WP: 3 Reasons Virtual Teams Fail (And how to see it coming)
At a recent training event, two managers sat at the back of the room as a Senior Executive from their firm spoke to them about the days when he was a line manager. He waxed rhapsodic about the way he used to focus on the “soft skills” of management, of the “HP Way” and “Management by Walking Around” and how they needed to get away from their desks- stop sending so much email and really connect with their teams. Heads nodded. Some in agreement- most in boredom. Finally one attendee turned to the other and muttered in frustration, “Yeah but it’s a long bloody walk to Bangalore”.That’s the problem facing many of today’s managers- while the challenges of creating, managing and getting the most out of people hasn’t changed in thousands of years, the constraints under which we work now are very different from even a few years ago.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of Remote and Virtual Teams. Problems that were common but manageable by committed teams when they could all get together physically are made even more dramatic when separated by time, distance and even corporate or national cultures.
Because of distance and communication challenges, the costs of failure are higher than ever- and many projects are threatened by forces they don’t even know exist until the project is behind budget or crashes completely.
How confident are you that your managers and teams have the skills, tools and attitude to address these challenges? To raise your confidence level, view this free whitepaper at:
