Working at a Distance

A Global Business Model for Virtual Team Collaboration

Cassandra Smith **NFA**

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138250321
• eBook ISBN: 9781134782901
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organizations are implementing virtual teams using web technologies as a cost-effective measure for training and project development. In Working at a Distance, Cassandra Smith provides a detailed, comprehensible virtual team business model for managers, professionals, teachers or students involved globally with such initiatives. The author argues that guidance for members of such teams is generally lacking. They are left to figure out their places on the team and face a host of other issues, the impact of which can be ameliorated with a virtual team business model that anyone working at a distance can follow. Cassandra Smith has taught courses online and facilitated virtual teams. The model she has created based on that experience maximizes the benefit to be gained from individual members' skills, personality styles, and the strengths of each active participant. It will enable teams to set up viable working plans and work cohesively at a distance. The model also provides for conflict management in virtual environments. Built on research and practical experience, the empirical data and subject experts' views captured by the author and the model offered here will help all stakeholders of businesses or educational institutions where managers, employees and clients; or teachers and students are working at a distance to achieve desired outcomes.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCING THE VIRTUAL TEAM GLOBAL BUSINESS MODEL

As a manager, you have established your goals and objectives for your employees working at a distance—in virtual teams—with their coworkers. You are certain that your expectations are clear. You have submitted the expectations to your employees in the form of statements with the end goal in mind—your mind. Your deliverable due dates are set in place as well, and you expect your employees to submit project deliverables by due dates. You believe that your employees working collaboratively understand the Web-based technology required to submit the deliverables. You believe that your employees understand how to communicate in their teams. You reason that your employees know how to use email and any real-time platforms that your company uses to communicate. All systems are set in place and ready for completion of the project.

But consider this scenario—a distance project—from the perspectives of your employees working at a distance: there is a project due, and your employer has assigned you to work with others to complete the project. This sounds like a simple feat. The issue is that you are not in the same location as your counterparts, your team members, your peers. You are working at a distance, assigned to a virtual team. You might be wondering where to begin. You have no guidelines or set rules. The goals and objectives are ambiguous to you and read like a list of commands, not clear steps on how to proceed. You might have initiated contact with some of your team members by email, only to find that only a few members have responded. One member has informed you that he prefers to use Skype, so please Skype him. You wonder to yourself, “Is this indicative of how effective the team will progress?” You have a myriad of questions. Since you initiated the email, are you now considered the team leader, the go-to person? Will there be a team leader? Where are management? Should you approach management about how to move forward? Will that make it look like you’re not a competent employee who understands remote working?

This book was developed to help professionals and participants in higher education working at a distance in what are known as virtual teams. Virtual teams occur when groups that are geographically dispersed work together using Web technologies to complete projects. Virtual teams facilitate work that occurs across diverse and disseminated areas and business centers; some virtual teams are in offices throughout the country and globally for businesses; some virtual teams are in employees’ home offices. Universities also find virtual teams useful as they are part of curricula to foster collaborative learning among students.

As noted above, virtual teams consist of groups of individuals working at a distance to complete a project or meet an identified common goal. Working at a distance could consist of asynchronous or synchronous communication, depending on the organization and strategic goals set by stakeholders for the organization. The premise of this book is to introduce a model that can be applied and followed when working collaboratively on projects challenged by distance. It is not always an easy task to work on projects and have a grasp of the skills needed for the job, to be in the know regarding which subgroups within the team will complete project parts, and to be fully aware of how to overcome communication barriers due to using technology mostly to communicate. These are among the factors that play a significant role in determining whether or not virtual teams will result in success. When employees have a guide and standards regarding how to work remotely, they are motivated to work collaboratively and submit quality work.

Before reviewing the details of this marvelous model, how it works, how it can be applied, and how it is set up to meet your distance work demands for remote projects, it is important to introduce some elements of virtual teams and virtual team dynamics that will be discussed throughout the book. Keep in mind that this chapter is a preview of the entire book, of what is to come, and poses salient questions that will be answered later.

ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION

Asynchronous communication involves participants working at a distance at their own pace, their own computer terminals, and sometimes at home. Participants can log on to their computers to independently complete tasks for the group project that have been assigned to a particular individual or that the individual has volunteered to complete. Some online schools use virtual teams in an asynchronous format. Students have a project due, and work in class posting messages (threads) about the assignment section they will complete, and then submit their sections of the assignment. Virtual teams in higher education will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.

Asynchronous communication tools include the following:

• email—participants may submit work using their companies’ email software;

• newsgroups—participants may submit their work by communicating in a particular area of the Internet provided by the company known as a newsgroup to organize projects and tasks;

• distance education software—participants may submit their work via software, using educational tools specially designed for Web-based learning such as Pearson eCollege or Blackboard Learning System.

Issues that occur in asynchronous virtual teams include lack of communication and miscommunication. Reading an email alone or working in an area of software dedicated to team participation is not always effective. The communication is asynchronous, which means that employees, students, or any participants working at a distance can log on to work whenever they choose. There are no set times to communicate and work as a group. When one person responds to an email, it could be nighttime in another location. This can lead to increasing miscommunication and slow team progress.

Other issues that occur in asynchronous communication involve technology. Managers may assume that employees can work effectively with the technology to collaborate within an asynchronous group. Participants themselves may assume that they understand the technology until it is time to work. There may be delays in the submission of deliverables because there is no central point to submit the work to or the employee cannot locate the central point or area for updates. Often, these are thought to be secondary issues that are not resolved until the project is under way, when in fact they should be a priority because they impact the delivery of products and services.

SYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION

Synchronous communication involves participants working at a distance as a group at the same time. Participants take part in synchronous communication by using videoconferencing or Web-based technologies that allow working at a distance simultaneously. Although this book focuses mostly on asynchronous teams, synchronous virtual teams may benefit from it as well. Synchronous teams work on projects using technologies that provide participants with the opportunity for face-to-face communication. Synchronous communication tools include the following:

• videoconferencing—video and audio telecommunication for collaborative work;

• conference calls—telecommunication by telephone with audio capabilities to share ideas;

• Webconferencing—real-time chat, video, and audio capabilities using software systems such as Adobe Connect or Cisco WebEx.

Issues that result from synchronous communication usually include a few people doing the speaking and not enough listening to employees by management and/or not enough active engagement from all employees. The chat feature involves numerous participants asking questions with limited answers from the host. Participants can easily become discouraged about the size of the meetings, their voice not being heard, or their ideas not being fully or accurately represented, or failing to participate and offer ideas. Some participants are reticent in these types of settings, while others are more forthcoming and will express themselves to the team. For either group—asynchronous or synchronous—there is usually no evaluation component in place enabling management and participants to determine and review what is working and what is not working in virtual teams.

Once the communication tools are set in place, participants can work either with asynchronous, synchronous, or both types of communications to meet virtual team goals. Members are given tasks, time limits to complete the tasks, perhaps some goals and objectives, and then expectations for deliverables. The deliverables are the actual product, assignment, or service that participants are working to complete. The problem is that there are often performance gaps in communication between the task allocated and the deliverables expected. Providing a model for remote workers to follow allows each member of the team to clearly understand their role.

PERFORMANCE GAPS

“Performance gap” is a business term meaning that some part of a task is disjointed or not connected to meet an intended goal. The gap is between where the company is currently operating and where it should be operating. For businesses, it may mean that a more strategic approach is needed to close the performance gap and achieve goals. For virtual teamwork, it means that there is no clarity and limited action steps are occurring because somewhere there is miscommunication, a gap, and slow progression. Here is an example involving O-Span Youth, a fictitious company that will be used to illustrate the methodology throughout this book.

O-Span Youth, a children’s shoe company, has noticed that there is a gap in shoe sales and wants to devise an advertising campaign in the hope of selling more shoes. Its management want several of its subsidiary companies to work on the campaign across its Northeast region. The gap currently consists of the low levels of sales management have identified. Future gaps could include communication among the geographically dispersed teams working to complete the campaign, among other issues that may ensue if there are no set rules and protocols for this virtual assignment.

