From Failure to Amazing Success in Global Teams

PART I
Building Trust and Clarity: Discovering, Dreaming and Goal‐Setting

‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.’

John Lennon

Adam stirs slightly as the dim light of a new day tries its best to break through the fabric of the bedroom curtains. His mind tries to cling to the last strands of his sleep, but he knows that he can't sink back into a deep slumber. Slowly, carefully so as not to wake his wife Rose, he rolls over onto his right side and gropes blindly for the alarm clock.

Through half‐closed eyes he sees the blue lines marking out the time: 5:50. At 6:00 a.m. his alarm will start to beep. He sighs, resigning himself to getting out from under the covers. As he stretches and starts to wake his body up, he feels his muscles contracting. They're aching a little after his gym session last night. With a slight groan, he eases himself up to sitting and turns the alarm off. A yawn and a stretch accompanied by some clicks in his body reminds him, once again, that while he's strong for 48 he's not as young as he used to be.

He stands and pads slowly across to the bathroom, flicking on the light and shutting the door behind him. Adam goes through the usual morning rituals. He cleans his teeth, showers, shaves and throws on some aftershave. Wrapped in a towel he makes his way into the bedroom to find Rose is up and has gone downstairs. He dresses for work and gets ready to join his family for breakfast. He can hear the gentle hubbub of his daughter and wife talking in the kitchen.

Adam walks into the kitchen and kisses Rose on the cheek as he passes her to get a cup of coffee. He's barely sat down at the table when Georgia, his daughter, has fixed him with an accusing stare. ‘Who bought cheese wrapped in plastic again?’ she asks, barely giving anyone a chance to answer. ‘How many times do I have to say this? There is going to be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050, we all have to do our part to change that. Not to mention all the seabirds, dolphins and whales that die each year because they eat plastic. It's disgusting.’

Adam holds his daughter's gaze, trying his best not to erupt and to be reasonable in the face of such an outburst at the breakfast table. ‘Look Georgia, I picked up some cheese on my way home from the gym last night. They only had cheese wrapped in plastic. What am I supposed to do? Leave the fridge and cupboard bare for breakfast? Then you'd be complaining you had nothing to eat. One piece of cheese wrapped in plastic isn't going to make a big difference.’

‘That's what everyone thinks, and that's why this planet is slowly choking on plastic,’ Georgia fires back. ‘It's alright for you, but it's my generation who won't have a planet to live on in 50 years. You just exploit the Earth, working in fossil fuels without a care for what it means for the future.’ With her eyes burning, Georgia leaves the room before Adam has a chance to respond.

He lets out an audible sigh. Rose reaches across and touches his arm. ‘You know how passionate she is about this,’ she says in a conciliatory tone. ‘Well it wouldn't hurt her to acknowledge how hard I work to put a roof over her head and food on the table,’ Adam replies. ‘I know, I'll talk to her. She needs to be respectful, even if she doesn't agree with you,’ Rose smiles. ‘Now, what would you like for breakfast?’

‘I think I'll skip breakfast,’ Adam says, taking one last sip of his coffee. ‘I'll see you later, have a good day.’ He gives Rose his best smile as he stands and walks into the hall, but inside he's still angry. He knows his job is far from perfect and he knows that Georgia would much rather he worked in a more, as she puts it, ‘responsible’ industry. But this is where life has led him. Adam is still thinking about Georgia's remarks when he sits down at his desk half an hour later.

He makes himself a fresh cup of coffee while his computer whirrs into life. The email at the top of his inbox is titled: Confidential. Without entirely knowing why, Adam feels nervous as he opens it. He has to read it through three times before the contents sink in. The gist of it is that they're closing his location because of competition and disruption in the renewable energy sector.

Adam almost laughs in spite of himself. This should make Georgia happy at least, he thinks. But then he focuses on the rest of the email. He has two options: take redundancy or relocate to Kuala Lumpur.

The more he reads the email, the angrier he becomes. He's given years of his life to this company, and those are the only two options they can find for him? His breathing has quickened and he realises he's clenching his fists. He slams one down on the desk, spilling a little coffee. Why the hell have I put so much effort in if this is how I'm going to be treated?

