The Invisible Man: Virtual Teams and The Speakerphone Experience

Global Teams almost always have a virtual presence dictated by geographic distance, time and cultural differences. One casualty to what should be a powerful and aligned team is what I think of as The Invisible Man (or Woman) syndrome. Who is this Invisible Man?

Think about the conference calls you have with your teams. This is often a weekly or bimonthly call that is difficult enough to do within a country (say inside the US or the Americas with 4 or 5 time zones), but incredibly more complicated in a fully global company where time differences of up to 12-14 hours are commonplace.

The constraints are as follows:

 Time: A US to China, India, or Japan call always happens at night for one of the parties. How clear and focused are you at that time? How often do you see people who are dragging into work the next day, having been on a call from 10pm to 1am? Or the opposite in which people are on at 4-5am? This is not easy to do over time, but it is more and more commonplace.

 Technology: As a visual person, I am not at my best on conference calls. Telepresence and Skype work well when available within countries or say, between the US and Europe. But the usual technologies are conference calls, often with several of the team in a room together and a couple of folks calling in from a remote location.

 Culture: With apologies to any stereotyping or simplicity, US and European-centric team members operate with a different (not better) intensity than many of their Asian counterparts. Language differences are often part of this, but cultural propensities around how one enters a conversation, waits to be invited to speak, handles disagreement, or deals with the internal dynamics of teams all play a part.

Thus the Casualty of the Invisible Man. Have you ever forgotten that there is someone else in the conversation, just not in the room? Do you make allowances to ensure that they are deliberately brought into the dialogue? Do you vary meeting times to ensure that it is not midnight their time most of the time? Do you ask them the kinds of questions that are critical or informative to a team decision? Oftentimes, someone who is on the call, but quiet, is perceived as not being fully engaged, and that is a casualty to the team.

Virtual Teams are difficult to manage. It is even harder to operate as a Virtual Global Team. How do you get better? How do you continually move in the direction of improvement – to be a Top Team that is desirous of getting the best of individual and collective viewpoints, and the engagement of all the smart people both in, and not in, the room.

One suggestion is to periodically survey the team to ask what is working and what is not. This pulls a point of view from everyone who is asked to work in an aligned team. We use the Global Top Team Assessment (GT2A) to see just how well a Global and Virtual Team is working, and where to leverage improvement. For more information, please contact us.

Four Key Questions for Global Leadership Teams

As we continue to work with Global and Virtual Teams, we are impressed by how critical these leadership and functional teams are to their company’s performance, yet alarmed by how difficult it is for them to really capture what is possible as an aligned team.

Time and geography, culture and communication, the demand to both hit their numbers yet really think together (the Now and the New) are challenges for almost every virtual and global team we work with.

So we pose 4 key questions for those who sit on or who support these teams:

1. What kind of team do you need to be? This seems like an elementary question on the surface. Yet it is a key, usually unexamined question that defines how interdependent and collaborative your team needs to be and what kind of conversations you need to have. There is no one “right” kind of team. One size does not fit all. Ask this question and really pull for responses.

2. How clear is your strategic focus? We assume that there is almost always a strategic plan in place. The question is, how clear is the team about their strategic focus and critical priorities? How well has this been communicated down and across the organization? Do people understand it? And when was the last time you had the 20,000 foot view of strategy together as a virtual team?

3. How open, honest, and inclusive is this team with one another? Geography takes a toll on establishing trust. Is your team open and candid with one another? Do you deliberately work to include all opinions, even those on the speakerphone, into your dialogue? Do you meet together often enough? You cannot utilize the collective intelligence of smart individuals if trust and candor are not fully present.

4. How good is your team now and what would it take to be even better – to be a “Top Team?” Ask people to rate the team on a 1-10 scale now and ask two questions: What makes it as good as it is, and what would it take to be a 10? You might also ask what value would you see from a higher number?

These are seemingly easy questions to ask — yet they set the stage for compelling and critical dialogue. In today’s world, being a Top Team is essential, especially if you operate globally and/or virtually.

What do you think about this? What are the best practices you see in global and virtual teams?

For additional information about our newest Global Team Assessment, please contact us at www.TopTeaming.com or 404. 377-9408.

