Building and operating effective virtual teams is as much an art as it is a science. Many organisations rely more on luck than good planning when embarking on a virtual team project, then are as shocked by the results as everyone else.

After decades helping virtual teams, here are four of the top ways your virtual teams may be failing (and some ways to fix things!)

The Top 4 Ways Your Virtual Team May Be Failing…

1 – Insufficient Planning – Planning for your virtual team work is as critical as any other planning in a business. Sadly though, we regularly find companies who have planned everything else in their project, then just jumped in to their virtual team and hoped for the best.

Without planning your virtual team, you risk failure on so many levels; sending the work to the wrong location, having the wrong systems and processes to support your project, having an immature leadership and management model that is not able to support the undertaking or having a business that does not have the required infrastructure to facilitate communications and sharing of materials needed by virtual teams.

Any one of these factors can be a project killer on its own yet many organisations have multiples, leading to massive risks, huge distractions for business and project leaders and a potentially poor project outcome.

Remember the old adage, “Failing to plan is planning to fail” this applies as much to communications and team structures as any other part of a project.

2 – Wrong Leadership – This is not something many managers want to hear, but often your virtual team may be failing because of the wrong leadership. It may be that your project manager is unsuited or unprepared to lead a virtual team, it may be that your business leadership does not understand the demands of supporting a successful virtual team structure, but again, it is a common reason many virtual teams are failing.

Virtual teams are a relatively new organisational structure, having only been on the business landscape for around 20 years and only really heavily adopted in the past 10 years. Consequently there is still not a collective body of knowledge around what a leader of such a structure need to know and do to be effective.

Helping your business leaders understand the different requirements of running a business using virtual teams will make your organisation stronger and reduce the risk of your virtual teams failing. Similarly, looking for the required skills in your project managers and their key staff required to build and run strong and effective virtual teams will ensure their projects avoid failing.

Many of the general skills to run a business or lead a project are completely transferable to virtual teams, but as we discussed in a number of earlier articles, there are many additional attributes that are also necessary to stop your virtual team failing.

3 – Wrong Personnel – Having the right personnel on any project is critical to its success, this applies to virtual teams as much as it does to co-located ones. However, similar to the issues associated with leadership, having the wrong personnel on your virtual team can lead to it failing to deliver.

In a typical co-located team communication skills are necessary but often not essential, personnel will see one another around the office and keep in touch on the project almost through osmosis. In a virtual environment however, the need to be an effective communicator is critical, personnel at all levels need to feel confident to reach out to colleagues, to ask questions and to give concise and reliable answers.

Similarly, the ability to build and maintain trust is critical to maintaining an open and productive environment.

If your personnel don’t aren’t good communicators or are unable to build and main...