Recently I made a post where I talked about how “e-mail” can kill your company and you; at the end of it, I mention “…but Gtalk is vital for virtual companies…”

Right after I made that statement and hit “Publish” I got to thinking about the truthfulness of what I just said. For some reason it felt “stupid” - if checking my email frequently is a problem, then how can CONSTANTLY chatting on Gtalk be any better?

The next day I evaluated my day and realized something that down right PISSED me off. I was WASTING hours just “chit-chatting” away on Gtalk and not getting anything done - all useless ramble. I was shocked, appalled and wanted to slap myself.

I am going on record today CORRECTING my prior evaluation of Gtalk and all other instant messaging programs.

Yes, they ARE vital for virtual companies - but not if you also have your friends on that account and if you “chit chat” with those who you work with.

Here’s How I’m Changing Things Moving Forward…

Everyone that I typically talk to now knows that to reach me, they need to either e-mail me with URGENT in the subject line or CALL me and ask me to get on Gtalk.

Will I still use instant messaging to communicate with my team? Yes, of course. But, I’m not going to be 100% reachable all the time - they can easily ask me to get on and I will, but then log right off afterwards.

I’ll also get on instant messaging when I am taking a break.

I am officially on record, sorry for giving you the bad advice on the prior post.

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So the more management we get into, the more I’ve been thinking about this concept. Especially having a largly virtual team, it becomes a big issue for us to think about.

Many don’t understand the concepts - micromanaging and macromanaging, I’m also now creating my own term - rightmanaging.

Micromanaging: 

The best way to describe it is the way Wikipedia does, “management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of their employees, generally used as a derogatory term.”

This is for people who just can’t let go - many entrepreneurs/CEOs “may” start off this way, but if they plan on surviving, they won’t make it long with micromanaging.

Not only are you not productive because you’re too busy watching over EVERYTHING - this is a big morale killer for the team. It basically shouts that you don’t trust your team and also those who work for you get sick of it eventually.

Micromanaging is like sucking the life out of you, your team and your business.

Macromanaging:

Macromanaging is the FLIP evil of micromanaging, “For the most part they leave their employees with a lack of decision making, especially when the details of the job change and they need immediate assistance - Source: CrystalLinks.com. Your team will always need your guidance and structure.

Macromanagers are almost “lazy” - they completely leave their team alone and this is never a good thing - unless you have ONE HELL of a team.

Even me, with the great team I have, I do keep a close tie to what’s going on - but I don’t practice micromanagement OR macromanagement (but if I were asked which one I’m closed to, it’d be macromanagement).

Introducing…RightManaging 

Not sure if anyone else has ever introduced this term, but I came up with it in my head.

Rightmanaging is really just a good balance of micromanagement and macromanagement - it’s right in the middle. A good manager never wants to over-crowd their team, but you do want to be there to make sure things are going well.

For example/ If your team is working on a project, you don’t need to see how they are doing every single element. However, you do need to check in to see deadlines are being met. And, on those deadlines, ask for demos of what is being produced.

This will not only help you stay in touch, but it will make your entire team feel great that they are involved. I mean as a good manager, what’s really your MAIN goal…

Nope, not that employees are on time. Not even that they are all constantly working. Honestly, not even that they do it only your way.

Your main goal as a manager is to make sure the project gets done on or before deadline and is done with supreme quality!

So, knowing that - practice rightmanagement. Don’t get in everyone’s way, but make sure you’re at least there to bump into them every now and then.

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I’ll probably take a break from virtual team discussion for a few days after this post, but here is another tip that is very necessary if you are running a virtual team. And, in full confession, we are still not very good about it (but fortunately we have such a great team, it has not been too necessary, everyone works on the “it was due yesterday” system

Running Tight Deadlines

By default with a virtual team - the team members are going to work their own hours - there really is nothing you can do to control that. If you try to place too many measures to assure “time based” work from your team, that’s a horrible culture to put in place.

So the solution is to move over to “project based” - think about it, do you REALLY care what times the project was worked on so long as it was done on time?

Our position on this is that we set-up launch dates and sub-dates within the launch for milestones. As long as those are met, we’re in very good shape.

It’s critical to really watch these deadlines tightly. It’s even more critical to make sure you have multiple milestones in the process of creating a bigger project. Small deadlines are much easier to manage than one large “launch this project on date X” deadline.

Make sure to appoint a “Project Manager” - one person who is responsible for managing the deadlines.

Project and milestone based deadlines: This is the simplest way to manage virtual teams, to make sure everything is getting done in a timely fashion while also allowing the freedoms that everyone gets from working off-location.

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Given that I am just returning today from an international trip where I met with two seperate teams that are absolutely critical to our business and obviously working virtually - I figured it would fit to discuss how we manage a virtual team.

From day 1 our team has been virtual so I’ve gotten quite used to it, however, the more I meet other companies, I have learned that managing a virtual team is quite a task for many and also unsuccesful.

There are many things that we do, some purposely and some just happen by chance that really make a virtual team possible.

Today, let me share some of the TOOLS we use to make it possible…

1. Conference Call Lines

In the U.S. we use www.freeconferencecall.com to run at least 1 team call a week where we have a very specific outline we use:

A) General reporting from the CEO and any other team lead with major news. Here we discuss the status of all on-going projects and any other major developments.

B) We go through all members of call 1 by 1 and ask the following 2 questions:

i) What are the 3 main objectives for this week.
ii) Anything you need from any team members?

** The great thing here is that it makes everyone’s commitments public and also gives everyone a chance to chat live.

If someone commits to doing something, they are now obliged to the entire team. The sense of responsibility drastically increases.

C) We go through any questions anyone has regarding anything going on.

** Our calls range from between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

2. GTalk

Most of us all have Gmail accounts and are constantly logged onto Gtalk so we can easily ping each other instantly if needed.

GTalk allows you to do instant messaging chat and also allows you to use their system for live chat through your computer (which is crystal clear even internationally).

3. Skype

You can host multi-user conference calls through Skype for free which are also free to use.

4. Project Management System

We currently use BaseCamp. This is a system that allows you to create many projects, deadlines, to-do lists, chat boards, etc…all around specific projects. You can also control who has access to what.

http://www.basecamphq.com/

My confession here is that I’m still not very good at using BaseCamp (the rest of the team is), I still prefer receiving e-mail threads, but am trying to get out of that now.

These are the 4 major tools we use to run a virtual team, they are simple and mostly free!

Tip of the Day: Even if you don’t have a virtual team, a weekly team call is critical - it has tremendously helped us stay organized and also build relationships and repore between the team members.

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