Cost savings are high, but the lack of physical proximity for direct exchange of ideas and information among individuals can have a severe impact on teams.
In the twenty-first century, many business and agency employees collaborate remotely without having to travel. Cost savings are high, but the lack of physical proximity for direct exchange of ideas and information among individuals can have a severe impact on teams. For example, a 2017 Harvard Business Review study revealed that distributed teams are subject to larger negative effects than on-site colleagues in several areas, including project costs, deadlines, team morale, productivity, retention, and stress. Some teams on large programs even lack organizational links among their members, who may work for multiple different enterprises on a virtual team.
In this white paper, Matt Light, Vice President, Strategy & Corporate Development, with Planisware, explores how today’s distributed teams work most effectively. We will probe how to ensure the smooth flow of information and its accessibility to all, and we will examine how to leverage new information and communication technologies for project or program success.
From there, we will explain how to take the initiative in leading far-flung teams, and how to efficiently respond when following up on team issues. We will explore different ways of encouraging collaboration and cohesion among remote team members, and identify eight factors (out of 100+ studied), that correlate with collaborative success.
We will also see how all stakeholders can share knowledge and capitalize on it. And finally, we will show how your scattered teams can develop « collaborative intelligence» a distributed system in which people scattered far and wide can nevertheless each make their unique contributions to a network for solving business problems.
