30 Lessons in 30 Days - Why is my Remote Team so Unproductive?

Hi there. How long have you been working from home? As the Covid-19 pandemic persists, working in remote teams have become a fact of business life for many of us.

I’ve been working with virtual team members in 8 different countries across different time zones over the past 13 years, and believe me, sometimes I get so frustrated that I want to tear my hair out (I know... .its a sorry excuse for my thinning hairline...). The control freak in me goes on red alert when I notice a drop in the quality of work. My heart pounds when I keep getting disconnected from the conference call. My blood boils when a co-worker forgot to mute himself, and I hear the ferocious tapping of his mouse keys when playing CounterStrike.

But I also recognise the advantages it brings me as an entrepreneur. Technology has made it easy for me to hire and work with talented people from any location around the world, and gave me access to an international market of clients. Today I'll like to share with you some of the lessons I have learnt from the School of Hard Knocks.

Assemble the right team members

High performing remote team members have a few things in common: Ability to work independently, excellent communication skills, comfortable with technology, and high relationship intelligence. If you are building a team from scratch, I suggest doing background checks using services such as HireRight, engaging headhunting professionals such as Exquisitz Asia and consider investing in established personality assessment tools such as the Workplace Big Five to screen your candidates based on your ideal job profile. Not sure of the idea job profile? Simple. Use the Workplace Big Five Profile of your star performer and do some "reverse engineering".

If you inherited your team, or are looking to boost performance of your current team, then a tool such as CoreStrengths will increase your awareness of your team member's intrinsic motivations, team culture, and potential conflict triggers among team members. These data points will allow you to establish unique rules that are customised to your team members, creating a collaborative and engaging environment.

Determine the right team size

My experience of working with companies from large multinationals to tiny start-ups has taught me that the most effective virtual teams are small ones—fewer than 10 people. A study done by OnPoint Consulting on virtual teams concluded that the worst performers had 13 members or more.

One of the reason for this phenomenon is the behaviour commonly known as "Social Loafing" effect. The roots for this term can be traced to 1913, when a french engineer called Maximilian Ringelmann performed a study on the performance of horses. His studies concluded that the power of 2 horses pulling a coach did not equate to the twice the power of a single horse. Stupefied at his results, he broadened his research to humans. He had several man pull a rope and measured the force applied by each individual. On average, if 2 persons were pulling together. each invested 93% of their energy. With 3 person in the team, the effort dropped to 85%. With an 8 person team, the score was just 49%.

Other than the detrimental effects caused by "Social Loafing", there is also a tendency for accountability to drop in larger teams, as responsibility is diffused among the team. This diffusion of responsibility also results in large teams having a tendency to take riskier decisions than individual team members would take on their own, which is quite dangerous indeed. "It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's nobody's fault. Nevermind about it!"

Another often quoted piece of research by Harvard professor Richard Hackman discovered that it takes only 6 conversations for every person on a team of 4 to touch base with everyone else, but that number rises to 78 for a team of 13. Wow, that's a lot of effort just to touch base. Imagine the struggle you'll face to align everyone in the event of conflicting opinions. Good luck....

So here's a piece of advice. Keep the team size small. Have a big team? Break it down into smaller teams. Ever wondered why Agile practitioners insist on keeping their SCRUM teams small? Because if everyone is talking all the time, who is doing the work?

Implement the Right Rules

It can be tough trying to adapt from a face to face working environment to a remote working environment. As a leader, we can help our team members to establish routine by requesting specific working hours and establishing communication guidelines. How often should the team meet online? What kind of security measures must we establish?

I admit it is tough staying motivated with all the distractions around the house. Kids crying in the background, dishes waiting to be washed, laundry waiting to be kept, lunch waiting to be cooked. But a leader's gotta do what a leader's gotta do. Deliver the results.

The solution to your woes is simple. Goal setting. Lots of studies have been done in different settings, and the results are always the same: People who have goals might not always achieve them, but will always outperform those who don't set goals.

A famous research was conducted by Gary Latham and Gary Yukl in 1975 to get lumberjacks to increase their productivity in cutting trees. Data was collected across 8 weeks from 3 different groups of lumberjacks.

• The lumberjacks belonging in Control Group 1 had a conversion with their superiors, and proceeded to set specific, and achievable goals.
• The lumberjacks in Control Group 2 was requested to set a "high, but achievable" goal by themselves.
• The lumbersjacks in Control Group 3 was simply told to do their best.

The study concluded the following: lumberjacks from Control Group 1 cut the most amount of trees, with those from Control Group 2 coming a close second (which is why coaches always request for the coachee to offer the first number!), and not surprisingly, lumberjacks from Control Group 3 fared the worst.

Denzel Washington once said, "don't confuse movement with progress". So don't be busy making zoom calls all day with no objectives. Get each individual to set their personal goals that are aligned to the organisation's objectives.

Use the Right Technology

The Covid-19 has created a golden age for knowledge seekers. Providers are dishing out so much free content that we cannot finish lapping it up. The time saved on travelling to the workplace (yes I am talking to you, my friends from Phillippines and Indonesia) can be spent on learning and development. Make use of special discounts offered by training providers (yes, myself included. PM me to know more) to experience award winning train solutions and simulations that was designed for remote teams (No. Sorry. Taking a video of your face to face workshop and uploading it online DOES NOT COUNT ).

The remote working trend has also triggered a war among many collaboration and communication providers to offer good deals in an attempt to gain market share. Here's are 5 of my favourites:

• Atlassian - the makers of popular software Jira and Confluence has offered teams of up to 10 to access their cloud based versions for free.
• Cisco - In response to the threat from Zoom, Cisco has expanded the list of features available as part of its free Webex offer in all countries where it is available. These features include support for up to 100 participants.
• Google - similar to Cisco, Google is expanding its list of features for Google Hangouts, including access to larger meetings of up to 250 participants, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers in a single domain, and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.
• GForge - this one is for the project management folks in my network. The GForge platform offers project management functionalities, and is currently free for 12 months to new customers.
• Wrike - the makers behind the popular team work management tool is offering the Professional Edition (supports up to 15 team members) of its team work management tool for free for six months.

Weixi Tan helps clients to implement impactful change initiatives by addressing the human side of change through the use of psychometrics such as Workplace Big 5 and Strength Deployment Inventory. He also facilitates sessions using award winning online simulations that highlights important principles of change management. All interventions can be conducted in a virtual instructor led environment. He can be contacted at [email protected].