He takes a deep breath and stands up from his desk, pushing his chair back a little harder than he meant to and feeling a little satisfaction at the sound of the backrest hitting the wall. He walks out of his office to go and see Dave, who's been with the company a little longer than he has. Maybe he'll have better news?

As Adam approaches Dave, he looks up from his computer and gives him a wan smile. ‘I take it you got the email too?’ Dave says. ‘Yep!’ Adam replies. ‘Where did this come from Dave? It feels like a bolt from the blue…’ ‘Well, I guess the writing's been on the wall for a while if you think about it. We've all known renewables were on the up and disruption is disruption. If you're not going to jump on the bandwagon there aren't many options left.’

Adam can't help but admire how pragmatic Dave is being about all of this. ‘Are you moving to KL?’ he asks. Dave shakes his head, ‘I don't think so. I mean I'll think about it, but I've been thinking about having a change and getting into the renewable energy sector for a few years, so this might just be the push I need, either to go out on my own or to join another company. What are you thinking?’

Adam lets out a sigh. ‘Well, I mean, I don't know. I've given 20 years to this company, you know? I'll need to talk to Rose about it. I mean, she's got her coaching business, and then there's Georgia and her schooling. KL could be a good opportunity, but, like you say, maybe this is a nudge to move in a new direction.’

By the time he's walking away from Dave's desk, Adam feels calmer. Dave always does look for the positives in a situation and that was what he needed today, to feel as though there were other options. He hadn't considered moving into renewable energy, despite Georgia's best efforts to convince him in recent months, but now, maybe, just maybe…

He doesn't have time for more contemplation though, as he has a video call in, he glances at his watch, in five minutes. He rushes back to his desk, composes himself and gets on with his day. The morning flies by and it's 2pm before he's able to step out for lunch.

As soon as he leaves the office, his thoughts hit him like a speeding train. As he walks his mind flicks between the two scenarios: move to KL with this company, stay in this job and uproot his family, or take the leap of faith into the renewables sector and do something new, something different. His mind keeps returning to Georgia's comments. This is a chance to do something good for future generations. But it's terrifying to take that step at this stage in his career. Is he just being idealistic? Adam can't quite tell. There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, he thinks.

Suddenly, he realises how hungry he is and ducks into a nearby takeaway. As he stands waiting to order, he scans the menu. Having skipped breakfast, he's now starving. A burger feels like a good idea, but his eyes drift down the menu and pause on a veggie burger. He knows which Georgia would choose. He's lost in thought and is pulled back to reality by the person behind the counter saying, ‘Excuse me, sir, what can I get you?’ He smiles, ‘I'll have the veggie burger please.’

He collects his burger from the counter and strolls out into the sunshine, making a beeline for the nearest park. Adam finds a bench and settles down, feeling the sun on his face and noticing the breeze in the trees. As he takes a bite of the burger, he starts to realise the possibilities that lie before him. But it's still a big decision to make, and he's not quite ready to take the leap of faith just yet. Maybe he could move to KL? Maybe Rose and Georgia could be happy there?

Walking back to the office, Adam decides he'll apologise to Georgia when he gets home, and then break the news of his impending redundancy, or relocation to KL, to Rose. That's going to be an interesting conversation.

Suddenly he remembers Kaito, a Japanese scientist who he met at an energy conference a few years before. They sat next to each other during a seminar about disruption in the solar energy sector and got chatting in the break. Adam can still remember how Kaito's face lit up when he started talking about his work on solar energy projects. It was refreshing to meet someone with so much passion for what he did. I wonder… Before he has time to think too much about it, Adam gets his phone out of his pocket and fires off a quick message to Kaito. ‘Hi Kaito, how's everything going in Japan? I have some exciting news, just wondered if you'd be free for a chat soon?’ He knows it's late in Japan, but he's hopeful he'll have a response by morning.

As the rest of the afternoon passes, Adam feels his stomach tying itself in knots. He's not looking forward to the conversation with Rose when he gets home. As he leaves the office, he notices that the wind has picked up and grey storm clouds are looming on the horizon. Great, what an omen.

