Can you manage a geographically-dispersed team as well as you can a centrally-located team? You have to! Global teams are an operational reality for many enterprises today, which involves management of systems, processes, and practices in multiple locations. To make them work – to ensure the organization appears as a single, cohesive unit with consistent levels of service, quality, and productivity – you need strong teams and sound leadership. You can’t fly hundreds of people from all over the world in to a central location; so, how do you get them to work together as a functional project team?

Recently, I worked on an implementation of a global SaaS HR platform. Team members were spread out over Canada, the US, the UK, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Bermuda, and the Philippines, and we had seven months to complete the project. When you have project teams and resources in different geographies, implementing a rigorous governance structure is critical so you can really hit the ground running – and maintain that momentum.

We advocate a Project Management Centre of Excellence (COE) approach to implement the governance structure so leaders and team members have access to best practices and are able to take ownership of the project. It clarifies accountabilities and ensures that deliverables are aligned to strategic objectives. Another major benefit: you link people together from different continents and help them feel like a “real” team.

The value of a sound governance structure with clearly defined processes and accountabilities cannot be overstated. Researchers from the Sloan School of Management at MIT found that “dispersed teams were able to significantly outperform their collocated counterparts when they had the appropriate processes in place.” They found that task-related processes – those that coordinated work, balanced member contributions, maintained accountability, and facilitated communications – were most critical.

The COE approach is built on clear, active communications. Information has to be widely dispersed in a timely and accurate way to all key stakeholders, clients, business units, and team members. It’s not selective; some projects, by contrast, have executives who talk to team leads but not members. Fine, but it’s not going far enough. As much as possible, you have to communicate with the leads and as many members as you can so they understand goals, objectives, and their part in the overall project.

It’s too easy with dispersed teams to have perceptions and expectations that are just as far apart as the team members themselves. To institute an effective, efficient governance COE model is critical as it establishes specific accountabilities across the project for everyone from the Steering Committee members to program leads to business analysts. Everyone must clearly understand:

• What are the roles and responsibilities?
• When are deliverables due?
• What is the escalation procedure?

The answers do not just apply to a geographic area such as India, or Hong Kong, or the UK. They apply to the entire team.

Here’s just one example: in our SaaS implementation, we made sure that everyone used the same templates and that they were operating from the same playbook in terms of their reporting. This allowed us all to “speak the same language,” even though we didn’t all speak the language. We had a common set of definitions. This way, we  concentrated on what they were telling us as opposed to the creation of multiple / different report formats.

So often, the discussion of how best to manage geographically-dispersed teams revolves around cultural differences and nuances. While these are crucial to understand and respect, it is equally critical to pay attention to similarities and creating a framework that allows us to achieve consistent results. A COE approach to your governance system gives us common ground on which to build.