The office of the future might not be an office at all. As virtual teams become more prevalent, we edge ever closer to a culture where “work” means logging in to your company’s online project management site from your home or collaborating with people who each work for different teams or functions at their local co-working establishment.

“Company headquarters” is becoming more of a concept than an actual building. And as physical location becomes less important, companies can hire the best talent regardless of their location. In addition, companies can enhance their efficiency by handing off work across time zones, enabling them to be productive around the clock.

Especially in the Internet company start-up culture and in early-stage biotechnology companies, virtual teams are increasingly prevalent.

But far too often, say Darleen DeRosa and Rick Lepsinger, this vision of the global economy workplace falls short of today’s reality. In other words, virtual teams may be increasingly popular…but they’re not necessarily successful.

“Today it isn’t uncommon for companies to have as many as 50 percent of their employees working on virtual teams,” says Lepsinger, coauthor along with Darleen DeRosa of Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-470-53296-6, $50.00, www.onpointconsultingllc.com).

“Our research finds that many organizations recycle the same guidelines and best practices they use for their co-located teams and hope for the best,” says DeRosa. “Frankly, that just doesn’t work. Virtual teams and face-to-face teams are the proverbial ‘apples and oranges’—and leaders who recognize this fact are the ones whose teams succeed.”

To help organizations maximize their investment in virtual collaboration, OnPoint Consulting conducted a study of forty-eight virtual teams to understand the success factors of top performing virtual teams. Surprisingly, 27 percent of virtual teams in the global study were not fully performing. Given these results, the authors recognized the need for a resource that could help organizations and leaders enhance virtual team performance—and so they wrote Virtual Team Success.

Through the study, the authors recognized that virtual teams regularly fall victim to four pitfalls:

Lack of clear goals, direction, or priorities—Because it is tougher to communicate with and inform team members who are geographically dispersed, it is often difficult to keep all team members focused on the same goals, especially over time.

Lack of clear roles among team members—In virtual teams, it is especially important for team members to clearly understand their individual roles and how their work impacts other team members.

Lack of cooperation and trust—Because there is a lack of face-to-face contact inherent in virtual teamwork, the process of establishing trust and relationships that lead to group cooperation can be very arduous. Over time, this lack of collaboration can lead to a lack of trust amongst team members.

Lack of engagement—With virtual teams, people can easily become bored and “check out” because there is a lack of dynamic face-to-face interaction and because there are more distractions.

Eliminate these pitfalls and a team’s chances for success greatly increase. Below DeRosa and Lepsinger identify six lessons—excerpted from the book—for creating successful virtual teams.

We’ll be presenting the rest of the lessons tomorrow, including a reprise of Lesson 1, below.

Lesson #1: Focus on people issues. Essentially, successful teaming depends largely on the effective interaction of team members. Virtual teams need to compensate for the inherent lack of human contact by supporting team spirit, trust, and productivity. The authors identify warning signs that indicate that a team’s “people issues” need more attention.

“You may notice that team members work independently and do not reach out to other team members to collaborate,” says Lepsinger. “You may also notice that an ‘us versus them’ mentality has developed between locations or sub-groups. The truth is, when everyone is engaged and communicating, it is much easier to succeed as a virtual team. When team members build relationships with one another, it prevents people issues from taking over and impacting team efficiency.

Lesson #1 in Action:

• Develop a team web page where virtual team members can share information and get to know one another.
• Create ways for team members to interact and communicate informally. Use real-time communication tools like Instant Messaging or social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter to create a virtual water cooler of sorts that allows people on virtual teams to communicate more spontaneously.
• Build a collective online “resource bank” to share information and experiences.
• Find ways to “spotlight” team members.
• Send electronic newsletters or updates to the team.
• Create ways to virtually celebrate successes as a team
• Partner team members at different locations on projects and rotate these periodically.

Darleen DeRosa, Ph.D., is a managing partner at OnPoint Consulting. Darleen brings more twelve years of management consulting experience, with deep expertise in the areas of talent/succession management, executive assessment, virtual teams, and organizational assessment. Her client list includes Accenture, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Daiichi-Sankyo, Gerdau Ameristeel, and Johnson & Johnson.

Richard Lepsinger is president of OnPoint Consulting and has a twenty-five-year track record of success as an organizational consultant and executive. His client list includes Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Citibank, Coca-Cola Company, ConocoPhillips, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, NYSE Euronext, PeopleSoft, Prudential, and Subaru of America, among many others

Tomorrow: the other five lesson.