Thriving in a Virtual Team - follow up story

Leading, contributing, and following for product managers

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for premium subscribers to Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about contributing to virtual teams:

Thriving in a Virtual Team

What Prompted this Article?

For over a year I’ve watched teams across my organization flatten out. Levels of the organization get removed by combining teams, early retirements and managers moving to individual contributors. I hear comments like “There needed to be 14 people reporting that manager”.

The resulting organization has senior contributors reporting to a senior manager. Afterwards the the org chart doesn’t match the workload. The shadow organization has these characteristics:

• team leaders to handle daily issues with 4-6 peers

• strategy leaders with oversight across multiple teams

• virtual teams popping up to handle initiatives

As a product manager, I need to be a good follower of my manager and to affected strategy leaders. I get tapped to lead virtual teams and I need to contribute to other virtual teams.

I wrote this article to determine how to succeed in this new organization. I’m feeling sandwiched between powerful forces!

What Happened After this Article?

I had suggestions in this article for each role on the virtual team:

1. Team leader - have a plan and be prepared to adjust while keeping stakeholders updated

2. Contributor - pay attention to dependencies and communicate with dependent teams frequently

3. Follower - Be sought out and provide constructive feedback

I got to exercise all three roles in parallel: