“I am writing to you this evening with what seems to me to be a slightly paradoxical request,” the email began. “I am looking for a presenter (live and in person) on the topic of Virtual Teams.”
He was writing from Europe, where the event would take place, with colleagues and clients joining from across North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia. I was impressed with the emailer's self-awareness.
We’ve received speaking queries where people don’t appear to notice that a virtual teams event might by rights take place virtually. There is a certain symmetry, a coherence of the message, that is hard to miss. Some do.
So this post, roiling around for some months, as the plethora—of books, articles, “studies” (I use quotes because some of them are of questionable provenance), and off-the-top-of-the-head posts on how to ensure virtual team success—proliferates.
A striking one came last year, a request to write another book foreword. It turned out to be a solid manuscript, based on sturdy research, and we ended up writing it without hesitation.
But I remain troubled by its—and the rest of these formulas’—Rxes for virtual team troubles: first meet face-to-face.
If that’s the primary requirement, rarely put forth with any theatre-of-the-absurb quips, then many virtual teams are sunk from the outset.
Unstated in the always-begin-in-person requirement is that otherwise people cannot learn to trust one another, that that only happens when you can watch how others fondle their coffee cups, pick at their cuticles, make faces (voluntarily or otherwise), or hang around a bar together.
Face-to-face, particularly for global and cross-country teams, is just not practical for everyone who has to work together—for example, flying across the US or taking the train from Chile to Venezuela or helicoptering across the Hindu-Kush.
I feel almost silly listing the reasons: it’s expensive; it’s time-consuming; it’s not particularly green; and, most important, there is no incontrovertible proof that it guarantees superior results. My bold assertion: It's an opinion, not a fact, that when teams meet face-to-face initially they always produce better, faster, and cheaper.
The problem in proving the opposite is that it's hard to imagine any organization actually performing this experiment, especially given the prevailing business climate. Would a thoughtful leader pay for the proof: give the same project to two teams—complex ones that require the best minds—funding one to meet first in person, the other to start virtually?
We need a number of well-designed studies that examine teams of similar diversity with comparably complex remits and roughly analogous resources, budgets, and schedules.
My hunch—based on our experience studying teams that never meet face-to-face—is that beginning in person may be desirable but it is not necessary.
It’s nice. It’s fun. It may even get some friendships off the ground more quickly.
But it also may create cliques that wouldn’t otherwise form; instill some prejudices that come about in the split-second when people first encounter one another; eliminate the possibility of serendipity that often comes about in the online environment; and, need I add, stress people out because travel is now so appealing.
Meeting face-to-face doesn’t guarantee success. Think of some of your own experiences where your team only met in person. All perfect, right?
I love being with people. There’s no substitute but …
Do we absolutely need to have our kick-off meetings shoulder-to-shoulder?
Should the “experts” continue drumming that we have to begin that way to be successful?
Thoughts?
