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

Chapter Ten. Working Adaptively

	Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined.
	--Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams[1]

Most virtual teams exist in adaptive environments. Their work is always changing, there are always new problems on the horizon, and the solutions to problems are often one-of-a-kind. When Einstein observed that we cannot solve the problems we have created with the same type of thinking that created them, he was referring to the adaptive world.

To understand adaptive environments, it is useful to contrast them with technical environments.^[2] Technical environments have structures and known rules. Teams can address work in such environments with tested methods and expert knowledge. Variables are contained, surprises are minimized, and planning and control are paramount. It is a world of process mapping, predictability, and repetition.

Adaptive environments do not follow rational, structured rules. Adaptive work consists of situations in which teams have not yet developed satisfactory responses to the problems they face. In fact, the problems might be so complex that team members may not even know what questions to ask. There is no specific plan of action or tool of logic that can solve these types of problems.

Many people prefer technical environments; these feel more comfortable because ...