Not too long ago we worked with a manager at Cummins Engine, Inc. He was locatedin the U.K., but the small teams reporting to him were scattered across morethan twenty countries. An especially bright and capable leader, the managerfound that he would seldom see a more significant challenge than coordinatingthe work of people sharing a common office. Leading global teams, for example,sometimes seemed like tiptoeing through an unmarked minefield. People haddiverse cultural backgrounds and often interpreted the same e-mail in different(and sometimes contradictory) ways. Offense was taken when none was intended.Confusion and duplication of effort occurred with alarming regularity. Findingtime for meetings that didn't conflict with someone's sleep schedule or nationalholiday was almost impossible. He was also concerned about the communicationchallenges associated with running an operation that required almost immediateaccess to him 24/7. How could he lead a balanced work and personal life when hewas constantly tethered to work by his smartphone and computer?

Case Two: Can a Group of Remote Employees Really Function Like a Team?

A manager from IBM went through a significant downsizing in his organization,leaving him with 65 direct reports spread across the continental United States.Turnover was high enough that even with a grueling travel schedule, he couldnever meet all his direct reports in person before they transferred away.Unfortunately, temporary travel restrictions for nonmanagers made it impossibleto get his team together in one place at the same time. All their meetings hadto be Web meetings or teleconferences. But how could he help the team membersget to know each other well enough to trust each other? Would they ever reachthe comfort level that would allow them to openly admit mistakes, offerconstructive criticism, share their best ideas, or ask each other forassistance? How could he help them—especially those who worked alone fromtheir homes—overcome their inevitable feelings of isolation?

A team that shares a common office could get to know each other by taking breaksor having lunch together. Informal interaction in the hallways, at the watercooler, or in the parking lot builds relationships and a sense of common teamidentity. Celebrating birthdays and childbirths, sharing pictures of childrenand weddings, informally telling work stories about organizational disasters andvictories and any of the thousand other tiny social interactions that connectpeople and create a social lubricant that facilitates working together wouldlikely never happen. Was it even possible to create a highly functioning team inthis situation?

Case Three: Can a Team That Shares a Common Office Be Virtual?

A manager of a sales team at the high-tech distribution giant CDW told us thatshe struggled with the challenges of managing people who were never in theoffice. Her sales team was almost always in the field working with customers.She was a good manager and had a track record of positive accomplishments, butmany of her leadership practices were based on the traditional management modelthat assumed regular face-to-face interactions. She knew how to pop over acubicle and help someone she could see was struggling with an assignment, how togather an obviously confused group together for an emergency meeting, how tocorrect a misconception she overheard in the lunchroom, how to take fulladvantage of those fortunate moments when you run into someone in the hallwayyou need to speak with, or how to watch people and tell from their expressionsand body language whether they understood or agreed with her.

When she observed gossiping, whining, blaming, or other behaviors she knew woulderode the effectiveness of the team, she intervened immediately. If she sawcliques forming, behaviors that indicated disunity or silo thinking, orindications of the early stages of conflict brewing, she resolved them. She knewhow to rally the troops when the tone of their comments indicated that they werediscouraged. To continue the military analogy, she liked being on thefrontlines, helping the wounded, and personally leading charges far into enemyterritory. "But," she asked in an interview, "how do you lead a team over theInternet?" It felt to her like calling in orders to the battlefield when she waslocated in a tent, blinded and deafened by separation from her army, a millionmiles away.

The Challenges of Working with Virtual Teams

We have hundreds of these stories about the challenges of working with what arewidely known as "virtual teams." They come from operations as diverse as largemultinational insurance companies to the staff office of the U.S. Senate, andfrom jobs that range from Microsoft executives to Swedish R&D scientists in amining explosives company. Even though these are very differentorganizations—both private and public, blue collar and white collar, largecorporations and small home-based businesses—they share a common problem:How do you manage people you seldom see in person—especially when thatgroup of people is supposed to be a cohesive and productive work team?

Why Are Virtual Teams Becoming So Common?

The bad news is that these types of operations are difficult to manageand they are increasingly common. Since the industrial revolutionstarted more than a century ago, organizations have had employees who didn'twork in the same location as their manager. But in the last several years, thenumber of these operations has exploded. Why? True global marketplaces haverequired that even smaller organizations have people closer to their customers,vendors, and key stakeholders.

Skilled workers now live everywhere instead of in clumps surrounding keycorporations or schools. Employees who were once willing to relocate to whereverthe employer needed them now have to manage multiple careers and are reluctantto move their kids. Businesses don't want to pay for relocation expenses. Costpressures have also forced large organizations to reduce expensive brick-and-mortar office buildings and place key components of their businesses in othercountries. The nature of work itself has changed from mostly physical labor tomostly knowledge work, allowing people to work away from farms, factories, andmines. (For more about this, see our book The Distributed Mind, Amacom,1998.)

