BEST PRACTICE

Far-flung teams can be

remarkably productive,

even outperforming groups

whose members work side

by side. But to make these

teams succeed,you have

to follow new rules about

how to manage them.

Can Absence Makea Team Grow Stronger?by Ann Majchrzak,Arvind Ma I hotra, Jeffrey Stamps, and Jessica Lipnack

THE COLD WAR had been good toRocketdyne, Boeing's propulsion

and power division. Starting in 1958,when the United States launched its firstorbiting satellite, all the way throughthe 1980s, Rocketdyne was the domi-nant producer of liquid-fuel rocket en-gines. But after the breakup of the So-viet Union, makers of communicationsand weather satellites started favoringthe cheaper engines coming out ofa newly independent Russia.

In response. Bob Carman, a programmanager at Rocketdyne, envisioned anengine that was radically simpler andcheaper than anything in its catalog. Butto design it. Carman needed people witha depth of expertise that didn't existwithin Rocketdyne's two offices in Ca-noga Park, California. He needed thebest simulation-software stress analysts,who knew how to test alternative de-signs on the computer so the company

wouldn't have to build expensive proto-types, and he needed engineers whoknew how to manufacture extremelyprecise parts in low volumes. The topsimulation analysts worked at MSC Soft-ware, 100 miles away in Santa Ana, Cal-ifornia, and the manufacturing engi-neers worked at Texas Instruments inDallas. Remarkably, both groups had ex-perience not only in modifying others'product designs for their own purposesbut in originating them, a task more com-monly the province of design engineers.

Going outside for expertise, specifi-cally by forming partnerships with com-panies that had never produced a rocketengine, was viewed by Rocketdyne exec-utives as"blasphemous,"Carman recalls.Yet the eight-person group he assem-bled, about one-tenth the normal size,managed to design a reusable rocket en-gine, called SLICE, in only one-tenth thetime span it took to develop its prede-

cessors-and 1% of the actual number ofhours. Featuring a thrust chamber andturbopumps with only a few parts eachinstead of hundreds, it cost millions ofdollars less to manufacture. The teamwas able to do all this even though theonly physical meeting held included justfive of its members, and the group as awhole spent only about 15% of each work-week over ten months on the project.The very first sample unit it producedpassed what is known as cold-flow test-ing, a simulation stage in rocket devel-opment that few designs ever reach.

How did Carman pull off this amaz-ing feat? By using modern communi-cations technology to fashion a virtual,far-flung team of diverse talents thatno face-to-face team could match, evenif its members uprooted themselves tocome work together, or commuted be-tween their home offices and the team'ssite, for the project's entire length.

MAY 2004 131

BEST PRACTICE • Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?

Carman then managed it so that theteam's range of functions, disciplines, andtemperaments didn't produce disarray.

In studying the Rocketdyne team, wenoticed it had some unusual character-istics. Team members got to know oneanother well, though they spent abso-lutely no time together in person afterthe project began. They became remark-ably attentive to one another's responses,though shifts in body language or facialexpression were mostly invisible. Theywere working in areas outside their ex-pertise but benefited greatly from beingable to stay in familiar surroundings,continue working in their own organi-zations, and consult their local colleaguesand extensive paper files.

We began to wonder whether otherteams like SLICE existed. In 2002, weconducted a benchmarking study ofsuccessful virtual teams. (See the side-bar "Learning the Secrets of Far-FlungTeams") Some were global, others re-gional. Half had members from morethan one company. Half were long-term,and half had been set up just for a sin-

gle project. All of them convinced usthat when a project requires a diversityof competencies and perspectives andthe work can be done by means of elec-tronic documents and tools, it's better toopt for a far flung team than for one thatworks face-to-face. Such teams not onlyhave a wider variety of communicationchannels at their command but also arefree of many of the psychological andpractical obstacles to full and effectiveparticipation that hobble their tradi-tional counterparts.

