Leading Virtual Teams Online: How a Start-up Finds its Actual Asset
…now that we have identified our work process itself as most remarkable, we will, of course, make our know-how on how to build international teams that can work together digitally and highly effectively available to you.
The QLab idea
One company, one question, letting five students from all over the world work on it for five weeks; that was the idea for our think tank.
Not knowing if this would work, we started activating our network and pushed to find students interested in environmental and sustainability issues. Not only did these students have to have time, but they also had to be exceptionally good in their subjects. Due to the pandemic, they also had to be able to work on their laptops all day long.
Moreover, we established even more complex conditions. We decided that the students must have diverse backgrounds and come from worldwide. Our goal was to prevent our solutions from only being seen from Eurocentric perspectives. Ideally, we wanted to have as many nationalities, continents, and fields of expertise represented in our teams as possible.
Then there were also our customers, the companies. They had to be willing to work with us on their challenge digitally, and they had to be keen to get involved in the process. Further, they had to be genuinely interested in openly discussing the students’ ideas to reveal conclusions valuable to them.
It’s not an easy task to put such a project team to work, is it?
Getting an international team to work according to Design Thinking principles appeared of little value to us. What others may have seen as remarkable had seemed self-evident. Initially, we were more of the opinion that the result must stand out.
They sure did, but only with time passing did we realize that the real power of our work was bringing these teams together and enabling them to consult experts around the world to find an original solution for our customers. Today we know: The solution itself is of great value, but our actual asset is the knowledge of how to lead such a team to success.
Anyone who knows us, Andrea Kuhfuss and Boris Gloger, knows agile methods must be involved. But what we understood even more clearly during our first year in the QLab is that trust, leadership, and sharing are the real keys to success.
Daily meetings, reviews, and retros are beneficial in this process. However, only Andrea’s unique way of challenging the teams, keeping them focused, and the business insights that I (Boris) occasionally added enabled the students to become truly outstanding teams.
The feedback from our participants is exceptional. Sentences like: “We learned as much in the few weeks here as during our entire bachelor’s program.” — and Patrick even decided to work for us instead of starting his master’s degree.
You rarely appreciate what comes easy to you.
It took us some time to realize that. But now that we have identified our work process itself as most remarkable, we will, of course, make our know-how on how to build international teams that can work together digitally and highly effectively available to you.
If you want to know more about this work process, follow our articles or attend one of our events. We will write more about this topic over the next few weeks and organize events to share our insights with you.
Boris Gloger, Co-Founder and CEO of QLab Think Tank GmbH