Perhaps most importantly, technology that allows people to do knowledge workjobs from anywhere is cheap, effective, and plentiful. The ubiquity of theInternet, in particular, allows people to coordinate their work regardless oflocation. What was once rare—a virtual team including employees who areremote from their manager and each other—is now commonplace. And it isunlikely that any professional manager will go through his or her entire careerwithout having to manage at least one. Surprisingly, this is also the good news.These types of operations are increasingly common. That means that even thoughthere are challenges, lots of people have already faced these challengessuccessfully.

There was a time when some experts wondered if an effective work team was evenpossible if its members weren't physically located together. They argued thatcommunication technologies could never substitute for face-to-face interaction.We now know that is not true. Yes, it's more difficult to lead a group of peoplelocated all over the place. But it is possible. Lots of managers are doing it.In all three cases that open this chapter, for example, the leaders ended up notonly solving their difficult problems, but excelling as virtual team managers.

Defining Virtual Teams

To begin our discussion, let's define virtual teams. Please note thatthere are many organizations that are not teams. If your operation doesn'trequire people to collaborate to achieve common goals, for instance, then a teamstructure isn't necessary. People can do independent work effectively even ifthey are isolated from each other. For example, we once worked with a utilitythat wanted to create teams, but when we helped management discover thatindividual gas meter readers didn't have to work with each other to accomplishtheir jobs, they quickly (and appropriately) abandoned the project. (Ironically,technology that now allows for the remote reading of meters makes the formernonteam of employees new candidates for teaming because they now have tocollaborate to make the best use of the technology. Before, they could work inthe field without sharing anything other than an occasional tip on how to dealwith aggressive dogs.)

This book deals with virtual teams composed of people whose work depends on oneanother. We do not write about virtual groups of people. Unlike virtualgroups, virtual team members have to collaborate to do their work, butunlike teams who are collocated, their mission is more difficult because theydon't share a common office and/or work schedule.

Virtual teams are more prevalent than many people believe. Our experiencesuggests you have a virtual team if any of the team members:

* Are located in different workplaces

* Work in shifts

* Travel frequently

* Often work from their homes, cars, or in the field

* Are assigned to multiple project teams

* Work part-time

* Report to more than one manager

If you're a student of virtual teams, you'll probably notice that our definitionof virtual teams varies from that of some other experts in the field. Some, forexample, consider virtual teams to be only those teams that are geographicallydispersed. To them, a global team is obviously virtual, but a collocated 24-hourcall center, 24/7 manufacturing plant or a multiple-shift IT help desk is not.But to us, the management dynamics of leading across a distance are similarwhether the distance is geographic or is caused by working different hours. (Formore on this, see our book The Distance Manager, McGraw-Hill, 2001).

One of the authors, for example, was a manager in a multiple-shift manufacturingplant operated by Procter & Gamble in Lima, Ohio. The plant continues to be oneof the most advanced team-based operations in the world (described in detail inLeading Self-Directed Work Teams, McGraw-Hill, 2000). Because teammembers were scattered across three shifts, however, some people were alwaysunavailable because they were home asleep. They might just as well have beenliving in a different state.

And although it is not part of our definition, we believe that culture is athird important variable affecting virtual teams. If team members are separatedby significantly different cultures, they can be as behaviorally distanced fromeach other as if they were in a different country, regardless of whether theyoccupy the same space or time. This is especially obvious in those teams whosemembers may share a location but do not all speak the same language andtherefore cannot collaborate effectively with each other. But it is also truewhen other cultural differences separate people and make it difficult for themto work together.

What's in This Book?

Now that we have defined virtual teams, we'd like to dedicate the rest of thebook to helping you lead them more effectively. Common questions about managingvirtual teams that we intend to answer in this book include:

* What are the major challenges of managing a virtual team?

* What is the leader's role?

* How do we help employees feel connected?

* How do we build trust from a distance?

* How do we communicate effectively?

* How should we use e-mail, teleconferences, instant messaging, and Webconferencing?

* How do we maintain relationships?

* What type of people should we hire to be on virtual teams?

* How do we orient new virtual team members?

* How do we manage across cultures?

* How do we manage the performance of people we can't see?

* How often should we get together in person?

* How do we maintain an effective team environment?

* How do we set up a virtual team?

* What are the practical tools needed to keep a virtual team focused andeffective?

* How can we maintain a balanced work and personal life?

* How can we do virtual team building?