For instance, several team membersmentioned that they contributed muchmore during virtual meetings than theywould have in face-to-face settings. Theysaid they felt compelled to articulatetheir views more precisely than if theyhad depended on visual cues. Althoughmany did affirm the value, in theory, ofmeeting together in the same room, fewin practice found it essential. On the con-trary, they asserted, holding such tradi-tional meetings would have harmedthe teams' work processes. Decisions ina complex project have to be made con-

Learning the Secrets of Far-Flung Teams

To obtain data for our sample, we asked a handful of executives in companies

known toconducttheir work virtually whether they would give us access to both

their successful and unsuccessful teams. They balked. No one wanted to talk

about failures.

So we asked several hundred senior executives to nominate only teams they

regarded as successful. This time, we got a good response. We asked about

ones that did most of their work virtually yet interdependently, with few, if any,

face-to-face meetings. We heard from 54 such teams in 26 companies represent-

ing a wide variety of industries-not only high-tech, telecom, financial services,

and consulting firms but also heavy manufacturing, automotive, and consumer

product companies. Among them were such brand names as EDS, IBM, Emery,

Kraft, Motorola, and Shell Chemicals.

Fewer than 4% of the 293 participants in our survey reported ever meeting

with all oftheirfellov^i team members face-to-face, and Iesstham7% reported

ever meeting with any other member in person. Almost two-thirds of the teams

included people from at least three time zones; slightly more than three-quarters

had members from more than one country. The membersof 57%ofthe teams

performed different functions, and members of 48% of them came from more

than one company.

To participate, team members had to complete a 25-minute Web-based survey;

the team leader had to agree to a half-hour telephone interview; and an executive

familiar with the team had to rate it according to nine common dimensions of suc-

cess, including quality of innovation, collective output, and adherence to budget

132

tinually. Postponing them until every-one assembles slows everything down-way, way down. If such a meeting is in theoffing, everyone expects it to be wherethe real work will take place and avoidsdoing anything of value until the meet-ing occurs. Our far-flung leaders dealtwith that problem by never holding one.As one team leader said,"There's nothingwe don't discuss virtually."

Indeed, much of the value of virtualteams derived from members' ability tobe in two places at once. Remainingtightly linked to their local organiza-tions allowed them to keep their team-mates current on developments there.Long or frequent absences would havemade that difficult, in addition to di-minishing team members' value to theirhome units.

But, clearly, far-flung virtual teams es-tablish a sense of connectedness and im-mediacy differently from the way localteams do. The virtual solution: Blur thedistinction between time spent at meet-ings and time spent away from themthrough the use of always open, onlineteam rooms-and ensure that the meet-ings that do occur really count.

The proof of the method was in theresults. One team in our study went be-yond its charge and designed a manufac-turing process that saved its employermillions of dollars. Another team de-livered virtual training to 80% of its com-pany's employees at one-eighth the tra-ditional cost. Yet another group wasable to merge the IT infrastructures oftwo billion-dollar firms without suffer-ing a single mishap on day one.

In this article, we set out three prin-ciples that guided most of our teams.The first deals with how these teamswere composed; the second with howthey used technology to coordinatetheir efforts; and the third with howteam leaders induced a collection ofstrangers with little in common to func-tion as a mutually supportive group.

Rule 1: Exploit DiversityWith the assistance of his corporatepartners, Bob Carman chose people forthe SLICE team on the strength of theirdifferences. They all may have spoken

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger? • BEST PRACTICE

English, but the languages of their vari-ous disciplines were so dissimilar that,for a while, the engineers, analysts, androcket scientists couldn't understand oneanother. Each subgroup also had a dif-ferent style of working and a differentapproach to solving problems. One ofthe engineers from Texas Instruments,for instance, didn't believe in going tothe trouble of constructing elaboratemodels to test how an increase in mate-rial thickness might affect ease of man-ufacturing. In the early stages of the de-sign process, he was comfortable relyingon his own judgment and exf>erience.Rocketdyne's more cautious propulsionexperts felt otherwise. Each team mem-ber had areas of competence that wereuniquely his or her own, and, inevitably.

