Week 15: Virtual Teams

For last class we talked about something which is getting stronger with globalization, which is virtual teams, although it can be develop within teams from a same country it is common for it to be developed in multicultural teams that are formed by people of different locations.

It’s been said that people need to personally interact with each other in order to develop strong bonds, but internet has proved them wrong, nowadays you find people that even fall in love through internet and only meet when they’re getting marry, so if it works for love in must certainly work for business.

So there where two main knowledge I gained this week, the first one is to understand why a virtual team exists, and it turns out there are many reasons for it, the most common one is that people who live in different locations can work together, but there are also some virtual teams that exist because of the lack of time people have to meet, may be because they’re traveling all the time or because they have a busy schedule, and finally some virtual teams are created in order to have an extended domain of a market or a knowledge.

The second thing I learned is that there are four factors for virtual teams to be successful, the first one is having a common goal clear for everyone in the team, if you don’t know where you’re going you may as well get lost, the second one is to create trust, although it is harder to create trust virtually a strategy in order to get to know the people behind the screen must be develop, the third is to have a coordinated work and communication process, lack of communication is the main source of misunderstanding in teams, so there must be a  define set of communication rules in order to share information successfully, and the fourth one is to preparing cultural and technical training, this is so teams can work in the same page and can understand where the others are coming from.

Knowing about virtual teams is very relevant today because it is one of the working styles of the future. As globalization increases and companies expand, executives travel much more adn have less time, therefore, forming virtual teams are a good choice in order to overcome distance and time barriers. Also, I think it is an excellent way of taking adavantage of technological development and promoting intercultural exchange.

Research Question: What are the best ways to motivate millennials?

Millennials are the generation between 18 and 35, there a big part of the actual workforce of the world and by 2020 will almost have of the workforce of the world, they represent a challenge for today’s companies since they have different motivations sources than passed generations. Many times companies encounter with the problem of having great employees that resign fast looking for motivation elsewhere. Last week I attend a conference on teamwork at the university, and the lecturer proposed the following recommendations in order to get millennials motivated:

• Explain what the company is, where they’re projecting themselves and what they want to achieve.
• Give opportunity to be part of community service, they believe in being part of a better world so they want to work hard to get it.
• Develop in between positions, for them is really important to move forward and faster, so it is important to have positions they can escalate to.
• Keep up the feedback, they like to know how their work is perceived and how they can improve it.
• Offer more flexibility, they like to own their time and be autonomous, so it is really important to offer different kind of conditions to do their job. 
• Provide educational and professional development, since they want to keep getting better.
• Give them time for personal projects, they need independence and have a desire to fulfill their personal expectations as well as their professional goals.