Top Teaming: HR as the “Consigliere” of the Organization

One of the things we hear in our work with management and operations teams across the globe, are their views of the Human Resources function and how HR could be even most valuable to them. What is surprising is that on many occasions, their experience of HR is not congruent with what they want from HR nor in line with how HR wants to be perceived.

Let’s look at some of the recent comments we heard and propose an idea:

On the negative side:
– HR is often seen as the “policy police” whose processes are often experienced as slow, inflexible, and cumbersome.
– They are viewed as a necessary, but not always valued function.
– They are seen as harbingers of the negative. (“When they show up, something bad is going to happen”)

Human Resources has a “Branding Problem.” Frequently our HR friends talk about having a “seat at the table” and being “trusted business partners.” But all too often, they don’t do the requisite work in the right way to earn the very thing both they, and their business partners both want.

So let me propose an HR Brand, and a set of actions to allow HR to be viewed as even more effective and welcomed.

“HR as Consigliere of the Organization.”

If we move the Godfather references aside, the word “consigliere” means being a trusted advisor or counselor — someone who understands the needs, the business challenges, and the people issues of management and of “the business.” This takes work and a particular approach that requires:

1.  First seeking to understand what the business is trying to accomplish – its priorities, challenges, and resource needs.
2.  Being seen as a business leader first, and an HR functional leader second.
3.  Really showing up to play – asking lots of questions and being a Business Partner who can “help me talk, understand, and make decisions in favor of the business.”
4.  Demonstrating a “Proactive Hunger” about finding out what people need.

One business unit leader who I recently interviewed said the following: “They should be beating down my door to say: ‘Tell me your agenda so I can think about this and prepare what to do.’”

While Human Resources professionals have a complex, often thankless, but necessary job to do, they must be in control about how they are experienced and the strength and value of the relationships they build.

Think about the HR “Brand” in your job, with your team, and with your key customers. Go interview them and ask how you can be even more effective and valuable to them. What do they most need and want?

Be a true Consigliere to your business. You’ll always have a seat at the table.

Larry

What Just Hit Us? Adaptive Strategies for Change

About 3 weeks ago we were with a team of Global HR officers. The original mission was to help them become an even higher performing team – a Top Team. But there was something missing in the room – something that was obvious, but not explainable on their Team Assessment. There was an enormous lack of energy among the people.

Then they told the story: Their parent company had decided to make some significant structural and personnel changes that would rock the company. Our client group was told that these changes would not impact them or their global responsibilities. But that was not the reality. It turned out that they were significantly impacted by a reduction in their ranks, and were also tasked to carry this “head count reduction” (a term I am not fond of) across their regions thus earning a reputation as “corporate assassins.”

As one of the leaders said, “It was as if we were enjoying a clear sunny day, then all of a sudden we were hit by a tornado.” And then our observation became clear – they were the survivors who were still numb with shock, unable to believe either in the weather report, or on their own eyes. How do they adapt to this? How do they earn trust? How do they let themselves trust?

Virtually none of us has complete control over our own destiny. Whether we work for others, or are self-employed, we are still hostage to the unpredictable. And, given the increased sense of ambiguity, volatility, and rapid change in an interconnected world, this sense of unpredictability is, in fact greater than it ever was. So what do we do? How do we adapt to change? How do we best respond to it?

We know that the two primary variables in the experience of stress are control and predictability. Thus the more we have a sense of what may happen and the more we can do something about it, then the experience will be less intense and we will likely respond and rebound faster.

For this team, recovery and resiliency required them to do several things very differently:

• Pull together as a team. What must they do for themselves and for the organization? Do not allow a protective silo mentality to emerge. It will not work.
• Stay in closer touch with the functional business leaders. In every case, the business leaders wanted HR to be closer to them, to better understand the business, to ask lots of questions, and thus have better eyes and ears about the forces which might impact the business and the leaders.
• Do not, ever, believe that they (we) exist on an island and that issues and forces across the pond(s) will remain there. They won’t.
• Ensure that open dialogue is occurring between you and your leaders, and between them and their leaders so that the likelihood of surprises will diminish, No guarantees here, but always look to lower the odds.
• Operate with positivity and show up as a leader that people want to talk with. This gives you greater access and credibility to know the business and the key people. It is also your best personal reaction to surviving the storms. And whenever possible, predict the next tornado.