Much of the value ofvirtual teams derivedfrom members' ability tobe in two places at once.

disagreements arose over matters with-in one person's area of expertise that hadrepercussions for other team members.But the clash of perspectives producedsolutions instead of acrimony. The pro-pulsion engineers, for example, decidedto thicken the edge of a casting part theyhad rounded to smooth the fuel's flowbecause the simulation engineers saidthe rounding diminished the part's abil-ity to handle stress.

How were other teams able to takeadvantage of their diversity? Considerthe example of a research and develop-ment team at Unilever Latin Americathat was asked to redesign a deodorant

for the Colombian and Venezuelan mar-kets. The packaging for the roll-on, stick,and cream formats were to be manu-factured in Brazil; the engineer who wasto develop the cream packaging was sit-uated in Argentina. The roli-on formulaitself was going to be made in Mexicoand Brazil, the stick in Chile, and thecream in Colombia. But because thepackaging and formula for the Colom-bian and Venezuelan markets differedfrom those the factories were alreadymaking for the rest of Latin America,the company needed the existing suppli-ers and manufacturing engineers, whowere spread across five countries, to par-

Ann Majchrzak (majchrza@usc.edu) is a professor ofinformation systems at the MarshallSchool of Business at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is thecoauthor of the September-October 1996 HBR article "Breaking the Functional Mind-Setin Process Organizations."Arvind Malhotra (Arvind_Malhotra@kenanflagler.unc.edu)is an assistant professor of information technology and e-commerce at the Universityof North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chape! Hill. Chief Scientist Jeffi-eyStamps (Jeff.Stamps@netage.com) and CEO Jessica Lipnack (Jessica.Lipnack@netage.com) are cofounders of the Boston-based consulting firm NetAge; they are theauthors of six books on netvi^orked organizations, including, most recently, VirtualTeams: People Working Across Boundaries with Technology (John Wiley, 2000).

ticipate in the redesign of the new prod-uct The kind of collaboration called forwas best suited to a virtual team.

Much of the work of generating solu-tions happened in conference calls, whichwere carefully orchestrated by the teamleader. "I didn't know the team mem-bers very well, didn't know how theythought and worked," the leader, whowas based in Argentina, recalls, "so Icouldn't always go directly to the pointon an issue. Instead, I encouraged a lotof conversation, trying to reach a com-mon view that included all of theirpoints. We discussed different alterna-tives, always asking everyone, 'What doyou think about this?'

"If we had ignored even one country,"the leader continues, "we would haverun the risk of creating a product thatcould not be rolled out according toschedule. But by surfacing our differ-ences early, we didn't ignore anyone'sneeds, and we rolled out the productwithout problems on time."

This level of attention paid to solicit-ing and discussing everyone's opinions

MAY 2004 133

BEST PRACTICE • Can Absence Make a Team Crow Stronger?

makes for a far more detailed conversa-tion than the sort teams have when theymeet in person, where they can be ledastray by excessive politeness. After all,not every nod means assent. Most of the

It turned out thate-mail was a poor wayfor teams as a wholeto collaborate.

leaders we studied worked hard to moveconversations beyond tacit agreement.Typically,the teams'charters from man-agement were broad, not prescriptive,requiring searching discussions by theentire group, not half-baked suggestions"phoned in"tothe leader by people work-ing on their own.

Leaders planned their weekly or bi-weekly conference calls as orchestratedevents that team members wouldn'twant to miss. To ensure that everyonecommunicated in the same way, someof the leaders asked those working atthe same location to call in from theirown desks, rather than from a confer-ence room. Wallflowers were drawnout in the meetings and mentored be-tween them. If they still declined to par-ticipate, they were sometimes cut.

Leaders typically started their tele-conferences with an unexpected queryor bit of news, then introduced a topicthey knew would generate some heat.Every person was given a minute or soto respond. The call closed with what oneteam member called "a self-propellingending"-that is, one that set the agendafor the next meeting.

