Four Fresh Insights for the Next Generation of Business Teams

Modern enterprises are under constant pressure to innovate. Whether it's through introducing new technologies, adopting new management practices, or expanding into new use cases or industries, today's businesses recognize that the only unacceptable option is to remain stagnant. But while these adjustments and innovations typically take place gradually, the past year pressed businesses throughout the world to innovate suddenly, with no time for evaluation and little margin for error.

COVID-19 turned operations upside down for enterprise teams, pushing most companies into work-from-home programs with fully distributed teams. We don't yet know what the next 12 months will look like, but it's safe to say it won't look like our in-person pre-COVID environment, nor will it look like the fully remote workforce of the height of the pandemic.

To get a better sense of how different engagements are working and how projects are adapting to the pandemic work environment, and to understand which tactics have proved successful, LatentView Analytics conducts quarterly Voice of Customer (VoC) surveys . Gathering responses from more than 80% of LatentView clients, the most recent results paint a picture of teams that have adapted to remote work with impressive agility and surprising results.

Here are four key takeaways that can inform the next steps for business teams as they plan for hybrid workforces and a long-term return to the office:

1. Distributed teams drive superior performance and work better for clients.

The global experiment in remote work put a long-held management belief to the test: that the best performance and creativity can only emerge from co-located teams. Our survey results indicate otherwise. According to the results, 10% more clients consider distributed teams to be their thought partners, as opposed to co-located teams. The results were even more striking when considering cross-pollination, a key habit for sharing knowledge and fostering innovation. Nearly twice the number of clients engaging with co-located teams found that distributed teams were cross-pollinating ideas from other client engagements.

2. Comprehensive project management pays greater dividends than incremental augmented efforts.

What is the ideal scope for client engagement? Are customers better off being served by a team that can manage a project in its entirety, or will they achieve better outcomes with a smaller team offering more targeted support? The VoC survey is clear: client satisfaction on overall project management is 13% higher when working with complete (5-10 member) teams, as opposed to smaller engagements. This can likely be attributed to the broader skill set available when working with larger teams, as client satisfaction was 12% higher with the skill set of 5-10 member teams. While some clients may be interested in a small, focused engagement, they are significantly more likely to be satisfied with the results of a larger deployment.

3. More hours don’t guarantee better outputs. Conversely, it stifles innovation, insights and creativity.

Along the same lines as the previous point, we see that it’s clearly preferable to invest in a larger, optimally utilized team than to demand additional output from an overworked team. According to the VoC survey respondents, clients working with optimally utilized teams (defined as 85-100% utilization) were 15% more satisfied with the team’s understanding of the context of a given problem. Additionally, 20% more clients received actionable insights from optimally utilized teams, demonstrating clear value in matching scope of work to the size of the team.

4. A well-balanced team with energy and enthusiasm trumps total years of experience.

Perhaps the most surprising result from the VoC surveys related to experience. Many clients seek out highly experienced teams that will be able to bring specialized expertise to every level of the engagement. However, results indicate that teams with lower average experience significantly outperformed teams that indexed heavily on experience. Teams with balanced experience outperformed very experienced teams by 30% in terms of both error-free delivery and actionable insights. Even more surprisingly, client satisfaction with the skill set of a balanced team was 15% higher than with very experienced teams.

What do these insights mean for evolving enterprise teams? For one thing: conventional wisdom should be treated with a grain of salt. Given the exceptional performance of distributed teams, as well as the superior output from teams with balanced levels of experience, it may be time to evaluate how important these factors are for business success. Regardless of whether your team is in the office, hybrid, or fully remote, optimal utilization should be a top priority; when your employees are overworked, no one wins.

The most important consideration when building post-COVID teams will inevitably be the customer’s input. Today’s data-driven enterprises must benchmark and evaluate their performance as a means of driving improvement and avoiding stagnation. With uncertainty sure to continue in the next few months, the voice of the customer will be more important than ever.

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