What examples do you have of unpredictable change and what are the great examples of how people best respond to and plan for it?

Top Teaming: Has the Nature of Change Somehow Changed (Part 2)

In a previous blog, we suggested that given the increasing complexity, uncertainty and rate of change in the world that the very nature of change itself has, in fact, changed.

Rarely do we find anymore that change occurs and we then return to a previous state of equilibrium. That is almost old thinking. We then began to view change as more of a whitewater experience in which waves of change are punctuated by short returns to normalcy. Our adaptability and physiological wiring could handle that. But that’s no longer fully true. Now it seems as if we live in a personal, business and global world in which change is constant.

And most things, from personal technology to geo-politics seem fair game. Predictability and control, two of the major variables in controlling stress are on the endangered species list. And minimized are the classic 5 and 7 step models of how to deal with change.

So what do we best deal with this?

From a leader-led change perspective, our responsibilities begin with providing honest and repeatable communication about:

• What is changing/what is not
• The “why” and context behind the change
• That this isn’t the first and will not be the last change
• Acknowledging the disruption and impact
• Maximizing predictability and control
• Defining and re-defining “What we are FOR”
• Providing clear expectations of the workforce during and after this change

Sufficient? No – but it’s a start. Your credibility is on the line

And as those impacted by changes we must:

• Understand the meaning and impact of the changes — what has really changed?
• Redraw the maps — who are our teams, who are our critical stakeholders? What are the conversations we must have? (Move fast on this)
• Dialogue about what kind of team do we need to be? (It has changed)
• Move toward one another and be aware of our interdependencies. (Getting more siloed is natural, but not good)
• Define and communicate what we need from management
• Take care of us and those around us (Essential)
• Be extraordinarily pro-active about the new and the next (High predictability and control strategy)

This is the high level approach. In the next blog, we’ll look at adaptive strategies and best practices to re-form structures and working relationships that have been impacted by changes. As we say, you have to “wrap your head around change.”

Stay tuned and weigh in.

Has the Nature of Change Somehow Changed?

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change — Charles Darwin

How often have we heard the phrase, attributed to Isaac Asimov, “The only constant is change?” Has the phrase “change” itself become another management cliché—and thus something to be “managed?” Has change really become somehow less difficult, unsettling, and disruptive? Or has it become more complex, less predictable, and more ambiguous in nature?

A very real question is: Has the nature of change somehow…..changed? Over the next three blogs we’ll examine some fundamental questions about change and the ways in which Top Teams approach this very tricky and always disruptive arena.

Most models of change are predicated on the belief that change is a disruption to an established pattern or way of doing things. Managing change then, means weathering the storm and managing the process until some degree of normalcy returns. But the return to normalcy hasn’t been our experience in some time.

Intense global political, technologic, and economic shifts continue to impact virtually every individual and business across the world. Speed of change, global inter‐connectedness and interdependence continues to accelerate. We’ve seen leaders forced to imagine change what would have never been possible or imaginable in their reign; leaders who are often challenged to fundamentally rethink the very nature of companies they have created, worked at, or led for years.

Leadership and military teams often talk about VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—as something they face almost daily. The current Wikipedia definition, which has great face validity, defines the elements of VUCA as:

V = Volatility: The nature and dynamics of change, and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts.
U = Uncertainty: The lack of predictability, the prospects for surprise, and the [difficulty in] awareness and understanding of issues and events.
C = Complexity: The multiplex of forces, the confounding of issues and the chaos and confusion that surround an organization.
A = Ambiguity: The haziness of reality, the potential for misreads, and the mixed meanings of conditions; cause‐and‐effect confusion.

Change consultants talk about “waves of change” during which companies and employees experience one disruption after another without returning to solid ground for long periods of time. Neuropsychologists tell us that the human brain is not evolutionally developed to deal with constant change. We are not wired for constant disruption or “flooding.” In today’s world, the frequent waves of change, high volatility and complexity, significant paradox and ambiguity, create a whitewater experience. And this experience creates huge paradigm shifts for executives and employees alike as the very ground underneath them feels shaky.

