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For multinational companies, virtual teams operating across boundaries of time and geography are necessities of everyday working life. However, research suggests that typical success rates run at less than 30 percent. Jenny Goodbody, a global change manager with the BOC Group, and leader of a project team with members in six continents, considers the critical success factors for global virtual teams.

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Overcoming common obstacles to improve team performance

PGS, the engineering division of The BOC Group, is one of BOC's three global lines of business. It is headquartered in Singapore but its customers and employees are located in over 60 countries around the world. Like most global organizations, PGS uses virtual teams extensively in many areas of its business. It's a highly matrixed organization with teams that cross functions, business units and geographies, tasked with carrying out everyday business processes and unique projects.

My team, for example, is tasked with managing the organizational change aspects of implementing a global asset maintenance management system in 35 countries. Our job is to ensure users know why, how and when the system will be implemented, how the related business processes will change, and what it will mean to them in their various roles. But since the team is comprised of individuals based all over the world, they've never actually met face to face.

Identifying success factors

Although the use of virtual teams such as this has become increasingly common within the organization, leadership recently became aware that some virtual teams have been highly successful while others have struggled to achieve objectives. A year ago, we decided to investigate this issue by seeking answers to the question: What are the factors critical to the success of virtual teams? Identification of these issues would enable the organization to develop business processes and personal development programs to help teams achieve their goals.

Through research of current literature on the topic, and interviews with team leaders and members throughout PGS, we identified factors that determine the success or failure of virtual teams in three key categories:

1. Team formation

2. Trust and collaboration

3. Team communication

1. Team formation

Many authors writing about teams, both colocated and virtual, agree that this is the most important stage in the life of the team. Without successful team formation, the goals and objectives are unlikely to be attained, or at best, will be partially reached through the efforts of individuals, removing the advantages inherent in teamwork. The following factors all contribute to developing a strong virtual team.

Clear sponsorship

Team members need to know who their sponsor is; the person they can go to when problems arise, with whom they can discuss progress and issues and celebrate success. The sponsor should be present at the team kick-off meeting - this provides an early opportunity to define expectations - and should maintain a sufficient level of interaction with the team throughout the life of the project.

Within the change management team, we've created a standard list of the characteristics that we expect of a good sponsor, and we use this as a basis for discussion around team expectations. The list reflects issues important to change management projects, such as understanding the impact of a project on end users, showing public and private support, openness to feedback, active tracking of project progress, and ensuring necessary resources are available.

As the project progresses, the sponsor or sponsors should be actively involved in the project steering team. In a global project like ours, with multiple reporting structures, there may well be multiple sponsors, but the same rules of sponsorship still apply.

Agreed goals

Where possible, team members should have input into goal definition, so they can take personal ownership of those goals. In some cases this isn't possible, particularly where the goals are strategic in nature and set by senior leaders. In these instances, members should play an active role in setting short-term goals and success measurements. In our change team, for example, we've been given the overall project goals and schedule, but we "own" the project implementation plan and are measured on its success and sustainability. The more dispersed the team, the clearer the purpose or goal must be since the team leader cannot be on hand to direct members all the time.