CHECKLIST

Work today is not a place — it’s a set of tasks, timelines, and tools. Whether it’s a global band of developers or a remote branch office, technology gives you smarter ways to help virtual teams succeed.

The right IT, combined with careful planning and prioritization, helps boost productivity and visibility, giving you key answers about teams and their workloads:

• Where are my team members, and how can we communicate at any given time?

• What are teams working on, where are those files, and are deadlines being met?

• Are people happy?

1. ESTABLISH CORE AVAILABILITYNo matter where team members are located, productivity requires consistent, predictable availability. New tools make it easy to plan your daily and/or weekly agendas, one hour at a time.

• Establish shared hours of availability, adjusted for time zones.

• Communicate the schedule to the team via shared calendars or daily/weekly schedule updates.

• Use instant messaging and other tools to continuously share online presence.

You need to be able to count on your team when it matters most — time zones and distance are no longer an obstacle to successfully working together.

2. COMMUNICATE CAREFULLYCommunication is essential to productivity, and technology can keep the team connected 24/7. Smarter decisions about how these tools are used can ensure maximum results.

• Choose a shared communication and collaboration platform to eliminate information siloes.

• Give users devices designed for the latest in media-driven collaboration tools.

• Use video-driven conferencing to build stronger, deeper connectivity.

WORK IS A STATE OF MIND:

A Checklist for Building a Productive Virtual Team

Sponsored by Lenovo and Intel®

CHECKLIST

Choose tools that empower your teams to efficiently and easily collect and combine wisdom when and where it matters. Keep it easily searched, accessed, and shared with a single click.

3. MAXIMIZE YOUR MEETINGSCollaborating remotely is not better or worse — it’s simply different. The use and overuse of meetings is a problem for any workplace, but can be especially challenging when managing distributed teams and users.

• Plan meetings for shared core hours. (See No. 1.)

• Make sure meetings are purposeful, with a clear agenda, goal, start, and stop time.

• Assign one team member the role to take notes and delegate action items.

Technology creates multiple ways to work together across the day, so your need for meetings will vary. Your users are already expert distance collaborators — make sure to leverage the tools they already use.

4. MANAGE WORKFLOWS PRECISELYHanding tasks off can be more complicated when done remotely. Luckily, technology gives you the ability to maintain good visibility into what’s being done today and what’s coming tomorrow, keeping clients and team members happy.

• Use web-driven workflow tools to assign and track tasks across users and teams.

• Leverage time differences — handing off a task to a team that is starting their day keeps your project moving.

• Choose tools with robust notifications and alert features, then let teams customize their use.

Getting virtual teams right gives you the confidence that everything is running smoothly — even if you’re not there to see it. A culture of accountability and an enterprise-grade productivity infrastructure are a strong start.

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY CHOICES

AND ATTITUDES ABOUT WORK ARE

CREATING NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO

CREATE BUSINESSES THAT START

SMART AND SUCCEED QUICKLY.

VIRTUAL TEAMS CAN HELP IMPROVE

YOUR EFFICIENCY AND IMPACT, GIVING

YOU A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

THAT GROWS OVER TIME.

ULTIMATELY, BUILDING VIRTUAL

TEAMS ISN’T ABOUT WORKFLOW

TOOLS, EMAIL BEST PRACTICES,

OR CLOUD SERVICES. IT’S ABOUT

THE ABILITY TO CAREFULLY BUILD

YOUR TEAM, ONE RIGHT PERSON

AT A TIME, AND GIVING THEM THE

TOOLS THEY NEED TO SUCCEED.

Sponsored by Lenovo and Intel®

CHECKLIST

5. BUILD FOR CONTINUITYThe need to recover from disasters and outages isn’t just for traditional workplaces. With employees managing their tools around the world, the ability to quickly restore productivity to virtual teams is critical.

• Select dependable, durable devices.

• Choose a shared backup tool and insist on its use.

• Have emergency “Plan B” solutions in place, especially for client-facing tools.

In a world driven increasingly by the cloud, users expect the simple, seamless continuity of information and experience. Give them the same confidence that when things go wrong, any downtime will be short and relatively painless.

As the world’s No. 1 provider of technology to businesses of all sizes, Lenovo® is committed to bringing our very best to everything you do. Driven by thoughtful design, purposeful engineering, and nonstop performance, our ThinkPad® and ThinkCentre® X1 products, powered by Intel®, deliver breakthrough innovation that really matters.

For more information, visit www.lenovo.com/think.

© 2015 Lenovo. All rights reserved. Lenovo is a trademark of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both. Intel, the Intel logo, and Intel Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Version 1.00, November 2015.

Sponsored by Lenovo and Intel®