Virtual Teams at Work

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Technology is letting people a continent apart work together with ease-even if they rarely meet face to face.

Instead of travelling to an office, they “go to work” by logging onto a shared Web site.

Instead of sitting in a room together, they hold meetings with real-time Web conference calls, complete with virtual whiteboards.

Instead of shouting over the cubicle wall, they shoot off an e-mail.

Such “virtual teams” are becoming the norm at many companies, with millions of them already formed around the world.

But they require a whole new set of rules to work effectively, says Jessica Lipnack, co-author of “Virtual Teams: People Working Across Boundaries with Technology” (John Wiley and Sons, Oct. 2000).

Lipnack and her husband Jeffrey Stamps have co-authored six books about networked organizations. They are also the founders of The Networking Institute Inc, a Massachusetts-based consulting company with clients such as Apple Computer, Intel, AT&T Universal Card Services, the Massachusetts Teacher's Association and The United Nations.

Here are some of Lipnack's thoughts on virtual teams, from the pitfalls of e-mail arguments to tips for working from a home office without sacrificing your social life.

Q: How long have you been seeing virtual teams?
A: People have been working in virtual teams since the dawn of time. I was in Corsica last summer, where from the earliest times on they used smoke signals to communicate across the mountains. That's virtual teaming: communication across physical boundaries.

What's happened with the new technology is we've created a way to make it easy. We've transcended all of the problems in terms of the physicality. It's a slam dunk. Now the hard part is getting people to work in this new way.

Q: What makes virtual teams work?
A: There are several steps. You have to establish the team's purpose. Identify the members. Build trust. And create a map of who's going to do what.

If you're on a virtual team, you have to see yourself as the center of the network. That means that it's your responsibility to get to know-and allow yourself to be known by-everyone else on the team. You have to communicate, communicate, communicate. And have the guts to take the leadership role when necessary.

Q: What are the main advantages of a virtual team?
A: Speed and memory. Those are the two big ones. You can do things a lot faster, and you can create a shared experience of reality that persists over time. So once you have a meeting online, you have a record of it online, and you do away with taking notes on a scrap of paper or the back of a deposit slip. We're looking for ways to make that process much easier.

Q: You said in your book that a virtual team is 90 percent people, 10 percent technology. But do people tend to get lost in the equation?
A: Absolutely. People thought if you just put in the technology, that would solve the problem. But putting in the roads doesn't mean that people can drive on them. That's what the big challenge is right now.

Q: What are the main challenges a virtual team faces?
A: Building trust. Maintaining an open flow of communication. And compensating for the social advantages of proximity.

Q: How do you make up for that loss of proximity?
A: Growing up and giving people the benefit of the doubt. Always think twice before responding if you're irritated. Maybe someone sent an e-mail while their kids were screaming, and maybe they mistyped it. And the next thing you know, people are e-mailing back in all capitals, “ARE YOU SOME KIND OF IDIOT?” and you have World War III on your hands. If you get an e-mail message you don't like, take the high road. Think that probably this person was hungry or didn't get enough sleep.

If you respond in kind, you get this unbelievable amount of traffic back and forth with clarification after clarification. The fastest way to resolve an e-mail conflict is by picking up the phone.

Q: How do virtual teams build trust?
A: The fastest way is to start out with a face-to-face meeting. You can build trust online, but it takes a lot longer.

It depends on the experience of the group. If a few of the people have worked together before and are tech savvy, there's no problem. You can just get to work right away. Otherwise you have to compensate. Start off meeting face to face, supplemented by frequent conference calls. Then create an online workspace, and drop the conference calls out.

Q: What type of businesses do virtual teams work best at?
A: The innovators are global companies that have no alternative but to work virtually. In the world of software and hardware development, they've been doing it for a long time, just winging it and creating their own systems. So those companies have got a big leg up. But I've yet to find a situation where virtual teams didn't work well.

Q: How prevalent are virtual teams?
A: I've heard all kinds of figures. We know there are 10 million users of document-management systems right now: Lotus Notes and Livelink have 4 million each, and another 2 million use other products. And there are millions of virtual teams running their projects by e-mail.

Q: Will offices eventually become obsolete?
A: I think we'll always have offices. There's just nothing like face to face — we don't want to get rid of that.

Q: As technology lets more people work from home, will this mean people will never get away from work?
A: That's a really big problem. The first thing you have to do is reset your thinking about what the workday is. How can you think about time differently? For instance, I got up early this morning, I worked for a few hours, then, at 10 a.m., I went for a 45-minute walk.

I've worked out of my house my entire adult life, and I've learned that working hard doesn't mean that I can't have a very rich family and social life. I've really struggled with this.

Yes, work is encroaching on the home life, but it's in a manageable way. This is again an issue of being a grown-up. No one said you have to work all the time.

You have to work in a style that's most suitable to your time, your inclination and your body clock. If you're a morning person, get up early and get to work. If you're an evening person, sleep late and work later.

If you're working all the time, that's a therapy issue. Why are you working so hard? I love my work, but nothing's going to replace the walk I just took with my daughter.

In my early career my husband and I decided to work from home and make our own business. It's really paid off for us-our girls are now 20 and 23, and we're extraordinarily close to them.

Q: Is the goal for everyone to be able to work from home?
A: The goal is for people to be working wherever they're most comfortable, with whomever they want to work with. If you need a team of astrophysicists working together-and one is in Switzerland, one is in Japan, and one is in the United States-you don't want to have to make them move. We now have a way where they don't have to move, where there are no have-to's.

Q: Do you think virtual teams are the future of the workplace?
A: Absolutely. Thank the Lord! They make things so much easier.

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