Insights for Working Virtually

We call on our organization’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) everyday to support our sales meetings, customer briefings, and organizational “lunch and learns.” It just makes sense. They can introduce the finer points of a new product, help a customer more effectively adopt a solution or inform the organization about new processes.

If you are reading this, you intimately know the daily challenges you face leading a virtual team. In my experience, it is difficult enough managing a team that you lock eyes on every day. With virtual team management, you not only need foundational management skills, but you have to artfully customize those skills to bridge the distance between you and the team and team members with each other.

Here’s a sad fact that I see confirmed in my work with global leadership teams. Not everyone is contributing their best ideas and feedback in meetings – even the people with the most knowledge or innovative ideas. In a recent survey cited in Harvard Business Review, even though participants may feel they have an important contribution to make, only 35% felt they could do so routinely. It’s even worse for virtual teams.

Do you spend a good amount of time each day reading emails on one of your numerous devices with a screen? Studies have shown that we spend just over one month a year reading email. Sometimes these emails tend to be a chain of conversations that you simply were CC'ed on and don't care about. Other times you are not sure of the action you need to take as a result of reading the email. When this happens, you send back yet another email with a clarifying question. I'm not even going to get into all the "reply to all" emails that clog up our in boxes.

By unleashing the Power of 168 (as noted in Vernon’s book The Gift of Success and Happiness with Chip Sawicki), you can build relationships, careers, families and empires. You can build your dream, whatever it is and you can master working virtually. So what is 168? 168 is your resource, your allowance, your grant, your budget, your clay. It’s the hours that everyone on the planet is given each week. One hundred and sixty-eight glorious hours packed into seven days. How are you spending it? Many take their 168 for granted. Do you invest it or do you blow it? Most track their money more diligently than their 168. If you had 168 pieces of gold, would you throw any away? My guess is no.