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Performance Management

Published October 2009

Virtual Teams: Narrowing the Performance Gap

 

  Terence Brake

Global virtual work environments are increasingly common these days, as are associated performance gaps caused by lack of cohesion, collaboration and focus. There are six C's talent managers can use to build a sustainable, performance-enhancing collaboration architecture for virtual teams.

Your organization is dependent on global virtual teams to carry a heavy workload, but the teams aren't performing. Yes, the teams have access to all the collaboration technologies and tools they need — Web meetings, groupware, social media, wikis, instant messaging and so on — but results are well below expectations. Despite all the broadband connectivity, the teams have just never, well, connected. Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common.

Work Revolution

The workplace revolution — driven by the forces of new computer and communication technologies, security concerns, economics and globalization — is a tangible reality. Managers and employees are experiencing challenges to old-world ways:

From local workplace to global work webs: People used to travel to a workplace, but increasingly the work is traveling to them, wherever they are. Freedom from "place" also means we are collaborating more often with customers, partners and colleagues in transitory virtual teams that cross multiple geographic, cultural and organizational boundaries.

From physical presence to technological presence: Being fully present and connecting with others is important on any team, but it becomes more challenging in virtual environments, where isolation and alienation are common.

From command and control to collaborate and control: Managers leading distributed workgroups understand that command-and-control micromanagement is dysfunctional in a virtual environment. To paraphrase a Pentagon saying: It's pretty hard to turn a screw with an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver.

From information value to connection value: The right information at the right time still has power, but information is everywhere and easily accessible. Connections are becoming the new currency — not simply the number, but the access many give to new knowledge, influence, skills and resources.

From fixed structures to fluid structures: New technologies enable agile working and teaming. Virtual project teams can be formed and dissolved quickly to promote speed, responsiveness and innovation. The best global talent for a job can be mobilized and leveraged to solve customer problems or create new sources of value.

Some of these shifts are still more theoretical than real in many organizations, but the trends have been visible for some time. What is real is the gap between virtual team importance and performance.

The Importance-Performance Gap

In the June 2009 TMA World webinar "Can Global Virtual Teams Ever Work?" 98 participants were polled about the importance of global virtual teams to organizational competitiveness. Participants also were asked to rate the current performance of their teams. Figure 1 contains the results.