Page 250 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

developing your Virtual team � 229

keeping the team Focused
On projects as long-term and as complicated as the one Brian’s team
works on, it’s easy to get sidetracked. He spends much of his effort
making sure that people are spending time on the right things. He
says, “I try to make sure that they have a list of operating priorities
they can ask themselves throughout the day: where is this I’m work-
ing on in terms of the overall value to this program this month?” He
is continually recalibrating where the team is and where it’s going. At
the end of every four-week cycle they check progress and decide if
they need to modify what people are doing. That way, they don’t get
way down the road and find out that people are on the wrong track.

` the VIrtuAl teAm ContAIner

A “container” is the environment most effective for producing dia-
logue, according to Peter Senge, the author of The Fifth Discipline
Fieldbook and other seminal works in the field of organizational learn-
ing. The container encircles all of the qualities necessary for people
6
to focus group attention, suspend their assumptions, and to seek un-
derstanding. It holds “human energy so it can be transformative rather
than destructive.” Another metaphor he uses is that of a cauldron,
7
which takes potentially destructive molten steel and surrounds it so
that it might be transformed into something useful. Similarly, Wil-
liam Kahn uses the term “holding environments” to describe the close
relationships that help people during difficult times. 8
Teams, whether they be colocated or virtual, can also be consid-
ered to be held within a container. Traditionally, a functional work
team has resided in a central, physical location. The accounting de-
partment is all on the fourth floor, for example, and engineering is on
the sixth floor.
The container in those cases, quite literally, is the building it-
self. The team can move within physical boundaries, has designated