To help overcome differences in com-munication styles, at the outset of aproject several teams administered anonline version of the Myers-Briggs TypeIndicator (MBTI), the widely acceptedassessment tool that places people inone of four personality "dimensions." Inearly teleconferences, team membersagreed to remind everyone of their ownMBTI styles when they spoke. "As youknow, I think out loud," said one witha high extroversion score. In anotherteam, a particularly young member

often prefaced his comments with thereminder that he "hadn't been aroundthe block yet."

These kinds of inclusive conversa-tions proved to be indispensable formany of the teams. Although in thebeginning their discussions took a lotof time, results more than made up forthat. As the leader of the Unilever teamsays, "We got to a shared view muchmore quickly than any of us antici-pated." Of course, teleconferencing wasnot the whole story.

Rule 2: Use Technologyto Simulate RealityToday, a host of technologies exist forprocessing and communicating infor-mation. Which of them did the teamswe studied use? Our more interestingdiscovery was the ones they didn't.

Many in our study found e-mail apoor way for teams as a whole to col-laborate. They reported what othershave noticed as well: Trying to do themain work of the team through one to-one exchanges between members cancause those not included to feel left out,diminishing trust in the group and lead-ing ultimately to dysfunction.

To avoid this expensive mistake, someteams initially adopted the practice ofcopying everyone else on every e-mailexchange. They soon were drowning inmessages. To cope, members resorted todeleting e-mail without reading it. Overtime, it became harder to maintain con-trol over the circulation of documents.People regularly found themselves work-ing from different versions of the sameone. They also complained about e-mail'spoor documentation and storage fea-tures, which made it hard to find infor-mation quickly.

They didn't think much of videocon-ferencing either. Only one-third of oursample used it The majority offered suchobjections as the distracting time delayof most systems and the difficulty of re-turning to the videoconferencing facil-ity after normal business hours, partic-ularly if the team members were indifferent hemispheres. But participatingin a teleconference from home at nineor ten o'clock at night was less problem-

atic. What's more, these teams felt thatthe visual cues most systems providedwere too fuzzy to enhance the collabo-ration experience. In fact, those equip-ped with desktop videoconferencingfound it almost impossible to watchtheir teammates and work collabora-tively on their documents at the sametime. Yet leaving the desktop and mov-ing to a videoconferencing site was noanswer either.

And while they made regular use ofconference calls, team members did notreport on the status of assignments dur-ing them. Instead, most (83%) relied onvirtual work spaces. Here they postedtheir work in progress electronically andexamined their colleagues' postings,well in advance of teleconferences. Theytended to use the conference calls them-selves to discuss disagreements, whichthey said were more effectively handledin conversation than in writing.

These work spaces were more thannetworked drives with shared files. Ac-cessible to everyone at any time, thework space was where the group wasreminded of its decisions, rationales,and commitments. A particularly goodexample of a team room is one that wasset up at Shell Chemicals by assistanttreasurer Tom Kunz, who led a projectbegun in February 2001 to develop acompanywide, cash-focused approachto financial management. Essentiallya Web site accessed on an intranet. Itprominently displayed the project's mis-sion statement on its home page, whereno one could ignore it, as well as thephotographs and names of team mem-bers, in a clocklike arrangement. Duringteleconferences, members adopted thepractice of identifying themselves bytheir position on the clock; "This is Kateat ten o'clock,"the member in Singaporewould say. (See the exhibit,"Shell Chem-icals'Virtual Work Space.")

The home page also had links to theother"walls,"each of which was devotedto a particular aspect of the project. Onthe wall labeled "people," for instance,were kept not only individuals' contactinformation but also extensive profilesthat included accomplishments, areasof expertise, and interests, as well as in-

134 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Can Absence Make a Team Crow Stronger? • BEST PRACTICE

formation about other stakeholders. Ona wall labeled "purpose" was a hierar-chical listing of the mission statement,the goals, and the tasks involved inmeeting the goals, indicating how closeeach task was to completion. On the"meeting center" wall could be seen allthe information needed to manage theteleconferences - notices of when theywere being held, who was supposed tocome, agendas, and minutes. Yet an-other wall displayed the team's respon-sibility chart, and one more containedthe team's entire work product, orga-nized into clearly numbered versions,so that people would not inadvertentlywork on the wrong one. Comprisingseven walls in total, the team room keptinformation current, organized, and eas-ily accessible.

