Effectively Leading Remote Employees

The benefits, basics, and best practices for leading remote employees

By Tom Salonek

Intertech Page ii of ix Created on 1/1/2005

Table of Contents

Part 1: Customer Benefits

Part 2: Best Practices

Part 3: Agile Development

Part 4: Staying Connected

Part 5: Technology

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Customer Benefits

“A 2005 Deloitte study of IT projects outsourced to virtual work groups found that 66 percent failed to satisfy the clients’ requirements,” reports Keith Ferrazzi in the Harvard Business Review (12/14) article “Getting Virtual Teams Right.”

Ferrazzi, a principal with the California-based business consulting firm Ferrazzi Greenlight and author of Never Eat Alone, also cites a 2009 study of 80 global software teams that found that “well managed dispersed teams can actually outperform those that share office

space,” as well as an Aon Consulting report that noted “using virtual teams can improve employee productivity, with some organizations seeing gains of up to 43 percent.”

I’m a strong advocate of virtual work groups, and believe the discrepancy behind these vastly different study results can be traced to those two little words “well managed.” Getting it right when working remotely requires strong management and other elements—the right team, the right leadership, the right touchpoints and the right technology—which Ferrazzi’s HBR article details.

I would like to touch on the myriad customer and employee advantages of virtual teams, which we use extensively. When Intertech IT consultants work remotely (at our software development center or in some cases at home), customers benefit from:

Access to talent and skill sets that may not be currently available in their market, particularly if the customer is located in rural locations.

A deep bench. While the client may be hiring a specific team, a firm like Intertech has many other resources at its disposal beyond a specific team. Our consultants can (and do) bounce ideas off each other throughout our firm, relying on the same communications technology that tethers them to clients, without any added cost for customers.

Demonstration of best practices. It’s common that our clients don’t have strong development or agile practices. Using one of our virtual teams gives them an infusion of best practices that may be difficult to create locally on the client site. We know this is powerful because clients, after experiencing how we deliver projects remotely, have adopted our processes or asked that we help them implement those processes internally.

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Free technology and “workspaces.” Computers, software, workstations all represent significant costs. A typical professional laptop costs $2,000 and software costs $1,000’s. When we work remotely, those costs don’t exist for customers.

Community goodwill. Some of our clients are located in remote areas with limited local IT resources. Due to their remote locations it’s hard to recruit employees, which can result in “talent poaching” from the few local businesses that may employ IT professionals. This can cause a fair amount of embarrassment, uncomfortable moments or even hostility in small towns where people know each other and frequently are in similar social or civic circles.

For employees, the benefits are simple and enormous: working remotely gives them the ability to manage their work and personal lives more flexibly. The advantages of a flexible work life should not be minimized, especially when your workforce includes a large percentage of millennials.

In case you’ve been sleeping, you probably already know that millennials soon will outnumber baby boomers in the United States and are on the cusp of representing the majority of the workforce. As was noted by Sarah Sladek, CEO and founder of XYZ University and author of the book, Knowing Y: Engage the Next Generation Now, “Organizations are doomed to fail if they cling to old-guard ideas that motivated baby boomers.”

Clinging to the notion that employees must be located in an office where they can be observed like babies in a maternity ward is as antiquated as the tradition of proud fathers puffing cigars in the hospital waiting room. Remote or virtual work teams are not the future, they are the present.

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Best Practices

The use of virtual teams is a popular and growing workplace trend. As consultant and author Keith Ferrazzi describes in the Harvard Business Review (12/14) article “Getting Virtual Teams Right,” following best practices around four key areas greatly increases the effectiveness of virtual teams. He identifies the first key area as having the right team.

What makes a great virtual team? Ferrazzi notes that all successful virtual team players share some characteristics: good communication skills, high emotional intelligence, an ability to work independently and the resilience to recover from the snafus that inevitably arise. He recommends that leaders should conduct behavioral interviews and personality tests to screen for these qualities. This is something we have done for years at Intertech and I highly recommend it. While the evaluations are fairly expensive, they’re “priceless” when compared to the cost of a bad hire.

Ferrazzi also makes an interesting observation about the size of virtual teams. He suggests that the most effective virtual teams are small (fewer than 10 people). A study by OnPoint Consulting found the worst performing virtual teams had 13 members or more. Apparently, as the team size increases something called “social loafing” kicks in as individuals begin to feel less responsibility for output.

The other aspect of getting a virtual team right has to do with communication. Specifically, how roles are clarified and communicated. Ferrazzi recommends forming sub teams when projects require the efforts of multiple people from various departments. Intertech typically identifies one project leader, who serves as the main point of contact with everyone else on the team.

