Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques That Succeed, Third Edition

Chapter One. Critical Success Factors for Virtual Teams

In today’s business environment, organizations must adapt quickly or die. Gaining competitive advantage in a global environment means continually reshaping the organization to maximize strengths, address threats, and increase speed.^[1] The use of virtual teams has become a common way of doing this.^[2] The formation of virtual teams allows organizations to draw talent quickly from different functions, locations, and organizations. The goal is to leverage intellectual capital and apply it as quickly as possible. The methods that organizations use to manage this process can mean the difference between success and failure.

Consider the example of a team in a global consumer products firm. This product development team, with members from around the world, had just completed the development of a new product. When the team unveiled the product to the senior staff of the organization, it included a description of the way the team worked. The presentation showed an icon of an airplane, with the entire team of twenty-two people traveling from country to country. The team members had continually moved from site to site for activities such as status reviews, design meetings, and prototyping sessions. The cost of the travel was tremendous, not only for hotels and airline tickets but also in terms of the human costs of being away from home and lost work time and productivity. In addition, talent from other parts of the organization was not ...