This brings to mind questions, such as: How do we deal with the Now and the New? What is the “New Normal?” Does the New Normal somehow represent continuous, complex, ambiguous and uncertain change, like a river that is truly never the same? Our thinking is that the very nature of change has changed both on a personal and on a business level.

Change has changed. And Top Teams do a far better job in wrapping their heads around change than do just good teams. What makes the difference? I invite you to weigh in over the next three blogs.

TOP TEAMS: BEING FULLY IN THE GAME

As we continue to work with Leadership Teams around the world, our experience is confirming and expanding our thoughts set out in the book Top Teaming: A Roadmap for Leadership Teams Navigating the Now, the New, and the Next. We see very few true “dysfunctional teams” – and those stand out like sore thumbs. What we see more often are groups or teams comprised of very smart, hard working, and committed executives who generally do very well in their specific roles or functions. They work pretty well together. There is not a lot of overt friction. They communicate – sometimes carefully, and sometimes not fully. They are mostly aligned behind their strategic plan. In fact, many are pretty far along the road to classic definitions of High Performing Teams.

Yet those Leadership Teams that we define as “Top Teams” are in a different class. Their results show it. Their internal dynamics show it. Their willingness and ability to really collaborate, communicate, trust one another and take supported risks are outstanding. They are fully in the game as deliberate and conscious leaders. And interestingly enough, research is pointing to their experiencing less stress in their jobs than many executives.

In fact, most of the best leaders we interviewed painted a clear picture of creating Top Teams that lead with a mix of reality and optimism, focus on both the Now and the New, and deeply believe in serving others and doing the right thing. One of the most frequent comments we heard was that any decent team can thrive in times of growth or even mediocrity, but only those teams that are “fully in the game” can rise to the occasion and grasp the opportunities when times are tough.

Being “fully in the game” does not come automatically, even to the best of teams. Operating with conviction, with passion, and with a clear articulation of what the team believes in—what it is for—is a conscious and deliberate process. It requires open dialogue. It requires that nothing is hidden and very little is unspoken. It requires an unshakeable belief in the team’s ability to have the courage and deploy the collective intelligence to navigate the future and lead the organization through rough water.

This is what Top Teams do.

SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER:
• Think of the team that you are currently on. Are you playing to your full capacity?
• On a scale of one to ten, how good is your team now? Why did you rank it where you did?
• What would it take to be a “ten”?
• What would you do differently? What would be possible?
• What are some of the obstacles that get in your way?
• Look at the variables that describe the behaviors of Top Teams. What do you have to do to make yours a Top Team?
• What does it mean to you to “go forward with trust versus fear?”
• How vocal and/or how well understood are your articulation and passion about your purpose—as individuals and as a team?

Shaving the Tiger: Understanding and Recalibrating the Default Setting of a Team

Part of understanding the collective self-knowledge of a team is to understand its default setting—what it is likely to do when under stress or when operating on automatic pilot.

When under pressure, teams that have a history of operational focus go directly to the numbers, root-cause discussions, and Excel spreadsheet examinations. Health-care teams almost immediately argue about outcomes and support these arguments with data (then often argue about whose data is better). What is missing when this happens?

A Team’s default setting is not unlike our individual default settings and derailers when under stress. Do I move toward or away from others when pressured? What happens to my ability to trust? How do I cover my derriere when under threat? We know from studies on Emotional Intelligence (EI) that self-awareness is the first key step in recognizing our own default settings. It is equally important, though sometimes more difficult to recognize, what a team’s default setting is when under the gun.

I was amazed (but somehow not surprised) to see, while watching a recent Animal Planet program, that when tigers are shaved, their stripes are also present in their skin. This says something about our fundamental personality or wiring, as the “who we are” goes deep—down to our very skins.

We work very deliberately to make these default settings both predictable and a normal response to stress, often to the point of having teams rehearse and exaggerate pressure situations so they are less likely to go on autopilot. We believe that the antidote to moving away from real teaming when under threat is to adopt a conscious and deliberate style that says, “We know our default settings. If we find ourselves doing X (our default setting), someone needs to ‘throw the flag’ and revisit our agreements about how we will operate together.” This collective team knowledge is like a fire alarm that gets the attention of the team members and returns them to the agreements they made about working together and really resolving issues using their collective intelligence (CI).

