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Find The Power Of Virtual Teams – Income Throne – 30 Mar 2021 […] A multinational team of Japanese software engineers and European designers launch a mobile phone product simultaneously […] Distance no objectOn 1 Feb 2003 in Personnel Today Morecompanies are going remote in managing their teams. Margaret Kubicek looks atthe people development challenges they face along the wayTheir empires may be expanding geographically, but today’s managers areincreasingly staying put. As the general cultural shift towards viewing Europeas a single entity continues to cross over into business, and as growingconcerns over the economy force companies to integrate the business in aneffort to cut costs, managers are leading teams that span ever greaterdistances and nationalities. Remote team management may be a sign of the times, but so too are cutbacksin business travel due to the threat of terrorism and lean economic times. Asrecent as a decade ago – when remote teams were emerging as a result ofcompanies taking on an increasingly global focus – the approach was verydifferent. Superman “We call it the superman pants syndrome,” says Kevan Hall,president of Global Integration, a consultancy that trains people to work internationally.”Go in your office, spin round three times, pull superman pants over yourtrousers and start flying around. Because people have been so used to ahands-on style of management, they assume this is the only way to manage staffbased in another country.” Rick Woodward, training and development director for Kimberly-Clark Europe,says frequent travel can inspire a false sense of security. “The beliefwas the more managers were kept on the move, the closer they were to the business.The reality was, although they felt close to the business, they were onlyvisiting places about every two months.” For managers to succeed in this new remote environment, says Woodward, theysimply need to accept they are remote and use all that today’s technologyadvances can offer to build community and manage activity according to changingcircumstances. Virtual teams – led by a remote manager who has responsibility for an aspectof work or a short-term project but no line management responsibility for thoseon the team – are also making more of an appearance in today’s global market. Kimberly-Clark launched a global training programme and published aninternal guide for its remote and virtual managers last year. It is expandingthe programme this year and will include some tailored programmes forindividual teams. “From a systems co-ordinator point of view, we alwaysdid work remotely – we just didn’t do it as effectively as we could,” saysChris Jefferies, Kimberly-Clark’s European business systems manager. “Now,by understanding the challenges and adapting to remote working, we are.” ChallengesMost of us are used to a sense of team community occurring naturally, butthis informal networking so natural in a traditional office environment justdoesn’t happen across great distances, says Woodward. “You’ have to workat community and so you need a system to achieve it.” For the remote or virtual manager, that means having a keen awareness ofhow, and in which circumstances, to use the different modes of communication –from old-fashioned phone calls or teleconferences to real time onlinediscussion forums or e-mails. E-mail, for example, is perfect for agendas and action plans. Says Woodward:”What frustrates me in meetings or video conferences is managersdiscussing action plans or timetables. If time is precious you really want touse it for value-added activities and not clutter it with things that could besorted out via e-mail.” Woodward proposes that face-to-face meetings be reserved for discussingissues that are contextual, strategic or developmental – in short, thoserequiring debate. In circumstances where the only contact is e-mail, responsiveness is key,according to Hall, who says something as simple as having access to a photo ofsomeone can help build trust. Hall identifies building community as the first‘dilemma’ facing remote managers. “When you look at what people rememberof great teams it’s about community rather than ‘what we did’,” he says.”If you lose community in a remote team, you’re dead.” Other dilemmas centre on how to manage activity without being face-to-facewith your team and to what extent team members should look for commonapproaches as opposed to doing simply whatever works locally. According to Dr John Symons, lead tutor in leadership at Henley ManagementCollege, emotional intelligence behaviours such as listening, patience andsensitivity tend to make for more effective virtual and remote managers. Theseteams, by their nature, invite a less dominant, more consensual style ofmanagement, he says. “It’s something to do with the media, with allowingeveryone to have a say and to be reflective.” “We’ve all come out of meetings and said to ourselves, ‘I wish I didn’tsay that’ or ‘I could have been punchier’,” continues Symons. But in thevirtual environment, ‘even though the chairman of the meeting doesn’t catchyour eye, you still get your say.’ More efficient Symons maintains that hierarchies fade online and virtual working encouragesan environment free from race, age and gender discrimination. In many cases, itcan even be more efficient than the traditional office. Says Symons:”Remote communications such as e-mail allow people to be reflective,whereas face-to-face has more of a sense of urgency.” The remote environment may delay the process of decision-making, accordingto Symons, but it ‘teases out richer debate’ along the way. For an example of the potential offered by remote team working, consider therecent launch of Vodafone live! in 15 countries on the same day. The company’slatest consumer offering, Vodafone live! combines colour, sound and pictures toincrease the range of mobile services on offer to customers. The code for the software system which runs Vodafone live! comes from Japan,while other aspects of the product were developed in other countries. “Youwouldn’t get the scale in just one country to develop a product such asVodafone live!,” says Nick Holley, Vodafone’s group director of leadershipdevelopment. “Remote team working allows us to develop ideas across the business andpool expertise rather than make it all come into the centre. It’s about gettingthe benefits of being a global business while still building on localcreativity and local understanding.” He continues: “This is about getting people to develop the sameproducts in different countries. It’s about co-creating things so we getownership of them as ‘ours’ not ‘mine’.” Effective remote and virtual managers are those who delegate whereverpossible and empower their team members. They also inspire a high element oftrust, says Jeremy Webster, a partner at training and skills developmentconsultancy MaST. Webster identifies four elements necessary for managers to build trust:openness about what is expected of your people; reliability so that you don’tmake promises you can’t keep or make unreasonable demands of your people;congruency in your actions so you don’t say one thing and do another; andacceptance of your people and their strengths. As with trust, many of the necessary ingredients to successful remote teammanagement apply to teams in a conventional environment as well. Says Hall:”It’s just that when we’re face-to-face we can get by without givingattention to it.” For Webster, it’s simple. “The remote teams that succeed are the onesthat know what they have to do, what they can do, and deliver according tothose strengths. And achievement is seen as common to all.” Case studyInformation flow feeds growthTwo years ago Kimberly-Clark launched its global Going forGrowth programme – restructuring its sales force to be customer-facing ratherthan regionally orientated following the growth of international retailers. “We now have multi-functional sales teams and along withthat restructuring, it made sense to develop European-wide systems,” saysChris Jefferies, Kimberly-Clark’s European business systems manager.He was one of a number of Kimberly-Clark remote and virtualmanagers to take part in training facilitated by consultancy Global Integrationlast year. Jefferies now leads a team of 22 co-ordinators – formally put inplace at the beginning of the year – across Central, Southern and EasternEurope who support the new centralised sales and support system. Jefferiessays: “The main challenge is to get the system understood and embraced andovercome the mentality which questions why we should adopt a new Europeansystem when the local ones were thought to be working fine.”He has planned a kick-off meeting for early March to bringeveryone together in one place to share experiences, introduce them to the newrole and understand their responsibilities. It will also include a module onremote working facilitated by Global Integration.Establishing a good information flow early on is critical, asis getting the team to sign on to a shared – European – objective, saysJefferies. “Working remotely makes it easier for people to go off ontangents and do what they think is right and what might be best locally, butwon’t necessarily be best from a European and a system point of view. Peopleneed to feel empowered to give input into the European system so they don’t gooff and adapt the system locally.”Case studyGoing virtual for the short termBayer Pharmaceuticals uses remote team working for short-termprojects to develop product education materials and sales excellenceinitiatives. The teams exist for up to 10 months and typically comprise sevenor eight people across a range of Bayer’s departments, such as product expertsor medical specialists, and in different parts of the world.Time and cost savings are a must, but Bayer accepts at leastsome face-to-face meeting is necessary, according to Claire Hutchins, a Bayertraining manager. “These are not classic teams working over the longterm,” says Hutchins. “But people still need to form as a team andsome face-to-face is needed if that is going to be achieved. Lack offace-to-face meetings means certain assumptions can take place about whatpeople are doing and how much they are contributing.”Bayer employees may be working on a number of these kinds ofprojects at any one time, on top of their everyday role. “The challengefor anyone co-ordinating a team is to manage people without having direct linemanagement responsibility for them,” says Hutchins.Ever present is the ‘what’s-in-it-for-me factor’, she says, andit’s best not avoided if the virtual team culture is to be fostered.Involvement has a number of benefits – not least early knowledge of newproducts the company is bringing to the market. “It broadens their mindsto be globally rather than locally focused, and it also forces them to networkmore. It increases their visibility in the organisation as well as enhancingteam working.”Top tips on integrated learningOnce your remote team is in place andoperating effectively, the final challenge is to get the learning and bestpractice that is taking place in different locations integrated across thewhole team for everybody’s benefit. Some practical ways to achieve this are:– Train new team members specifically in how to work remotely.Allocate them an experienced mentor– Get new team members to capture their learning, and then passit on to the next new person. This makes a good induction project for newpeople, but do get experienced people to quality check the material– Allocate specific time for learning during face-to-facemeetings. Whenever possible – even if just once a year – get together in oneplace and devote time to celebration, recognition and learningSource: Kimberly-Clark’s guide toRemote & Virtual TeamsMore informationGlobal Integration is offering a free practical guide to thekey challenges of managing remote and virtual teams to the first 25 readers whoe-mail [email protected] Previous Article Next Article Trackbacks/Pingbacks Related posts:No related photos. read more