Performance gaps can be minimized if there are process standards to follow. The model introduced in this book allows for management and leaders to define process standards to help overcome performance gaps. Later in the book we will discuss process standards, and the example of O-Span Youth will be used to demonstrate how such a model can be effective for remote working.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

If management are initially involved in setting up the virtual team project, they need to be fully present and connected to the project. In this book, goals and objectives, tasks, and expectations for deliverables are some of the main areas of management involvement that will be discussed. These particular areas help to sustain virtual team collaboration. Goals are defined by management, and subsequent goals often follow when the participants start to work on their assigned projects. For example, a goal could be to design demographic software for the children’s shoe company, but the objectives could be obscure, postulated by management, therefore leading to a performance gap at an early stage. If management fail to communicate the demographics they want included in the software and to connect the objectives to the goals, the miscommunication has begun, and will extend to the employees working at a distance. The team working on developing the demographic software—the actual design—will have to ask the management team what is needed with regard to standard operating procedures, or it may decide to design the software based on members’ areas of expertise, including the demographics that are standard and that they think need to be included. This is where a subject matter expert would be helpful. But was a subject matter expert consulted? One designer might think the goals and objectives consist of a demographic that includes female, male, age, and location. A subject matter expert might include culture, assess prior market sales, surplus, and so on.

If you are assessing the flow thus far, you may notice an emerging theme of miscommunication from the start of the virtual team project or any project that requires group collaboration.

TASKS

Tasks are easy to identify, especially by stakeholders. Usually, management understand what they want to do and the desired end product. Management know that they want to increase sales of the children’s shoes. They understand that the tasks will require employees working in satellite locations to achieve this goal. The task is clearly defined, at least from management’s viewpoint, but the performance gap for this project may be subtle yet present. Tasks should result in specific steps of action needed regarding what is expected from employees’ job performance on the virtual team. Nowhere has this been identified at this point. Management have really identified the goal, not the task.

EXPECTATIONS OF DELIVERABLES

Expectations of deliverables often conflict when working at a distance. What management and leadership teams want in terms of project quality may be radically different from what employees are working to complete or submit. The performance gap may be wide because there is often a lack of communication and clear expectations of management’s goals regarding employees’ final deliverables when working remotely. Not only are the tangible deliverables questionable, but the timeline and what each employee should be working on to complete the project factor into expectations of deliverables. As stated above, deliverables are the tangible evidence that shows work is being completed, and completed in the way that is desired. Some employees will not meet deadlines. The reasons may include difference in work ethic, performance gap issues, miscommunication, and uncertainty about project goals and objectives. If the performance gap includes issues with what is actually desired as opposed to what is submitted, deliverables may be delayed. Completing the task will be problematic because of previous performance gaps. Employees may in fact produce deliverables, but there may be reliability issues with the end products because of problems or delays in production to complete tasks due to having to go back and close the performance gaps.

CHECK-POINTS

There is one more element of virtual team dynamics that needs to be previewed before the grand introduction of the model: check-points. Between the lines of communication in cyberspace, there is a huge disconnect. That disconnect is as nebulous as the expression “between the lines of communication”. Think about it. When there are updates and changes in a face-to-face environment on a huge project, how often are you updated, regardless of whether you are in management or an employee? Is there a sense of immediacy to check an update if you are notified by email, for instance? A lack of check-points and communication of changes that may be made on a whim or during a live testing event of products by management/employees means that they may never be conveyed to all staff or in the operating procedure manuals accurately, if at all, because these changes have not been fully captured. These intricacies impact the overall goals of the project and communication among employees. This occurs even in traditional teams, so what might happen in virtual teams where there may be no sense of urgency and no check-points for communication among employees working remotely?

INTRODUCING THE VIRTUAL TEAM GLOBAL BUSINESS MODEL™ (VTML)

Having collected empirical data, it seems that more and more companies are using technologies to work at a distance and bring employe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introducing the Virtual Team Global Business Mode
• 2 Management Using the Virtual Team Global Business Model
• 3 Team Leaders or Project Managers Using the Virtual Team Global Business Model
• 4 Virtual Team Guides and Virtual Team Members Using the Virtual Team Global Business Model
• 5 Business Applications of the Virtual Team Global Business Model
• 6 Higher Education and the Virtual Team Global Business Model
• 7 Determining What Works for Virtual Teams
• Appendix: Survey Results from Professionals on Virtual Teams
• Sources and Contacts
• Index