Virtual Team & Diversity Management

21^st century business thrives on managing virtual relationships. Most of the time the complex webs of relationships is “de facto” and not “de jure”. These relationships could be in the form of supplier-vendor relationships, distributed teams, regional offices and so on. Issues at hand are both global (macro) and at organizational level (micro). Be it local market adaptation and assimilation for a multinational company or just selling through franchisees; any firm which uses people, resources of any kind for “value addition” needs to have representatives who are skilled in tune with “Virtual Team management“ for dealing with diversity.

Often senior executives cite multiple locations, diverse, non-co-located teams as a risk for Program/Product lifecycle management. With short product life-cycles, fear of “disruption” due to technology, new market model upheavals; having diverse and distributed teams is always sees as a risk. In hindsight it was GATT and WTO which ushered in the era of open markets in 1994 and 1995 respectively. Ubiquitous flourishing of Information Technology, desire to sell in global markets and access to cheap, skilled labor-all lead towards more conglomerates going global.

But, all has not been hunky-dory in the world of global management for corporations. Often stated by people that Leaders are born not made (surely people can be chiseled to be leaders is my mantraJ), so how do people learn in managing diversity and distributed/virtual teams? I remember asking a question in a seminar at my MBA class, how do you prepare for dealing with diversity? Apt came the answer that we enable people through learnings and experiences! Surely experimental, boxed environments can help, but can they replace the inherent prejudices?

Coming from India, the land of “de facto” diversity, I have always felt comfortable with my DNA and ability to have empathy as well as understanding of diversity (Some came through interactions and more through travel). US, the land of opportunities has done very well with “created” diversity through amalgamation and by providing equitable success mechanisms. Europe and Latin America have done well too despite underground fissures here and there. However, even when organizations hire from different nationalities, there is still a sense of “slow transformation” in changing the DNA for making it more accommodative. Just having diversity is a first step, enabling diverse people into “decision-making” positions helps drive that message, be it at the cost of long experiences in an organization. Technology is no substitute for diversity and distributed team management is the moot point!

Some common pitfalls that I have come across in diversity and virtual team management:

1. ·         Dis-trust and skepticism
2. ·         Distance (Technology transmits the message, but it gets truncated!)
3. ·         Missing empathy and cultural sensitivity
4. ·         Condescending attitudes
5. ·         Us versus them
6. ·         Problem of scaling-up (specially for innovation hubs)
7. ·         Fear of more skilled people taking over the ones in the saddle having leadership roles courtesy longer tenures!
8. ·         Lack of information flow in time (Selective sharing)
9. ·         Transparency (Has to be with the bad words of politics!)

One can juxtapose the opposites for all the pitfalls to find the elixir of diversity and distributed team management. All the above and more lead to failure of products and program that companies making in achieving strategic objectives. 

Even countries struggle with global co-operation projects! I have heard skeptics questioning the much needed ITER project in France towards bringing to reality electricity generation through the experimental thermonuclear reactor. Unfortunately, there is no short-cut to being successful in global business dynamics. Organizations which will not embrace “diversity” in their DNA holistically along with “disruption business models” will lose out in the long run.