Leaders used such online team roomsto hold virtual conversations, throughthreaded discussions. Here's how theyworked in one of the teams we studied.During a conference call, the team tookup the topic of quality assurance. In-stead of devoting limited meeting time

to exchanging information, one mem-ber volunteered to start a thread in theonline discussion area of the team room.A second person followed the openingcomment by introducing researcb thatsummarized his related experience inanother industry. A third team mem-ber responded to the first topic, whilea fourth person responded to the sec-ond. In the meantime, someone begandiscussing scheduling conflicts, settinganother series of remarks in motion. Or-ganizing online conversations by topicmade it easy for all those participatingto follow each thread.

Team leaders tended to be the onesmanaging these threads, though thatwas not always the case. In a number ofinstances, a team member volunteeredto serve as thread facilitator, taking re-sponsibility for conducting the conver-sations the way teleconferences wererun: a bit of news, a provocative ques-tion, and a self-propelling ending. Toencourage participation in the onlineconversations, leaders posted links todocuments relating to topics on the

Shell Chemicals' Virtual Work Space

How different are virtual work spaces from shared files? Here's

the home page of the virtual work space for a project set up

to create a new cash-based approach to financial management

for the energy-company subsidiary.

1 , ,1'=r...|^.-i ••"••11^1-1 . C h e m i c a l s V a l u e N e t w o r k

IChsnucoUVolueNswiork j a fil

^Chemicals Value Network

iti Chemicilf !0 as to change behaviours, lake ( P ' p l ' o p k ' ^ P |utionE dnd mdks decisions th^t (bcui an . ,,,^ u , , . , , ._ ,improving the lalueof theanterprue . n.i-on utn. '"-"

© "•'• ^ " " " " """"***" - @ - " •

>B Diafl CECRolra El /OFAOi Q

iTl Kmvi-v Iiifs El CD\'BItllinDlriii*iUitQan

A|ipioa<b a

Fn.i]j i i30(nPrcBeci' Pfl'sonff- Erlwp'ae- Tofda- H B ^ -

1 Alia Ne* Hem _ ^

J T I PBU \ T Foiura DKCUHUU S n

12 a^BwiivAlMa

agenda of upcoming meetings and thenencouraged discussion before the meet-ings. They also encouraged those respon-sible for crafting draft documents (slides,drawings, analyses, and the like) to kickoff new discussion threads with requestsfor comments.

Members were supposed to adhere topreviously agreed-upon protocols, suchas how quickly to respond - typicallywithin a week. At the end of the desig-nated time period, there were usuallyenough contributions to warrant sum-marizing what had been said. When atopic generated a great deal of discus-sion, summaries would appear morefrequently. The person who initiateda thread would be responsible for thesummary, which highlighted areas ofboth agreement and disagreement. Theteam then took up the areas of dis-agreement at the next teleconference.Between teleconferences, team mem-bers continued their online threadeddiscussions.

Everything of substance that theteam generated was always available,neatly categorized and easily retriev-able, in the virtual team room. The struc-ture of the space itself encouraged goodvirtual-team hygiene, since it called forsimilar kinds ofinformation to be storedin corresponding spaces.

Nearly half the teams used instantmessaging (IM), even when their com-panies barred it, which surprised ussomewhat. People said that they partic-ularly liked being able to share their"Eureka!" and "Oh, no!" moments withothers logged in at the same time. Sincethe majority of companies had no stan-dards for its use, most of our teamsadopted IM ad hoc. In some cases, ateam found itself using more than oneIM program, which created IM cliquesisolated by the information they aloneshared. Some teams found IM sessionsdifficult to store and retrieve for futureuse. Others resented IM's power to in-terrupt whatever they were doing at themoment. Aware of the burgeoning ofIM use and its harmful side effects, someteam leaders worked with their IT or-ganizations to develop standards andimprove security.