So some questions to ponder:

• How would I describe the “default setting” of our team when under pressure?
• What assessments or instruments have we used that have provided information on our individual and collective default settings?
• How well have we articulated the “rules of the road” and what to do to sustain real teamwork—even when under great pressure?
• How would I describe my personal default setting when under stress?
• How well do we know our collective EI?

To the extent we can stay a real team – a Top Team – when under pressure will determine how well we perform both in the moment and over time.

Top Teaming: Learnings from the Aspen Institute

For those of us who like to/need to feed our minds, the Aspen Institute is a gourmet cafeteria.  Some of the best minds from all disciplines meet in mostly informal settings to converse, debate, collaborate, and deepen thinking about issues that matter most – physics, medicine, geopolitics, business, music – all in the beautiful setting of the Colorado mountains in summertime.

I’ve spent the better part of the month here attending lectures, political seminars, and symphonies, doing some biking and a little fly fishing while trying to integrate what I’ve heard.  Some top line observations:

• We are in trouble but have great hope.  There was high agreement across disciplines that the economic issues in the US (and Europe) represent the greatest threat to national security. 

• We are moved too often by certainty, rather than by real dialogue about the facts.  This is true in science, medicine, politics and business.  3 Nobel Prize Laureates revealed with great humor that their important discoveries emerged from recognition that what they thought was so—was, in fact, not.  The data pointed in another direction.

• We have a crisis in confidence: we do not trust one another (especially our politicians) and have become polarized in our beliefs and thinking.  Adam Reiss, a Nobel physicist, Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State, and Jon Huntsman (former Governor of Utah, Ambassador to China, and presidential candidate) all separately defined fundamentalists as those who make up their minds before they examine facts.

• The informal time that people of different disciplines, cultures, and belief systems spend together is invaluable.  They dialogue (dia-logos – an exchange of ideas), they collaborate (physicians, engineers, physicists, and businessmen look at illness together and re-contextualize what health means), and they build relational intelligence (American, Chinese, and Europeans talk together over drinks, and build trust). And ultimately, they realize that what is most important is that we share the same planet and very fundamentally we care about the same things.

So as I come back to my work with leaders and their teams, I am re-engaged by the need for and spirit of dialogue, of the need for people to come together informally to talk about the things that matter most, and to build real relationships with one another to unlock their collective intelligence.

Top Teaming: Unraveling the Virtual Team

Johanna and Karen are members of a global OD team comprised of smart people from pedigreed backgrounds and strong corporate experience.  They are both highly interdependent and highly matrixed as they, and the other 8 members of their “team” support various businesses across a fast-changing, highly pressured global organization.  They rely deeply on one another. 

The only problem is, they actually only meet in person twice a year.  They are a new and increasing breed of team – a “virtual team” that works cross-culturally, globally, and intensively, without the high touch, face-to-face time that usually is required for a real team to develop into what we call a Top Team.

Many of us are struggling to find ways of developing teams such as this.  Think of some of their issues:

• They operate across China, Europe, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Rio — time zones that span 12-14 hours.  When do they talk?
• While a high-technology firm, travel requirements and historic business models force most connections to be by conference call and webinar.  Video and ‘telepresence’ occurs, but is not the norm.
• They meet as a team twice a year together, with additional connections as people travel across regions.
• They are under enormous pressure to be seen within the organization as an aligned and highly functioning team.
• And the list goes on….

In our research on Top Teaming, we have come to believe that “Relational Intelligence (RI)” – people coming to know one another and building the trust necessary to grow real Collective Intelligence (CI) is a foundation for Top Teams who can succeed in the “Now, the New, and the Next.”  But how does that work when smart and pressured people rarely get together, and when they do, have meetings that are jam packed with agenda items and jet lag?

This is an important area for us, who consult with teams or serve on teams to both understand and improve.  So let me pose some questions for us as a community of learners to discuss over time:

?         What are the keys to building Virtual Teams? 

?         What are the 3-4 most critical elements for the team and their leaders to consider?

?         What is the best method of, and cadence for communication and relationship building?

?         What must organizations provide for key teams to be fully successful?

?         What are the key questions we must address and resolve?

Let’s create a dialogue here that will allow us to raise the bar of Virtual Teams into Top Teams.  Please share your ideas and experience.