Best practices of managing virtual teams

Sudipta Dev / Mumbai

Project management is not just about effective monitoring, tracking, and delivery within deadlines, but more significantly it is about managing people who comprise a team. The HR responsibilities of project managers become all the more critical when they are handling virtual teams. Communication remains the key aspect of managing a globally dispersed team, which has no face-to-face contact. While teleconferencing and video conferencing are evident communication channels, many organisations have formulated specific strategies to enable greater bonding between team members scattered across continents and to keep them motivated.

The principles of managing virtual teams are more complicated than those of managing physical teams. The HR responsibilities of a project manager looking after a geographically dispersed team is consequently very challenging—ensuring that the whole team operates as a single unit, building the capability of the team, performance management and knowledge management.

Managing virtual teams

It is not easy keeping up the motivation levels of team members from different cultures and time zones who lack face-to-face interaction. The camaraderie and spirit that makes such a difference to team work is also missing. “The problem can be that of ‘virtual meetings’ vis-à-vis physical contact and hence reduced effectiveness and loss of personal touch. Second, it reduces acce-ssibility…while someone present in the same location can walk across and speak…in the virtual scenario, one does not have that option,” says Anil Jalali, manager—talent engagement and development, Wipro Technologies.

He adds that differing time zones cause difficulties, whether it is the problem of getting together at the same time or differing energy levels, for some it’s morning while for others it is the fag end of the day.

R Dileepan, group software manager of Mastek believes that the lack of coordination occurs in dysfunctional distributed teams on account of the different units perceiving themselves as individual teams that have supplier-customer relationships with each other. This leads to ‘clannishness’, lack of readiness to cooperate, and blame-mongering. Language problems and the consequent misunderstandings are quite common. He points out that the root causes of these are geographical, temporal and cultural gaps that exist on account of the distributed nature of teams. “Getting commitments and making people stick to them is another issue that confronts most geographically-distributed teams. This is because local managers (be they customer representatives or higher level in-house managers) acquire a much stronger influence over what is perceived to be urgent and important. Clarification of reporting relationships helps a lot in this regard.”

Managing expectations of people is one of the most difficult tasks of virtual team management, believes Manoj Mandavgane, general manager of HR with ICICI Infotech. “The differences in body language are another factor that came up during video conferencing. It is not just about teaching Indian employees the body language of foreigners but also the reverse.”

Finding solutions

Video/teleconferencing are common modes of communication for virtual teams across organisations. Meetings between onsite-offshore team members are encouraged to enable personal interaction. Wipro Technologies has a Meet Your People Programme (MYPP) which provides a framework for helping managers interact with their teams on a sustained basis throughout the year. According to Jalali this leads to: More effective and sustained communication between leaders and their teams; superior

understanding of the organisation’s objectives, goals and approach among team members; alignment towards business goals; more effective communication by team members of their ideas and views to their leaders; and sustained avenue for team leaders—to coach, guide and develop their team members.

The following activities are part of the MYPP: Business strategy meeting; goals and objectives setting; appraisal discussion; career discussion meeting; new manager assimilation meeting; monthly plan meeting; skip level meeting; project meeting; social event.

The company also has a ‘war room’. “This is a virtual space where team members located at different physical locations collaborate in order to achieve a common goal. War rooms become a necessity when large teams which are geographically dispersed need to collaborate on a real-time basis to discuss, coordinate and accomplish their individual but inter-related activities which lead to the common team goal. War rooms facilitate document sharing, exchange of information, real-time online discussions among team members, sharing work plans, online updates to work plans and close monitoring of the progress of the team’s activities,” informs Jalali, adding that access privileges and restrictions are critical for war-room applications as sensitive information needs to be exchanged between team members who are privy to the same.

Mastek deals with problems of distributed teams by promoting a shared sense of purpose, a global insight into what drives each unit and global buy-in to all the decisions made. The key to it is providing the right communication, Dileepan lists the various measures employed by the company:

• Top-management is focused on end-to-end results, it emphasises collaboration (to the extent of having team-based as against individualised, performance appraisal);
• A single leader for the team, with complete accountability for success and failure;
• Clearly defined hand-off points, with clear roles and responsibilities for all team members;
• Empowerment of team members by driving down accountability;
• Focused team building efforts in order to emphasise the need to work as one team;
• Providing complete information to all team members to keep them involved;
• Proactive transfer of key team members to different geographical locations in diverse roles, in order to gain insight into the constraints of these positions;
• Culture of consensual decision-making, with the leader arbitrating differences of opinion.

Dileepan recounts an interesting incident when a project manager claimed that there was no possibility of improvement in productivity, given that her team members were already stretching beyond normal work hours in order to deliver expected results. When the problem was presented to the team members, accompanied by an incentive for obtaining the same results, but by reducing the number of hours put in, suggestions kept pouring forth on what could be done to make it happen! To her credit, the project manager saw the point and took charge of making the improvement happen.

At ICICI Infotech, the kno-wledge management platform is an effective way of bridging people. The discussion boards and e-groups are the other popular ways of keeping in touch.

Cultural issues

Virtual teams are susceptible to cultural clashes. While these might not be aggressive, it mostly comes to fore on account of the expectation mismatched as a result of cultural diversity. The most vulnerable time is the process of change management. Dileepan agrees that decision-making, in particular, is very susceptible to cultural influences. “There are companies (and even regions) that revel in top-down decision handouts, while others believe in a bottom-up approach; teamwork is emphasised at places, while individualised decision-making is the norm elsewhere. This has a profound influence on distributed teams, since different parts of the team adopt the culture that is physically closest to them. If parts of a team employ different ways of decision-making, it can be very disruptive to team-functioning.”

“Wipro Technologies has not witnessed any major cultural clashes,” says Jalali adding that the diversity committee in the organisation builds a climate that welcomes, celebrates, and promotes respect for employees who come from different backgrounds and make up virtual teams. “In our commitment to diversity, we welcome people with diverse ethnicity, gender, cultural orientation, national origin, and age backgrounds and we seek to include knowledge and values from many cultures. Recently, during one of the diversity committee meetings we had representatives from the US, UK, Japan besides multiple locations in India meeting over a telecon. It was extremely interesting to get perspectives that represented so many cultures and it was an indication of the kind of plurality existing inside the organisation.”

Cultural clashes, feels Mandavgane, is not an issue to be worried about as communication helps teams understand each other. Cross-cultural training is mandatory at ICICI Infotech.

“In business etiquette sessions we make them understand the nuances in different geographies. A lot of protocols are established and every person is given a time frame to react (24 hours). I have realised that people from other geographies are keen to understand what is happening, are keen to make friends,” informs Mandavgane.

Best practices

Managing virtual teams is a complex process. Best practices can make the process smoother. Dileepan lists some of them:

• Web-based project management tools for centralised visibility;
• Electronic discussion boards to capture all discussions and decisions;
• Regular video-conferences at different levels;
• Relationship development through face-to-face communication wherever possible;
• Special focus on milestone events, e.g. start-up;
• Measurable objectives, end-to-end as well as at all handoff points with use of objective means like Earned Value Management;
• Clarification of roles and responsibilities across the board;
• Simple measures that promote effective time utilisation (e.g. prior sharing of the agenda and objective of a meeting/teleconference) are also very effective.

It is also necessary to maintain protocols, adds Man-davgane. The teams should be rewarded and accomplishments recognised and celebrated. For a team leader, what is most imperative is to be able to establish trust and live up to promises. Certainly not an easy task when team members are thousands of kilometres away without any personal contact.

sudipta@expresscomputeronline.com