MAY 2004 135

BEST PRACTICE • Can Absence Make a Team Crow Stronger?

Rule 3: Holdthe Team TogetherThe hazards that commonly threaten tosplinter face-to-face teams - mistrust,cliques, uninformed managers, and theallure ofother interesting but unrelatedwork-can be even more pronounced ona virtual team. Ours were notably adeptat wielding techniques that instead drewthem together.

Team leaders rarely let a day go bywhen members did not communicatewith one another. Frequent phone con-versations between the team leader andindividual members - even with thosewho did communicate regularly in tele-conferences, in the work space, and ine-mails - were not unusual. One teamleader reported being on the phonewith his team for ten to 15 hours a week.(See the sidebar "Whipping Up a KeyIngredient.")

Early in the life of a team, the leaderwould push it to adopt a common lan-guage - usually English, but not always.The members of the Unilever teamadopted what they called "Portunol," ahybrid of Spanish and Portuguese. Evenon an unusually homogeneous team,where everyone shared a background incomputer programming and spoke En-glish, it was still necessary to compile aglossary, mostly of technical terms butalso of figures of speech such as "homerun" and "go for broke." A team com-prising mainly Americans along withsome Japanese members hit upon theidea of hiring as translators local engi-neering interns fluent in both Japaneseand English.

Leaders also needed to create coher-ence when they were trying to blendthe work processes of the members'home organizations. At one telecom-munications company, some of the em-ployees of a newly formed call centercame from its northern operation, oth-ers from its southern. The southernershad been trained to solve customers'problems no matter how long it tookor how disruptive doing so might beto the linemen's standing priorities. Bycontrast, the northerners were accus-tomed to spending a more or less stan-dard amount of time with each cus-

Whipping Up a Key Ingredient

A project in the life of a person we'll call Paula Hans, a veteran technology manager

at Carruthers Corporation, the pseudonym for a chemical processor, demonstrates

how in one virtual team an especially coherent identity was forged. A few days into

her vacation, Hans received an emergency call from her boss, who reported that

the sole supplier of a key ingredient, one that met the company's stringent environ-

mental standards,wasleavingthemarket in three months. He asked Hans to lead

a team that would work with another supplier to develop the same ingredient.

"I needed chemists from research; people who knew supply chain; an expert

in sourcing; someone who knew our manufacturing processes; someone who

knew the product line; someone who knew the quality system, in case a change

in formula required requalification [by OSHA, EPA, or other federal agencies];

and, finally, someone who knew marketing, in case we changed the product," Hans

says."These people also needed to represent our plants here in Idaho and in Eu-

rope, as well as our research tabs in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. I made a point of

having people from all overthe world. That way, we'd have people everywhere to

represent, defend, and sell the project."

But this degreeof diversity generated forces that could have pulled the team

apart. The chemists, for example, saw nothing in the team's charter to prohibit

the group from trying a new manufacturing process. The quality control person,

however, didn't want to change the existing process because the cost of requalify-

ing any resulting product would be too high.

How did Hans build a coherent identity among the 40 people? She did it by

communicating intensively."We had a kickoff meeting on the phone using our on-

line team room, which everyone visited daily. We followed up with weekly telecon-

ferences. Between meetings, I talked to everyone individually, either on the phone

or face-to-face. I also led meetings from two other locations. I was concerned that

headquarters would be perceived as the in-group and the plants and the European

andjapanese operations as the out-groups, so I talked to them a lot. I kept our

virtual work space updated, and I moderated online discussion threads.

"In the beginning, I took minutes on a pad of paper and sent them out later, but

no one ever commented on anything. So I switched to taking minutes during the

meeting so that everyone could see them on their screens. People would

comment and correct things as we went along, which meant the minutes that 1

posted in the team room immediately after the meeting were accurate reflections

of what we'd decided. Then I put everything in the virtual work space and bugged

people to keep up."

