{"id":20899,"date":"2013-09-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/insights\/on-virtual-teams\/"},"modified":"2020-03-21T08:19:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T08:19:45","slug":"on-virtual-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/on-virtual-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"On virtual teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ChangeboardEarlier this year Kevan Hall participated in the\u00a0Virtual Working Summit, organized by Penny Pullan<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Today we continue with our series of extracts.<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Virtual’working is essentially now the norm for management and professional people. Most people these days spend at least some time working with colleagues in different locations. A lot of people seem to think that virtual teams are just ordinary teams plus a little bit on email, but it\u2019s a bit more fundamental than that. It starts really with looking at how we work together and how we cooperate.<\/p>\n

In virtual teams, the cost and complexity of cooperation is increased radically. There are also many types of virtual team: you might just have a remote team, it might be a global team where you\u2019re working across cultures, it might be an extended team where you\u2019re working with suppliers or customers. And depending on your particular type of virtual team, you may be working across barriers of distance, cultures, time zones, working through technology and even organizational complexities; it could be that you are in a\u00a0 matrix with more than one boss or you yourself are working with companies outside your organization. But in all of these scenarios, the cost of cooperation increases.<\/p>\n

For example, when I bring together my global team for face-to-face meetings \u2013 and I do it a couple of times a year \u2013 it costs us $100,000. By the time you\u2019ve flown people to a location, you\u2019ve got hotels, not to mention the fact that you\u2019re taking them out of the market, it\u2019s very, very expensive. I often ask people, \u201cHow many meetings have you been to in the last 12 months where you would write a personal cheque for $100,000?\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a diversity issue. In a virtual team, I\u2019m working with very diverse groups of colleagues; I\u2019m working with people in different time zones where I have a limited overlap in terms of when I can work with them; there are communication difficulties through email, etc. All of these things add complexity. Time zones may seem like a very simple issue, but when is the right time for a global conference call? The answer is that there isn\u2019t one. Somebody will always be up in the middle of the night. All of these things add complexity – \u00a0I call them transaction costs.<\/p>\n

Now, we also know that the actual quality of cooperation within virtual teams is fairly poor. In our virtual team survey<\/a>, people have told us they spent two days a week in meetings and that half of this is unnecessary. They have also told us that they receive 60 emails a day \u2013 three quarters of which are unnecessary. I\u2019m sure you can\u2019t imagine any other area of business where it would be possible to sustain this kind of poor quality. If I was back in my manufacturing days and I went to my boss and said, \u201cWe\u2019re about to launch this new factory. Don\u2019t worry \u2013 it\u2019s only 50 percent scrap\u201d or \u201cWe\u2019re about to launch this new product. It will be fine \u2013 75 percent of the time it won\u2019t work, but otherwise it will be OK\u201d. It would just be ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Basically, cooperation and communication have become much more expensive and much more complex. In economics, if something is more complex and more expensive the demand goes down. Yet in organizations, when we become more matrix and more virtual, the demand for cooperation\u00a0 increases. We often work with companies who\u00a0 run a \u201cOne Team\u201d type programme but have a third of a million employees. That\u2019s a big old team, right? And what we\u2019ve learned is that it\u2019s our obsession with the idea of teams that\u2019s part of the problem \u2013 in fact, it\u2019s one of the major causes of poor quality cooperation.<\/p>\n

Looking at large organizations, the majority of them have\u00a0 teamwork as a corporate value. They hire people for their ability to work in teams and they reward and develop them accordingly. If someone came to you in your career and said \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not sure you\u2019re a team player\u201d it would be a kiss of death in most organizations. But if you think about it, teamwork is just a technique. It\u2019s not a religion. It\u2019s not a value. It\u2019s a way of working. If we assume everything has to be done in teams, then that can very easily lead to too many people being in meetings the whole time, a slowing down of decision-making, additional costs and frustration. No one likes to be in meetings discussing things they don\u2019t need to know!<\/p>\n

Hear the full interview here:\u00a0Virtual Working Summit<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year Kevan Hall participated in the\u00a0Virtual Working Summit, organized by Penny Pullan.\u00a0Today we continue with our series of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","type-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn virtual teams - Global Integration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Earlier this year Kevan Hall participated in the\u00a0Virtual Working Summit, organized by Penny Pullan.\u00a0Today we continue with our series of extracts.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/on-virtual-teams\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On virtual teams\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this year Kevan Hall participated in the\u00a0Virtual Working Summit, organized by Penny Pullan.\u00a0Today we continue with our series of extracts.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/on-virtual-teams\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Global Integration\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-09-12T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-03-21T08:19:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Changeboard-Cartoon.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kevan Hall\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kevan Hall\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/insights\\\/on-virtual-teams\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/insights\\\/on-virtual-teams\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kevan Hall\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3ad6577af9c33612e410fbcdc3ff2a9a\"},\"headline\":\"On virtual teams\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-09-12T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-03-21T08:19:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/insights\\\/on-virtual-teams\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":794,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/insights\\\/on-virtual-teams\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2013\\\/09\\\/Changeboard-Cartoon.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/insights\\\/on-virtual-teams\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.global-integration.com\\\/insights\\\/on-virtual-teams\\\/\",\"name\":\"On virtual teams - 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