The team is dead... long live the virtual team

So, what is really different?

There are a number of critical differences between a Virtual team and the traditional team. Examining the characteristics identified by Larson and LaFasto, the successful Virtual team has two very significant differences:

1. A clear, elevating goal;
2. Results-driven structure;
3. Competent team members;
4. Arms-length commitment;
5. Specialist climate;
6. Standards of excellence;
7. External support and recognition; and
8. Principled leadership.

The two key differences are the nature of the commitment of the Virtual team members to the team as a group of people, as distinct from, the commitment to the goals of the project. The commitment of Virtual team members are, first and foremost, to themselves not the other members of the team. Indeed, most Virtual team members will place their commitment to their "home" group or company above that to the team members. In effect, team loyalty comes a very poor last in the relationship and commitment stakes [see Figure 3].

Secondly, Virtual team members are chosen for their technical skills not their Belbin leadership roles. This results in the replacement of a collaborative climate with a specialist climate. In other words, rather than the team building on both the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, the team is built on the specialist strengths only of each team member. To put it crudely, whereas a traditional project or team leader is held responsible for providing both personal and professional development to build on the strengths and reduce the weaknesses of his or her team members, the Virtual team member is simply concerned with the strengths. If a contractor is hired and it becomes apparent that that person lacks the expected skills, they would be fired or replaced.

In this new environment, there is no or little sense of "team-ness".

While this may appear a very harsh assessment, the typical Virtual team that our group works with has the following dimensions.

The team members are drawn from various expert and stakeholder groups. Team members will often be consultants or contractors who work for external organisations. In addition, many team members will have either part-time or ad-hoc commitment to the team and the project. In most cases, the only "normal" [in the sense of full-time and fully committed] member of the team is the project manager.

As a result, the inter-personal process that we believe is essential for building the traditional team is completely absent. In most Virtual teams that we have worked with or observed, there is:

• little or no loyalty to the team;
• trust between team members is limited to professional skills;
• no friendship between team members;
• little shared experience;
• little shared vision; and
• varied belief systems.

Simply, there is no Unified Commitment. The impact of a lack of Unified Commitment needs to be explored a little further.

• Increased Conflict

The absence of a sense of team-ness or team-spirit raises significantly the potential for conflict between team members. It is the norm in Virtual teams for team members to have multiple reporting and authority channels as distinct from the simpler reporting and authority channels in traditional teams.

For example, a team member works for a major consulting organisation. The project manager requires the team to work some additional time to catch-up on reworking analysis requirements. What is required is one night of 2-3 hours work. While the consulting group team member is only too happy to work the additional hours to help out the project, their consulting company has a operating principle of no free work. As a result, the project manager has to engage the additional effort required to negotiate a minor contract variation to get the team member to work the 2-3 hours of additional time [which of course is billed at full rate].

In a traditional team, given the shared loyalty to the team, the additional work would be simply given at "no cost" to help the team out. While the additional time should be recorded as part of the cost of the project, the issue here is the level and complexity of negotiation required on the part of the project manager to arrange for the team member to work that time.

Of course, this simple example is typical of the complex multiple layers of conflict that can exist in a Virtual team. Another example of the increased levels of conflict in Virtual teams arises when the solution that is perceived best for the project requires a technical team member to deploy a technology that is in conflict with the stated technical platforms approved by the technical team members "home" group.

As shown in Figure 3, while the team may be Virtual, the inherent conflict of priorities and interest are very real and complex.

This confusion in priorities is identified by Tom Peters [op cit.]. However, he offers little assistance to the Virtual team manager in resolving the inherent conflict in his own statement:

Loyalty is alive. But it is loyalty to your colleagues, your team, your project, your customers - and yourself.

As shown in Figure 3, most Virtual team members face an almost impossible model of conflicting priorities and loyalty.

Fig. 3 - A virtual world of real conflict

As we’ll discuss later, without a clear contract or agreement for how disputes are identified and resolved, members of Virtual teams will often be placed in the invidious position of having to resolve conflicting obligations and loyalties by themselves.

• Loss of control

Many leaders of Virtual teams have stated how much more difficult it is for the leader to influence the behaviour of their "virtual" team members. As put to us by one frustrated project manager:

"It would be so much easier if they reported to me. I cannot depend of them as other people can change their world without consulting me first."

While traditional team structures included models such as the Matrix team model where team members had dual reporting structures [to the project manager and to the technical or discipline management], the Virtual team has much more complex control issues.

In a typical scenario, a virtual team member is employed by a consulting company but reports, in an organisational sense, to a project manager employed by another company – the client organisation of the consulting company. In most consulting companies, loyalty to the consulting company and strict adherence to the consulting company’s culture, attitude and business drivers is not only demanded but it is a key determinant of the individual’s career path. In many cases, this will result in divided loyalties and loss of control, from the project manager’s perspective. For example, a consulting company’s need to secure an increasing income stream can lead it to replace more competent people [working in a project for an existing client] with new, less competent people; thus freeing up their better people for a more lucrative client contract.

• Adhocery

We sort of invented this word but, it appears to represent the dynamic of so many Virtual teams that we have observed.

In effect, not only is the commitment of Virtual team members an "arms length" one, the time allocated and the effort expended by Virtual team members is generally part-time and extremely difficult to control and predict – in other words, it is ad-hoc.

Many project managers and team leaders have been caught when assumptions that they have made in good faith regarding the availability of their Virtual team members are proved wrong. At best, the result is a degradation of the quality of the work of the Virtual team member as they have less time available than was planned. At worst, the work is done in small bits over a longer period of time than planned.

This adhocery results in what we have now termed "the death of a project through 1,000 small cuts".

Other impacts of Virtual teams include loss of team and corporate memory and skills degradation. However, these are more of a corporate concern than a team issue.

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