Because we use agile methodology, the client’s team members also are part of our “daily standup,” which is a brief call where everyone shares what they did yesterday, what they will be doing today, and any challenges they are facing. This provides daily updates on everyone’s tasks and allows team members in different locations to understand what everyone is doing and how they may be able to help.

At the end of each sprint we do a demo of what was completed in the last one. This is a “retrospective” to discuss what did or didn’t go well and it is how we decide, as a team, what to keep and what to improve. So the whole team gets better with each sprint/iteration by fine-tuning the process in planned steps along the way.

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Agile Development

Fostering trust is the first task of any leader, but this is especially crucial for virtual team leaders. Trust and empathy is key according to Ferrazzi and he suggests strategies like encouraging team members to share appropriate background information to help foster it.

He also recommends encouraging open dialogue, which is something we

champion with our virtual work teams. Intertech team members use different tools for communication such as #Slack, Yammer, instant messaging, and email to communicate throughout the day and with other stakeholders who may not be a part of the daily standup.

Clarifying goals and guidelines also help to establish a common purpose or vision. Ferrazzi counsels explaining to everyone “why you are coming together and what benefits will result, and then keep reiterating the message.”

With software development teams using Agile, it’s a little different because we are not driven by a formal project plan. As a team we collectively agree what will be delivered in the next sprint/iteration (usually these are every 2-4 weeks) so it is known by all what must be done and by when. We also encourage clients to add items or features. When we plan the next sprint/iteration the client can choose what should be the focus or priority for the next one.

This Agile approach allows the team to stay nimble and focus on delivering the highest value items, while delaying lower value items until later. This is quite different from a traditional Waterfall methodology where everything is defined and planned upfront, which is a much more rigid process that makes introducing change more challenging and frustrating for everyone. We use Agile because virtual teams – by their very nature — should be flexible and adaptable!

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Staying Connected

Getting the whole team together – in person – when a project kicks off always is a good idea. When logistics do not allow everyone to be in the same room, video “will go a long way toward introducing teammates, setting expectations for trust and candor, and clarifying team goals and behavioral guidelines,” notes Ferrazzi.

It’s not uncommon for new people to join a virtual team sometime during the project lifecycle. I agree with Ferrazzi that an in-person welcome is ideal when on-boarding a new project member. He also recommends “pairing new comers with a mentor who can answer questions quickly but personally—the equivalent of a friendly colleague with an office around the corner.”

Intertech consultants frequently transfer knowledge to our clients’ in-house IT staff, particularly when we’re introducing technology that may be new. Partnering closely with team members from the “client side” is a crucial part of how we work and clients tell us it is one of the top reasons they like working with us. We understand our role is not to come in and muscle out the onsite team. Staying connected in person and through technology (more about that in my next section) is crucial to making our virtual team partnerships thrive.

Milestones are another great reason to get together in person when possible. Notes Ferrazzi, “In the absence of visual cues and body language, misunderstandings often arise, especially on larger teams. Team members begin to feel disconnected and less engaged, and their contributions to the team decline.”

Getting people together, especially when there’s a reason to celebrate, can overcome the dangers of distance that can negatively impact trust, innovation, satisfaction and performance. This is a big reason why we host quarterly dinner meetings for all Intertech consultants, as well as Friday barbecue lunches in the summer, an annual holiday and summer party, and other fun gatherings throughout the year. Many of our consultants work from home or onsite at customer locations. Our in-person gatherings are a critical part of maintaining our consistently high employee satisfaction ratings.

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Technology

What’s left? Technology of course. Without the right technology virtual teams simply do not work. Or, as author Ferrazzi so eloquently puts it: “In our experience, even those with top-notch virtual teams—those with the most talented workers, the finest leadership and frequent touchpoints—can be felled by poor technology.”

Among the components virtual teams should use:

Conference calling—“Look for systems that don’t require access codes but do record automatically or with a single click and facilitate or automate transcription. . . Also consider one-on-one and group videoconferencing, since visual cues help establish empathy and trust.” At Intertech, we use UberConference.

Direct calling and text messaging—Nothing beats picking up a phone and talking directly with someone on the team. Texting comes in second. We like the Microsoft tool Lync. Not only does it allow us to indicate when we’re “in” the office (versus on a break), but it facilitates “conversations” over the web, including voice and text, and allows people to see each others’ desktops, which makes it easy for two virtual team mates to work together in real time on a particular issue.

Discussion forums or virtual rooms—At Intertech, Slack allows all team members to share ideas, files, and other artifacts… in a searchable repository. According to Ferrazzi, “scholars call this type of collaboration ‘messy talk’ and say it’s critical for completing complex projects.”

At the end of the day, virtual teams can save time, reduce hassles and can provide access to valuable intellectual resources. If you’re using or considering using virtual teams, I hope the strategies in this five part series help with your success!

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