For Geographically Dispersed Teams

I was doing some work with a client last week - a manager who leads three geographically dispersed teams. I shared this diagram as a way of making sure he had the basics covered. You want to work on each box and define and discuss each box.

Comments

[Scott Eblin]

Hi Lisa -

I'm new to your blog and really liked your post today. With more and more managers leading virtual and geographically dispersed teams, your graphic provides a great framework for thinking about how to get results. It reminds me a little bit of the GRPI model that was developed at GE in the days of the Jack Welch change acceleration process. For those that haven't heard of it, GRPI stands for Goals, Roles and Responsibilities, Plans and Processes, and Interpersonal Norms. It matches up pretty well with your model, Lisa, and like yours, can be used as a diagnostic tool for what needs more attention to ensure the success of the team.

Looking forward to reading more of your tips in the days to come!

Cheers -

Scott

[lisa haneberg]

Scott - Welcome to MC and thanks for reading. I am not familiar with the GE model, but it makes sense that they would have something like this. I think the key thing we often slouch on is connection and clarity. Both of these things affect our ability to collaborate, especially when we are not in the same place.

[Rick Cecil]

Great post, Lisa. And it's exactly the kind of stuff I fret over daily. I run a company that has people in 2 different states and across 2 continents. We're currently using a combination of Yammer, Skype, gDocs, gSites, FolderShare, Basecamp, and Unfuddle to manage all this. It's a lot of work, but I think it can be more efficient than if we were in person. In person, a lot of information that should be documented gets prioritized lower than other work. This absolutely cannot happen in a remote working environment. People can't just walk over to another office to get the info. And, as a result, of these community-driven documentation and communication tools, everyone is participating in maintaining the documentation (from company vision to dev plans) and they understand it better and buy into it more.

[lisa haneberg]

Rick - that's a good point, so it is even more important to whittle down and dehassle the information you collect so that people are spending valuable time documenting and sharing information that is not worth saving and sharing.