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As you can see from the beginning of Adam's story, there is a lot to consider when you're creating a virtual team.

I'd like to begin by sharing my definition of a virtual team. This is any team that is in more than one location. This doesn't have to mean that every member of that team is working in a different place. It might be that you have two offices in the same city and team members spread between them. Or you might have some people working from home and others from the office. These people may be working in the same time zones, they may not. For me, a virtual team is any team that communicates virtually at least part of the time.

According to research from Forrester in 2016, 81% of teams are virtual and 60% of these virtual teams are spread across more than one time zone. I'm sure that this figure has increased since this study was carried out. It's also important to understand why you'd want to build a virtual power team.

There are many reasons why this is the most appropriate option. They include expanding your business internationally and delivering projects more quickly, But if you don't spend time creating your virtual power team, there is a good chance they will fail.

I will tell you now that the first time I was a member of a big virtual team, in 2002, my overwhelming emotion was one of frustration. I was one of 30 project managers spread across Europe and our boss was based in London. Once a year we had a face‐to‐face meeting with everyone in one place. Once a quarter we had a telephone conference, although this was usually an opportunity for our boss to speak and present various KPIs and business results. But aside from these large meetings, we rarely spoke to each other. As a team, we didn't communicate, let alone help one another.

I didn't feel appreciated or recognised by my boss. Over time, I became increasingly frustrated and I'm sure the other project managers did too. This led not only to pain and frustration for us, but also for our manager.

This experience taught me that over time, virtual teams can lose their centre of gravity. People can get lost in space. This leads to a decline in the team's overall performance. It made me question how you could retain this ‘gravity’ and cohesion over time and even improve a team's performance exponentially as you do so. Before I come onto this though, I'd like to talk to you about why global teams fail.

What Causes Global Teams to Fail?

There are four main reasons why global teams fail. In fact, these are four reasons why any virtual team will fail, not just one that is global.

1. They fail to build trust – when you're creating a virtual team you need to make more of an effort to build trust between everyone. They can't bond while using the coffee machine. You need to find ways to build trust despite the distance.
2. They can't overcome communication barriers – in virtual teams you have different barriers to overcome. There is the distance and the technology. But there are also potential issues surrounding goal setting, particularly in relation to decision‐making and handling conflicts.
3. The goals of the individual and the team aren't aligned – sometimes there is a team goal that has been cascaded and not worked out from the bottom up. That means an individual's goal might not align with the team. Or, as is often the case, people within the team have their hidden agendas, whether that's something to facilitate their career or their bonus scheme. If it's not completely aligned with the team's goal, it will lead to issues.
4. The vision and goal of the team isn't clear – if the vision and goal has been cascaded, there is a much higher probability of a lack of clarity. By contrast, if people within the team work out the vision and goal together then they identify with it and this is one of the keys to the success of virtual power teams.

What Do All High‐Performing Teams Have in Common?

Over the years, I have developed a highly effective method called ‘Virtual Power Teams’, which comprises 10 Big Rocks. These are the 10 key success factors for retaining the gravity in your team and unleashing the virtual team's power.

I want you to imagine that your virtual team is a human. The first part to consider is the head. This is the logical, cognitive element and it's where you'll find the first three of the 10 Big Rocks that are essential to every virtual power team's success.

These rocks are:

1. Personality in focus
2. The Strengths Matrix
3. Interdependent goals

Personality in focus – this means you need to consider the personalities of every person you include in your team. If, as a manager, you don't believe this is important for remote teams you're making a big mistake. Later on in the book I'll give you an exercise that can help you get to know your team members quickly and intimately. It's important to know how to achieve this when you're managing a remote team. So, the lesson is not to ignore personality when you're choosing your team or recruiting, but instead to put personality in focus.

The Strengths Matrix – this is all about exploring and identifying the key strengths and natural talents of each team member. All too often people can feel anonymous and feel as though they're being treated as a resource. By identifying people's strengths and making everybody else aware of them, you'll make every person in your team feel like a hero who has a special talent that's vital to your success. This is about helping everyone in the team understand that they're not anonymous, but that they're understood. That they've been chosen to be part of this bouquet of skills and with this mix of talent we can achieve anything.

