#1 Way to Improve Your Virtual Teams Effectiveness
If you are in the process of building a virtual team and are looking to improve the performance of your key team members I have a great tip for you today.
But first let me make sure one thing is clear – This strategy can take a great team member and make them even better but, it can-not fix poorly performing team members.
For poorly performing team members there is only one solution I have found – ending their contract (except in rare occasions when there is a valid reason).
If you are interested in more of my posts on building out my virtual team here are 2 key posts…
This post can be thought of as the next step… “how to improve the performance of your VA’s”
How Do You Improve The Performance of Your Best Virtual Team Members Easily and Quickly?
The answer I have found is to make them responsible for a single piece of the business and give them managerial power over their own small team.
What does this mean? It simply means to make them managers with 1-2 part time VA’s that they are responsible for hiring, training and managing.
The transformation I have witnessed over and over again when great employees take on additional responsibility is amazing!
Why Does this Work?
The improved performance I have witnessed multiple times is very convincing. My theory on why this improves performance is because it significantly increases team members engagement and ownership of the task. They become much more responsible for the output and the prestige of being a manager often results in huge performance increases. My findings line up with a study from Andrha Univeristy in India (Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance).
7 Steps to Execute this Strategy Today – Even if You Don’t Have a VA Yet
Total time invested is 8-12hrs of working time and should take 1-2weeks.
- Hire 3 VA’s Yourself at ODesk using this tutorial
- Fire the 2 Worst Performing VA’s
- Make the best VA responsible for a given task/part of your business until they become an expert at it
- Once they have personally mastered it and proven themselves reliable expand the number of tasks they must complete. Then create a new team they will manage in ODesk and give them “hiring power” in their own ODesk team
- They Repeat the Hire 3 and Fire 2 VA process until they have their own team of high performing VA’s
- Leverage the manager to grow the team as needed to complete as much of the task as you require.
- Your job is to track the process they are executing and make sure it is up to the standard you require
Sign Up at ODesk Here
Affiliate Sign Up Bonus: If you sign up using my affiliate link I will provide the username of some proven article writers.
- Sign up at ODesk using THIS LINK
- Forward me the confirmation email that you have signed up to jon11 (at) gmail (dot) com
- I will reply with a link to a few content writers who have produced quality articles for me for $2-$4/500 word article
Rinse and repeat these 7 steps for different areas of your business such as…
- Website Development
- Keyword Research
- Content Ordering and Publishing
- YouTube Video Creation and Promotion
- Guest Post Outreach
- etc
Ultimately the goal here is to slice up your business and make a single high performing team member responsible for its successful execution.
Often when I read posts talking about outsourcing it sounds like a magic elixir that nothing can go wrong with. I hope this post does not come off this way, this strategy can build an incredible team but it takes time, effort and money on your part to make it happen. But, it is 100% worth it. Without my team I would not be able to complete a portion of what I do.
Do you have any “secret” tips for improving your team members performance?
Hey Jon,
Thanks for the tips. How big is your team right now? I only hired VAs on a Job to Job base until now.
Really good tip Jon.
How do you deal with trust when it comes to letting a VA into one of your websites or your hosting account, etc.? As unlikely as it might be for something to happen, I have this X Files “trust no one” mentality, ha. Is it just that through work and interaction you have to decide on the person?
Also, at what point in your business did you start hiring full time people rather than fixed price contractors?
Thanks
Thanks Jon, for another wonderful post..
How much, on average, do you spend on VAs? Are they all on hourly contracts?
Wow, that is a great idea John. Thanks for the tip. I have been using several VA’s, and have struggled at times. This is fantastic. Thanks, Rick
Great Management Tip!
I definitely remember when I was starting my corporate career feeling really good about myself when I “owned” something. I worked harder. I felt like it was my responsibility and failure would reflect poorly on me… which would have been accurate.
I don’t have any tips on improving performance. I currently don’t have enough work to hire someone full time..at least I don’t think so. I operate on a project basis with VAs right now. I do agree 100% that it’s pretty rare when you can improve a poor performer. It’s best to end the contract quickly and professionally.
Great “secret” tips.
You are delivering really good value between “How to hire a VA” and “How to manage a VA”, and now with this post. I tried the first 2 posts and it worked good for me. But I need to have more works to do on my website to try your technique.
Thank you and congratulation for your little boy 😉
P.S: I don’t have any tips for improving my team but I know that using the magic word for hire a VA works very well