Page 260 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

developing your Virtual team � 239

aren’t just focused on developing a team, but develop that team for a
purpose: getting things done. When the team and the leader have
done a good job of setting, evaluating, and adapting goals, processes,
and ways to work together, performing becomes less a matter of har-
nessing the horses and more a matter of just keeping everyone pointed
in the right direction.
As the virtual team works toward its goals, team leaders have es-
pecially important roles in being gatekeepers. Team members’ atten-
tion, because they are separated physically, can be easily diverted to
colocated projects. Other managers may assume they can impose on
team members’ time just because they are sitting in the same build-
ing as the managers, even though the team is currently working on a
project 1,000 miles away. At this point the team leader earns her keep,
acting to remove obstacles in an individual team member’s way, mak-
ing sure the team has enough resources and the right kinds of ones to
do their job, and keeping team members focused on the task at hand.
Performance management is particularly key here. Both electronic
mobile performance management systems and Results-Only Work
Environment systems (ROWE) (see Chapter 6) help keep leaders on
top of how the team is doing and reduce concerns about not making
targets. As performance becomes more and more related to results
and less to just showing up, the leader’s time is dedicated more to
supporting the team and its individual members, in its effort to reach
goals, and less to monitoring their time. Feedback, which is important
for motivation and for keeping people on track, is essential to man-
age performance; it is facilitated with explicit desired results, which
include intermediate target deadlines.
When rewards are for team performance, as well as for individual
performance, then there are incentives for working together. Collab-
orative work is an important norm, if a team is going to be successful;
it has to be established for the team early, before the team is formed.
This is done concretely in the preteam stages, when rewards are set up
to support this kind of behavior.