Interdependent goals – goal setting is very important in virtual teams. This rock is about making sure that everyone has their own goal and that everyone is clear on what they need to do to deliver. But more than that, the team will be organised and managed in such a way that they all have the freedom, within budgetary and time constraints, to decide how best to deliver on that goal. Micromanagement is not an option. This is about empowerment. It's about allowing people to set and choose their goals, not simply delegating tasks.

With these three rocks that make up the head of your team, you're aiming for clarity about who your team members are and what goals you're all aiming to achieve.

The next part of the body that I want you to consider is the skeleton and muscles. This is the dynamic part of the body, and therefore of the team. The next three rocks are:

4. Meetings and agenda
5. Knowledge management
6. Regular feedback

Meetings and agenda – this means deciding which online meetings and conferences you need to have as a team. You may have a core leadership team, as well as extended teams, and you need to be clear on how often they will meet and what format these meetings will take.

Knowledge management – this is about how we manage knowledge. It ties in with the Strengths Matrix, but rather than being about skills it's about the knowledge or expertise that individual team members have. I'll talk more later about how you can define knowledge champions or knowledge custodians within your team.

Regular feedback – this can sometimes be scarce in regular teams, but it's even more of an issue in virtual teams. But for your virtual team to be a success, it's essential that you institutionalise feedback. You need to make sure that communication with your team allows everyone to have an equal contribution. You want to establish structured communication where everybody can contribute, rather than taking a manager‐centric or problem‐centric approach.

From the skeleton and muscles we move onto the heart, which is my personal favourite. There are three rocks that are essential in this part of the ‘body’:

7. Recognition
8. Diversity
9. Winning spirit

Recognition – did you know that the number one reason for people leaving a company is a lack of recognition by a direct superior. That means people are leaving jobs not because of the company they work for, but because they don't feel recognised by their manager or boss. In virtual teams, it's important to recognise progress despite the distance and I'll give you tips on how you can do this and make sure everyone in your team feels seen.

Diversity – if you have a diverse team from multiple cultures, you need to think carefully about how to establish the optimal team culture. There are three areas in particular that you need to consider: leadership, decision‐making and conflict. In leadership, you have the choice between egalitarian and hierarchical and I'll explain how you define the optimal leadership style for your team. With decision‐making, you have the choice between top‐down and consensus and, again, I'll help you understand how to find the optimal way for your team to make decisions. In terms of conflict, you have confrontational versus non‐confrontational approaches. I'll help you reflect and consider different cultural considerations when deciding how best to manage conflict within your team.

Winning spirit – establishing winning spirit in your team when people are spread across time zones and cultures can be challenging. But if you can establish this winning spirit, anything is possible. I'll give you advice on how to establish this winning spirit across your virtual team.

The tenth rock is next generation leaders. This is very important because it is no good having this wonderful virtual power team at the top if there is no one coming through behind them to take their place. You need to make sure you are connected to all the layers of your organisation and think about how you can involve people at all levels in delivering your agenda.

According to Google's Project Aristotle, where they researched the characteristics of high‐performing teams, they found that the number one characteristic high‐performing teams have is psychological safety.

This means that the people in those teams are willing to share their vulnerability and don't feel pressure to keep up the appearance of being perfect. The benefit is that when they come up against a task that doesn't play to their strengths, they're not afraid to ask for help. This makes the team a powerful unit. It makes 1+1+1 much more than three.

Establishing Your Foundation

If you lay these 10 Big Rocks, carefully considering each one based on your industry, your locations, the countries your team members are in, their diversity and cultures, your virtual power team will be capable of anything.

Just like when you're establishing the foundations of a big building, you want to make conscious decisions about how you lay your foundation and where you place your 10 Big Rocks. Throughout the rest of this book, I'll share the tools that you need to make these conscious decisions to enable your team to become a virtual power team.

Source: Guide: Understand team effectiveness, re:Work With Google

I will give you examples of how these rocks have contributed to successful power teams that I've been part of, so that you can see them in action.