Five Tips for Managing Teams in Far-Flung Places

I live and work in Seattle.  But, like many of you, on any given day I am in contact with people all over the country and around the world.  Increasingly, I find myself managing projects—and therefore people—who dwell far away from the caffeine-fueled city I call home. 

Local is all the craze these days.  Local produce.  Local wine.  Local businesses.  When it comes to building a project team, technology allows us to define local more broadly.  By leveraging technology, we can let cyberspace, rather than physical geography, define our “backyard”, and create the best project teams possible without increasing our carbon footprint.  The trick is getting the right people on board and then managing the process really, really, (really!) well.

It goes without saying that budgets, timelines, etc. are essential to any project.  The following tips highlight things that are particularly important when managing projects with team members far and wide.  The examples I use are all communications-related, because that’s my area of expertise, but the tips hold true no matter what the project is. 

1. Goal Clarity:  It’s amazing how often individual team members have a different vision of an end goal.  For instance, when working on a website redesign, everyone generally knows that getting a new site live is the goal. Great.  But each team member will usually have a slightly different idea of what that site needs to be.  The communications people will be very concerned with the visual elements as they will focus on how the site integrates with the company’s other communications pieces and overall brand.  Sales staff will prioritize getting the right product information on the site.  Technical types will be concerned with the site being free of technical snafus and seamless integration with any back-end functionality.  And management just wants it done on time and within budget!  All of these pieces are critical.  But you need to be clear as a team from the get-go about what goal will get top billing.  It might be a really great looking site.  It might be a site that provides loads of relevant content.  It might be a site that is optimized to pop up at the top of a Google search.  Whatever it is, decide up front so that when you find yourself days before the launch looking at a punch list of outstanding items, the whole team knows how to prioritize them to achieve your project goal.
 
2. Role Clarity and Leadership: Who’s doing what and whose decisions trump all others?  For some reason, people get very uncomfortable about defining roles.  There is often unease about the idea that someone has the final word.  Trust me: it’s way more comfortable to have this happen at the beginning of a project when everything is on track than in the middle when something has gone awry.  Appoint someone the project lead and make sure everyone knows who has final decision-making authority.  It is the project lead’s job to keep everybody on track, on budget, and in line.  By contrast, it is the project sponsor who has final decision-making authority.  For instance, when creating a brochure, the writer might be the project lead, but the Director of Communications (or project sponsor) might get to decide which snappy tagline will be used on the front page or which photos will be used because these decisions must take into account the company’s brand.   The project lead should be someone who is infinitely comfortable with seeing how people are coming along with their tasks, prodding them when things are falling behind, and waggling their finger when something doesn’t get done.  Projects with a clear lead and role definition rarely include finger waggling incidents, but if it comes to that, your project lead has got to be prepared to be The Heavy.

3. Regular Contact:  Communicate early and often.  It is the project lead’s responsibility to know how different people like to communicate and be communicated with.  For virtual teams, email is incredibly important, but sometimes a quick phone call can save you a lengthy game of “email ping pong”.  Establish a regular time each week for an all-team meeting.  It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out affair.  It can be short and sweet.  It helps to follow the same format every week, so everyone knows what is coming and when.  If people know there’s an opportunity every week to raise issues or run something passed the whole team, it will cut down on distractions in between meetings.  Some weeks you’ll think there is nothing to talk about.  At a minimum, have quick status updates as a standing agenda item.  Usually these remind team members of other items that have come up and/or areas of confusion to clarify.  When it comes to virtual teams, “early and often” is so much better than “too little, too late”.  

4. Contact Info and Info Exchange:  Make sure all team members have each others’ contact information right from the get-go—email, phone numbers, IM and Skype info, etc.  If you’re using an on-line file-sharing platform, make sure everyone knows how to use it.  Shared database?  Ditto.  In this information age, people are reticent to say that they don’t know how to use technology.  (Who wants to be labeled a luddite?!)  So, if you have a hunch that someone doesn’t know how to use something, do a tutorial for the whole team.   The worst that’ll happen is that since you’re not in the same place and therefore no one can see what others are doing, some team members will take it as an opportunity to catch up on email.  No biggie.  If you start a project with everyone knowing how to get in touch and share information, you’ll be in good shape, especially when things come down to the wire.
 
5. Over-communication:  When you have a team that does not share a physical office, there’s no opportunity for water cooler chat.  There’s no going for that second cup of coffee and making an off-hand comment that leads to a break-through.  Regular check-ins, if crafted correctly, can create these types of moments, but they won’t happen on their own when Jack is in Tampa, Jane is in Tulsa, and the client is in Tucson.  Teammates who can still be effective when interrupted can IM with each other.  If the constant chatter drives certain team members batty, pick a time to Skype or share a phone call.  If something comes up and you’re not sure whether to ask about it or not, go with your gut and ask.  Our guts are rarely wrong.

Obviously, virtual teams have their limitations and sometimes there is just no substitute for face-to-face interaction.  But if you follow the five tips above, national (or even international!) can become local.  And that’s good for business and for the planet.