The team met virtually, in different configurations, whenever it needed to.

"We had lots of smaller brainstorming sessions. Since things never go as you like,

we brainstormed about what might go wrong." With the exception of one session

in which the seven chemists met face-to-face, ail the brainstorming was done

virtually and outside the formal meeting schedule.

All this communication paid off Early on, a research chemist developed a

cheaper substitute ingredient that did not require the product's manufacturing

process to be requalified, netting the company more than $2 million a year.

"The rest of the team was able to integrate the new ingredient into the rest

of the project, then show how we could apply it to other projects and products

worldwide," Hans attested.

At the end of the project, Hans put together a celebratory conference call.

Every site was presented with a cake. The Europeans got alcohol served with

theirs; the Americans, soft drinks.

136 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger? • BEST PRACTICE

tomer and documenting wbat they'ddone. After much discussion, the twosides decided that neither approach waswrong and therefore each should adoptelements of the other.

Another technique used to glue teamstogether was having members work inad hoc pairs for a week or two. Thesesubteams allowed members to get toknow one another better and discour-aged the formation of cliques. At onechemical products company, for in-stance, the leader of a strategic accountsteam named subteams to flesh out thedetails of the account plans. The sub-team members then came together toedit one another's work.

To keep the team members' home of-fices from trying to pull them away,team leaders negotiated in advance theextent of the team's claim on a member'stime, made clear how the home officeand the individual member stood togain, and kept the home office abreast ofthe team's and the member's progress.Some team leaders separately negoti-ated a financial reward for every teammember with his or her respective HRperson. Needless to say, these were time-consuming commitments. While teammembership was always part-time, teamleadership was often more than full-time.

Even though diversity was, in somesense, a virtual team's reason for being,leaders recognized that identifying com-monalities would strengthen loyaltiesto the group. The leader of one team, aretired military officer, started his con-ference calls by asking each person tospend 30 seconds describing "where themember is at." During a conference callin 2002, when snipers were terrorizingthe Washington, DC, area, a team mem-ber living there said she didn't feel soalone after she heard her fears echoedby another member in the Philippines,where insurgents were shooting peopleon their way to and from work.

The Powerof the Small GroupIf far-flung teams can be so effective,why aren't they used more? Organiza-tionai inertia rather than direct oppo-sition often stands in the way. For in-

stance, in today's military, commandersare not necessarily located with theirtroops; they may not even be on thesame continent. But U.S. Army doctrinestill holds that the "commander's intent"must be conveyed face-to-face wheneverpossible, even though commanding of-ficers may be able to make more in-formed decisions when they are re-moved from the fray. Policies that keepmanagers, executives, or even com-manders in perpetual motion hark backto the days when the jet plane, not theintegration of telecommunications andcomputers, was the new technology.

There's another reason organizationshave been slow to cotton to what ourteams have discovered. The computerrevolution missed a step. When compa-nies went from enterprise computing toindividual computing, they jumped overthe small-group level, where the pre-ponderance of work takes place. Thefirst computers, typified by the IBM 360behemoths of the 1960s, supportedcompanywide operations. The genera-

tion of computers that followed sup-ported department-level organizations,eventually morphing into today's serv-ers. In the 1980s, personal computersboosted individuals' productivity. Thenin the 1990s, the Internet and the Webconnected these previously isolated in-dividuals informally, boosting their pro-ductivity even more.

In this decade, the forgotten step, thesmall group, is suddenly the focus ofadvances in collaboration technology-shared online work spaces, on-demandteleconferencing, real-time applicationsharing, and instant messaging-whichthe massive investment in infrastruc-ture of the late 1990s is now available tosupport. When small groups adopt thekinds of practices our teams have demon-strated, they can work faster, smarter,more creatively, and more flexibly thandispersed individuals or the enterpriseas a whole. v

Reprint R0405JTo order, see page 153.

"Frank, stop with the anxiety again. Let's just hire a consultant and move on.

MAY 2004 137