Service Snapshot: High Performance Virtual Teams

The challenge is to adapt. Virtual Teams are the way organisations can adapt quickly. In order to perform well, these teams need to evolve and understand their roles correctly. At Penumbra we have an innovative methodology to help you get the best from your teams and make them world-class.

Challenge

We live in fast moving and uncertain times.  Globalisation, technology and the need for continuous performance improvement have emasculated command and control practices.  Failure can be sudden in today’s competitive, global markets.  Rigid organisational structures worked well with stable markets. 

Today the environment is complex and in flux.  We all recognise that the formal structures do not always work especially with reduced headcount and leaner teams. Today, managing tasks by Virtual Teams is the way leaders must achieve certain goals.  Encouraging and supporting cross-functional co-operation to improve performance and make work meaningful for employees is the aim.

But how do we engage with people to create teams with meaningful purpose and roles that will achieve the stated aim?

It sounds simple at first, but when we look at team performance it can be difficult to find many virtual teams that really succeed. This can be because

• Team roles can conflict with standard job roles

• No formalised analysis of how the members ‘fit’ has been made

• No objective measurement for individual performance seems possible

All current methods to analyse performance rely on either hard factual data such as sales targets or else subjective team analysis. These tend to hide real performance indicators through behaviours skewed by performance targets or biased views of peers.

This is insufficient when monitoring teams tasked with market intelligence or regulatory compliance issues, for example.

Solution

We use an innovative approach to ensure that organisations can set a team vision and purpose and then enable people to align their behaviours with it.

Core ideology

Team values, which should number between three and five, should be defined.  Alignment will only happen if employees can relate to the team values.  They can be discovered through dialogue but cannot be dictated from above.

The purpose – the fundamental reason for existing must be defined.  To be effective this should reflect peoples’ idealistic motivation for doing the company’s work. 

Vision

A vision is a first step in team strategy creation and these should change as often as the operating environment changes.  It should be short, sharp and deeply compelling; a rallying cry to motivate even the most cynical.

Alignment

Defining values, purpose and vision is the aspiration.  Organisations then need to be able to look at their team members’ behaviour.  That's the reality.  Only then can they look at how to close the gap between current reality and the aspirational targets.

With alignment, first one needs to know what the team task "looks like" and that's something that is unique to each organisation.  For instance, it may be focussed on making zero errors, suggesting improvements to processes, or around generating innovative ideas.

Once one knows what "it" is, one can list a number of behaviours for each team role that allow one to recognise "it" being demonstrated - and then measure them.

But whatever the task is, it's definitely all about behaviour, not attitude.

Benefits

Our approach will give your teams the ability to be world-class in their field. We will empower you to

• transform notional teams into real working teams

• give every team member clear insight into their own role and what is expected from them

• compare existing individual behaviours to those that will be most effective in creating team success

• help improve performance and output beyond existing boundaries

• re-energise existing teams and clear any barriers to success