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Virtual Teaming Pioneer
Arvind Malhotra |
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Virtual Teaming Pioneer
The eight team members worked for three different companies in four cities. Using teleconferences and teaming software, they designed a new rocket engine for Boeing-Rocketdyne over 10 months.
They weren't together in one room until they celebrated the completion of the project.
Yet the team's results are astonishing: Their prototype contains just six parts, versus the usual 450. Its predicted reliability is orders of magnitude greater than the industry standard. It cost $47,000 to develop, not the typical $4.5 million, and can be manufactured for $1.5 million instead of $20 million.
Working in a far-flung virtual team presents challenges. But the Boeing-Rocketdyne group, studied by UNC Kenan-Flagler professor Arvind Malhotra and his colleague Ann Majchrzak at University of Southern California, illustrates the enormous potential of distant/far-flung teams. Such teams can bring together world experts with a diversity of experiences and perspectives, enhancing each member's creativity, the researchers found. And such teams can be time efficient - the rocket project required just 15 percent of each person's time.
"This was rocket science," Malhotra said. "If rocket science could be done in a far-flung mode, the possibilities for other industries are endless."
Malhotra and Majchrzak surveyed more than 50 other highly successful, far-flung teams to discover what makes them work. Their paper about their findings won the 2004 Outstanding Paper of the Year honors from the Journal of Knowledge Management, which had published the results.
Malhotra highlights these principles for success:
- Pick the right people. The leader of a far-flung team should be an active listener and a passive controller. Members should bring particular creative expertise; be self-teachers; good at non-verbal communication; and able to adapt technology to team needs.
- Pick the right technology. Teaming software contains many features, but the most useful are audio conferencing, a group document repository that lets members mark comments, a virtual white board and instant messaging. Less useful features are videoconferencing, complicated indexing functions and e-mail notification of document repository entries.
- Establish norms. Norms create trust, reduce conflict and encourage knowledge creation. Use the online document repository instead of one-to-one e-mail so everyone knows everything. Establish what can be shared outside the team and when. Create subteams so a few members can work together on an aspect of the project.
"The outcomes can be absolutely great," Malhotra said. "But it requires a certain discipline where you let cognitive diversity flourish, but you reduce the diversity of behavior. There are standardized processes, yet people are given free rein to express their intellectual differences."
Leading far-flung teams is becoming a vital skill for executives at global companies, Malhotra says.
"Companies in the United States have to go abroad to where the markets are expanding, India, China, Southeast Asia," he said. "Product life cycles are so much shorter. This is how to bring the global expertise to the table."
The Executive Behind the LendingTree Ads
Competing bankers wearing sharp suits and earnest expressions crowd the home of a married couple who need a mortgage. The couple are casually dressed, smiling and obviously in control. The TV ad ends with the slogan, "When banks compete, you win - at LendingTree.com."
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| Bob Harris |
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Bob Harris (MBA '86) is the executive behind these familiar ads. They are part of his strategy to make customers think of his company ("1-800-555-TREE") whenever they need to buy, sell or finance a home. He joined LendingTree in 2000 as vice president of marketing and was named chief marketing officer in 2004.
Harris, a veteran of the Coca-Cola Co. and McCormick & Co., the spice and seasoning maker, has helped LendingTree thrive during years when many dot-coms perished. The key to that feat is the theme of the company's ad, Harris said: "You have to think about how the consumer can benefit."
LendingTree is one virtual company that provides real efficiencies for both consumers and the professionals who want their business, Harris explained. The same is true of sister companies Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Ticketmaster and Citysearch.com, all part of parent InterActive Corp.
Consumers complete one simple online application with Lending Tree and get loan offers from up to four lenders. Not only is the service a real time-saver, it's also free.
Lenders pay LendingTree a small fee for the opportunity to provide a quote, and then pay more when it leads to a loan. It's an efficient way for banks to find the kinds of customers they like to serve, he says.
Harris earned an undergraduate commerce degree from the University of Virginia, but he said his UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA jump-started his career.
"I had a great experience in Chapel Hill on the academic as well as the leadership side being around future leaders and always being challenged by fellow students and my professors," he said. "It really helped me gain not just the technical skills I needed, but also the confidence that I could do what I wanted to do over the long term."
UNC Kenan-Flagler also taught him that great executives always keep learning. That's an attitude that is serving him well as he helps LendingTree integrate RealEstate.com, a service that matches home buyers and sellers with the right realtor.
"We want to leverage the success LendingTree has had in the lending category," he said. "That's the challenge I'm up against today. It's energizing."
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