The Virtual Team Profiler: the fastest way to find out what your virtual team needs

April 15, 2008 | article by Ken Thompson in Online Collaboration Techniques (47)

A virtual team profiling technique to help you spot problems before they turn into nasty surprises by first exposing the nature of the team in 8 key dimensions: Team Objectives, Leadership Style, Member Profiles, Team Shape, Environment, Working Approach, Social Dynamic and Technology.

From my experience of working with teams, often due to business deadline pressures, we do not spend enough time at the start taking a quick look at the overall shape of the team.

This means we often start trying to apply our toolkit of team effectiveness techniques and supporting virtual technology before we fully understand the precise nature of the complex, living and multi-faceted entity we are dealing with.

This generally results in nasty surprises which occur too late to do much about them.

For example in a previous article I discussed three broad types of teams - "Recommending", "Managing" and "Doing" Teams and the very different problems they each have.

Recommender Teams are often part-time; great for reviewing work but can lack a "team engine" for getting detailed work done.

Managing Teams are often staffed with senior executives who have serious time management challenges and are unlikely to engage with traditional team communication and meeting approaches.

Doer teams are great for doing things but their networks may be limited to their own functional areas which can blind them to some innovation and cross-functional opportunities.

An organisational team profiler

We can see that even asking and discussing this one question in itself can yield hugely valuable insight into a particular team's most likely challenges. So I offer here my team profiling checklist which can be used to rapidly profile an organisational team or multi-enterprise network across eight different dimensions.

It can be worked through with a senior member of a forming team in as little as 15 minutes.

I don't pretend it is exhaustive but I do guarantee that if you use it properly it will identify at least 3 things about the team which you did not know about or were making invalid assumptions around and which will impact on your virtual team support plan!

First explore the eight areas:

Nature of Team Objective
Team Leadership/Management Style
Team Member Profile
Team Shape
Team Environment
Team Working Approach
Team Social Dynamic
Team Technology Factor

Then ask four questions:

What are the constraints/givens in the team?

What are the top problems/challenges for the team?

What are the Technology Implications?

What are the Change Management Implications?

The Full Checklist

Note:

All answers can be 'yes', 'no' or 'both'

Feel free to add more questions

I also include a mind-map version of the profiler which can be annotated as you work through with a team

1. Nature of Team Objective

Contingent (on others) versus Within Own Control?

Single or multiple Product Deliveries?

Must Have (people get sacked) or Nice to Have (people shrug shoulders and move on to something else)?

Scope already clearly defined or not?

Deadline already fixed or not, and if its fixed is it moveable?

'Recommending', 'Managing' or 'Doing' Team?

2. Team Leadership/Management Style

Dominant Style - Command and Control versus Self-Managed?

Formal or informal Project Style (meeting minutes, reports etc)?

Team consists mostly of Employees, Volunteers or Consultants/Suppliers?

3. Team Member Profile

Degree of co-location?

Mobility (what % of the working day are they at their desks/PCs)?

Single Organisation or Few Organisations or Many Organisations?

Single Profession or multi-disciplinary?

How many Languages/Business Cultures?

4.Team Shape

Full or Part-Time Project Manager?

How many Full-Time Members ?

How many Part-Time Members?

Reviewer/Expert Participation Level?

External Party Participation Level?

5. Team Environment

Prior existence of rules, standards and processes?

Degree of external dependency/approvals required for the team to act?

6. Team Working Approach

Partitioned or Co-operative Development?

What form do the Primary Team Meetings take?

What is the Primary Team Communication mechanism (e.g. phone or email)?

7. Team Social Dynamic

Degree to which team already know each other?

Willingness of team members to invest in team relationship development?

8. Team Technology Factor

Sophistication of shared technology environment?

Technology Capabilities of Team Members?

Tags: organizational teams, tools, virtual teams

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I am curious about 3 items in the instant profiler.

item 4 "every communication should contain crystal clear instructions" seems counterintuitive on the scoring. Is the crystal clear as in very detailed instructions on exactly what to do?
Item 7 "we dont try to stay in touch after hours?" I would have expected that we do try to stay in touch
item 12 plans and reviews, This seems like a two part question, I can understand not plannng in detail but it seems to me that reviewing is always important to learning.

Thanks, it is a nice assessment to start a discussion.

Posted by: chris | April 20, 2008 7:45 PM

Bioteams Books Reviews

Organisational teams: thin slice for responsiveness

January 22, 2007 | article by Ken Thompson in Book Reviews (37)

Humans and animals do not need complete information to act; they can operate on various clues provided there is a sufficient context. Organizational teams can also use this thin slicing technique in conjunction with short messaging to enhance their performance. Malcolm Gladwell’s introspective book Blink digs deep into the abyss of human cognition to illustrate the human ability to think at a subconscious level. The idea of thin slicing is used where one is introduced to only a few snippets of information which lead to a series of conclusions based on moments of rapid cognition – an ability claimed to be intrinsically dormant in most humans. By bioteams guest author Max Bhanabhai.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

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