If you are interested in these questions, read on. In the next chapter wediscuss why the three variables of space, time, and culture are so important tovirtual teams, and we introduce the basic techniques for managing them.

Manager's Checklist for Chapter 1

[check] The three key variables that affect virtual teams are space, time, andculture. Each variable can create a sort of distance that effective virtualleaders need to bridge.

[check] A virtual team (1) is any group of people that has to collaborate to getits work done and (2) has members who work in different locations or duringdifferent hours.

[check] Virtual teams are increasingly common because global markets requirethem and cost-effective technologies now make them practical. Any seriousmanager needs to know how to manage them effectively.

[check] In this book we help you address the common challenges of virtual teams,and we share the best practices of excellent virtual leaders across the globe.

CHAPTER 2

Managing Space, Time, and Culture

Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.

—Alexander the Great

In the last chapter we introduced the three key variables affecting virtualteams: space, time, and culture. In this chapter we explain why these variablesare so important and suggest some steps you can take to address the challengesthat come from a lack of shared offices and common working hours.

The Three Key Variables Affecting Virtual Teams

Why are these variables of space, time, and culture important? Team memberslocated together (shared space) who work the same schedule (shared time) andknow how to work together (shared culture) have a significant advantage overvirtual teams. In this setting, for example, there are few obstacles to theformal and informal communication that are important for collaboration.

Team members can quickly and directly share project status, ideas, concerns, andquestions, help each other learn their jobs, solve problems, and make jointdecisions. Informally, they can run into each other in the hallways, see eachother during breaks, or meet at lunch or in the parking lot. Not only does thisinteraction help with the socialization needs of team members (people will workand communicate more effectively with people they know than with strangers), butit also provides a serendipitous opportunity to coordinate and collaborate ("HeyJane, I just heard that you're working on the X project. Can I ask you a coupleof questions?"). Their shared culture helps them know what to do when they runinto problems, have conflicts, or need to coordinate difficult assignments.Virtual teams seldom have these advantages of shared time, space, and culture,even though they must be able to compete with teams that do.

Space-Time

Obviously these three variables are strongly related and most virtual teams areaffected by all three. Physicists tell us, for example, that space and time areactually part of the same continuum. This is easy to see if you imagine a widelydispersed team. If people are located in several places, then they will also bein different time zones. Thus, you could argue that as far as virtual teams areconcerned, space-time is one variable rather than two.

Culture

Culture is also affected by space-time. The more distributed the team is in timeand space, the more likely members are to have a fragmented (or what expertscall a "heterogeneous") culture. Obviously, teams dispersed in several countriesface challenges caused by geographic cultural differences. For example (and atthe risk of perpetuating stereotypes), consider what some people have reportedto us about working on global teams.

South Americans on a project may see timelines as approximate, while Germans mayview them as precise, even though both sit through the same discussion in thesame language at the same time. Asians may smile and nod their heads when askedto agree to something that they know they cannot later support because therudeness of overt disagreement is culturally intolerable. This behavior confusestheir U.S. colleagues, who assume that nods and smiles mean agreement. NorthAmericans may run roughshod over what they see as the unnecessary time-consumingpractices of other cultures. This short-term efficiency focus may backfire inthe long term as it erodes trust and employee commitment.

To add more complexity to this culture problem, Ed Schein, an M.I.T. professorwhose research focused on organizational culture, has defined culture asanything that falls into the category of a "learned behavior about howto work together" (Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership,2nd Ed., Jossey-Bass, 1997). This definition appropriately allows for manythings besides geography to influence the culture of a team, includingorganizational practices, educational backgrounds, and present and formerleadership styles. Gaps in these areas can create a great deal of distance.

What Besides Geography Causes Cultural Distance?

In one company where we worked, the biggest and most divisive culturaldifference wasn't based on location, but on organizational practices. Somerecently acquired organizations had fragmented into warring fiefdoms. Argumentswere heated and common. Resources and information weren't shared. Cooperationand collaboration were rare. The company was concerned that unless the language(e.g., acronyms, business terminology), practices, processes, and attitudes ofthe acquired organizations became better aligned with the culture of theorganization that had acquired them, the entire operation could fail.

We've heard similar concerns expressed about how the "culture" of a functionsuch as engineering versus marketing or manufacturing can cause confusion andconflict in a team. For example, if a virtual project team composed ofengineers, salespeople, and manufacturing people can't get their job donebecause they don't understand or respect each other, is that any lessproblematic than if the root of their conflict comes from geographic culturaldifferences?

(Continues...)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams by Kimball Fisher. Copyright © 2011 by Kimball Fisher and Mareen Fisher. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071754938
• ISBN 13: 9780071754934
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar