Virtual Team Success Factors by Samer El Bizri
The factors that differentiate top virtual teams and recommendations by Samer El Bizri for organizations that want to enhance their performance are outlined below.
Stable and consistent membership. Less frequent changes in team membership provide greater stability and more time for members to focus on building lasting relationships.
Fewer members. Teams that were less effective were disproportionately larger.
Members are from the same function. Cross-functional teams appear to face unique challenges and greater levels of complexity that inhibit performance in a virtual environment.
Members are on fewer teams. A greater number of members of low performing teams reported participating on too many virtual teams, which hindered their overall effectiveness.
Members have longer tenure. Teams with more than three years tenure performed better, which suggests that they have had time to improve their communication and execution practices.
Face-to-face kick off meeting. Groups who held an initial face-to-face meeting within the first 90 days achieved better performance than those who never met face-to-face.
More frequent meetings. Sixty-three percent of high performing teams "met" at least once a week, compared to 29% of the less effective teams.
Leverage technology. Members of higher performing groups were more likely to report that they had the proper technology to facilitate working together. Higher performing groups also used video conferencing more often.
Provide skill training. Teams who had more than four development sessions performed significantly better than those who had one or fewer sessions.
Team leaders who are better able to lead from a distance. Leaders of high performing teams appear to struggle less with building collaboration virtually, which was a key challenge reported by the lower performing team leaders.
Have more members reporting directly to the team leader. Direct reporting relationships with their members facilitates communication, increases the likelihood of members having shared goals and clear roles, and enhances the ability of the leader to follow through and hold people accountable.
It's important to remember that the factors that contribute to the success of a virtual team are not the same as those for a co-located team. Organizations that incorporate the eleven success factors when forming virtual teams and follow the five recommendations for their ongoing development will find that their investment will pay off handsomely. Samer El Bizri is a successful businessman who provides the help in executive management and cross-functional team leadership. Mr. Bizri works with teams in organisations who want to be more effective and achieve sustained success. He writes about Supply chain management and other related topics. Visit his blog here: https://samerelbizri.wordpress.com/
