{"id":20966,"date":"2009-01-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/insights\/how-big-should-virtual-teams-be\/"},"modified":"2021-02-04T12:32:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T12:32:01","slug":"how-big-should-virtual-teams-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/how-big-should-virtual-teams-be\/","title":{"rendered":"How big should virtual teams be?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Participants on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/training-for-virtual-teams\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">remote and virtual teams training<\/a> often ask how big should virtual teams be for maximum effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>At one level the answer to team size is &#8220;as big as it needs to be to deliver its purpose&#8221;. If you have a complex global team on a major project then you may need 20 or (many) more people. But we also know that the right team size size for a team in terms of effective human dynamics, decision making and maintenance of relationships is much smaller than that.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Studies in business schools have found that an effective face to face syndicate team size is no more than 4-6 people.<\/li>\n<li>A recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/tto\/science\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Times<\/a> article found that a group of 8 was the worst number of people for making decisions and that voting rather than consensus was essential for groups of 20 or more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Both of these studies focused on the right team size for face to face groups.<\/p>\n<p>In our book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/resources\/recommended-books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Speed Lead<\/a> we identify two factors that drive down effective team size in complex organizations<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Interdependence &#8211; if we really need to communicate and coordinate intensively (true or what we call <strong>&#8220;spaghetti&#8221; team<\/strong> work) then we can only maintain a limited number of connections. (a team size of 6 people creates 15 interconnections, 20 people create 190\u00a0 interconnections). <strong>Star group<\/strong> (hub and spoke) structures can be organized to work well with larger numbers of people<\/li>\n<li>working through technology &#8211; conference calls and other technologies limit effective contribution and discussion. If you ever attended a conference calls of 20 people you will know it soon descends into a series of monologues.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Because of this we recommend an effective team size of 4-6 for real spaghetti teamwork. If you need 20 people for a global team or project try to cluster them into several smaller sub-teams based on common objectives, geography, interdependence etc&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The average team size from our speed survey is 12 and people tell us they are part of 5 teams. This means that people are managing an average of 330 interdependent relationships. This would allow abut 7 minutes per week per relationship!<\/p>\n<p>This reinforces our view that most &#8220;teams&#8221; are not really engaged in interdependent spaghetti team work but are actually groups of individuals engaged in largely independent tasks with a small amount of teamwork.<\/p>\n<p>Read our book &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1838356312\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=httpwwwglob07-21&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=1838356312&amp;linkId=14a8be9cdd4a098c6cd2a22db677311a\">Leading remote and virtual teams<\/a>: Managing yourself and others in remote and hybrid teams or when working from home<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-28331\" src=\"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/GI_Leading-Remote-and-Virtual-Teams-3D-jacket-278x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"278\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How big should virtual teams be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","type-blog","training-virtual-teams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.6 (Yoast SEO v27.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How big should virtual teams be? 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