Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams

Chapter 15Effective Decision Making over Distance

Gettin’ good players is easy. Gettin’ ’em to play together is the hard part.

—Casey Stengel

Making decisions in an effective and efficient manner is another critical skill for virtual teams to acquire. Decision making is the skill that allows teams to transform ideas into specific, agreed-upon actions. But making decisions in a group is more difficult than making decisions as an individual. And making them as a virtual team takes more work than making them as a collocated one. In this chapter we review common decision-making methods and suggest how to optimize them for virtual teams.

Decision-Making Challenges

There are some real benefits to effective virtual team decision making, but there are ...