expecting team members to wake up early or stay Keeping track up late for team meetings. It can work for a short Once you have your transition to a hybrid virtual period of time, but in the medium and longer run model underway, how will you know if it’s working, it reduces the cohesion that develops through and whether you maintained or enhanced your real-time collaboration. (It also forces some team organization’s performance culture? Did your access members to work when they’re tired and not at to talent increase, and are you attracting and inspiring their best.) Moreover, if there is a smaller subgroup top talent? Are you developing and deploying strong on the team in, say, Asia, while the rest are in leaders? To what extent are all your employees North America, a two-culture problem can emerge, engaged in driving performance and innovation, with the virtual group feeling lesser than. Better gathering insights, and sharing knowledge? to simply build teams with at least four hours of overlap during the traditional workday to ensure The right metrics will depend on your goals, of time for collaboration. course. Be wary of trying to achieve across all parameters, though. McKinsey research shows that Keep teams together, when possible, and hone winning performance cultures emerge from carefully the art of team kickoffs selecting the right combinations of practices (or Established teams, those that have been working “recipes”) that, when applied together, create superior together for longer periods of time, are more organizational performance.⁵ Tracking results against productive than newer teams that are still forming these combinations of practices can help indicate, and storming. The productivity they enjoy arises over time, if you’ve managed to keep your unified from clear norms and trust-based relationships—not performance culture intact in the transition to a new to mention familiarity with workflows and routines. hybrid virtual model. That said, new blood often energizes a team. In an entirely on-premises model, chances are you would swap people in and out of your small teams We’ll close by saying you don’t have to make all the more frequently. The pace at which you do so will decisions about your hybrid virtual model up front likely decline in a hybrid virtual model, in which and in advance. See what happens. See where your working norms and team cohesion are more at best talent emerges. If you end up finding, say, risk. But don’t take it to an extreme. Teams need 30 (or 300) employees clustered around Jakarta, members with the appropriate expertise and and other groups in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, backgrounds, and the right mix of those tends to ask them what might help them feel a socially evolve over time. supported sense of belonging. To the extent that in-person interactions are important—as we guess Meanwhile, pay close attention to team kickoffs as they will be—perhaps consider a microhub in one of you add new people to teams or stand up new ones. those cities, if you don’t have one already. Kickoffs should include an opportunity to align the overall goals of the team with those of team members Approached in the right way, the new hybrid model while clarifying personal working preferences. can help you make the most of talent wherever it resides, while lowering costs and making your organization’s performance culture even stronger than before. 5 See Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth John, and Rob Theunissen, “Organizational health: A fast track to performance improvement,” McKinsey Quarterly, September 2017, McKinsey.com. Andrea Alexander is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Houston office, where Aaron De Smet is a senior partner and Mihir Mysore is a partner. Copyright © 2020 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. 50 What now? Ten actions to emerge stronger in the next normal September 2020