Stage 7 - Renewal
Why Continue?
The final stage of this organizational performance model involves a renewal that brings vitality and meaning to the team. Teams are dynamic and go through a cyclical cycle of learning and change as the internal or external environment shifts. Creating celebrations, encouraging learning, and accepting change can tap into the motivations of the members of a virtual team as it prepares for a new cycle of action.
Recognition
Rewarding, recognizing, and celebrating achievements is important to create a sustainable energy especially with virtual teams that can otherwise feel isolated from each other. Recognition provides a sense that contributions are appreciated, but it also provides a sense of belonging to something that is bigger that the individual (Greenberg, Greenberg, & Antonucci, 2007). Celebrating in a virtual world takes creativity and planning, but some possible ways to celebrate within virtual teams include…
- Organizing a virtual party.
- Using email, web postings, or newsletters to highlight important contributions.
- Writing a personal note or making a thank you phone call.
- Sending gift certificates for coffee, pizza, or dinner.
Learning
Innovation and learning is a strategy, a process, a commitment, and a culture within a team. As teams meet and celebrate the set measures of success, it should lead to additional discoveries that lay the groundwork for renewal (Hunsaker & Hunsaker, 2008). Sometimes lessons are learned by mistakes and failures so they are not repeated, but every experience is an opportunity to offer suggestions. Some areas to consider in the learning process include…
- Task inputs such as design, technology, and training.
- Relational processes such as trust, cohesion, or relationship building.
- Task processes such as communication, coordination, or structural fit.
- Outputs such as performance or satisfaction.
Making learning happen requires knowledge transfer among team members which can be unique to the environment. Team members within the virtual environment must contend with two types of knowledge transfer (Argote & Ingram, 2000):
- Organization knowledge transfer relates to how the team is organized and operating.
- Task Knowledge transfer relates to the problem that the team is working to solve.
CLICK HERE for a link to a chart that defines five knowledge transfer mechanisms for teams.
Creating successful virtual teams involves getting the right pieces into the right place and fitting them together with the right connections. Because the global environment is constantly changing, team interdependencies are in constant flux which can change the level of work at the team and individual level. In order to create sustainability, teams must have the capacity to adapt and change (Forrester & Drexler, 1999).
This last bullet takes us back to the orientation and trust-building stages…
- Change may result in renewed purpose, reformed potential, and new identities among team members.
- The purpose and trust that was built in the beginning of the performance process is the foundation that allows openness among team members to accept change (Drexler & Forrester, 1998a).
If Stage 7, Renewal, is unresolved...
Teams that do not celebrate what has been and do not look forward to the future are doing a disservice to the team and the individuals by…- Allowing for complacency that give employees little reason to take risks or change.
- Creating conditions for employee boredom and apathy that negatively affects team spirit.
- Negating the value of team members by accepting burnout as a casualty of employment.
