This presentation outlines a business proposal for idealized design of virtual teaming at General Electric, a multinational conglomerate that employs more than 313,000 employees around the world and so faces the challenge of synergizing a dispersed workforce.

1. Idealized Design for Virtual Teaming Olivier Serrat
2020

2. General Electric
Industries
• Aviation
• Capital
• Energy
connections &
lighting
• Healthcare
• Power
• Oil & gas
• Renewable
energy
• Transportation
Size
• 313,000
employees
worldwide
(2017)
• Present in 180
countries
across seven
regions
• US$120
billion in
revenues
(2017)
Stakeholders
• Communities &
individuals
• Customers &
consumers
• Employees
• The physical
environment
• Shareholders
Decline
• Near-
meltdown in
2017
• Profits: -$5.8
billion (2017)
• Total return to
shareholders: -
3.8% (2017)
"Back to
Basics"
Strategy
• Put customers
at the center
• Manage for
operational
performance
first
• Set fewer,
more
impactful
priorities
General Electric Company. (2019a). 2018 annual report of General Electric.

3. The Rise of Virtual Teaming
Half of all American employees hold a job deemed compatible with
telework (Flexjobs Corporation, 2019).
FlexJobs reckons that telecommuting grew 103% since 2009 and expects
that 50% of people will work remotely by 2020 (Flexjobs Corporation,
2019).
GE had 106,000 employees in the United States in 2017, or 34% of its
workforce (General Electric Company, 2019a).
But, the virtualization of work is a global phenomenon. There are action
teams; management teams; networked teams; offshore information systems
development teams; parallel teams; project or product development
teams; service teams; and work, production, or functional teams
(Management Study Guide, 2019).

4. Virtual Teaming 4GE
GE is carrying out extensive cost reductions that will impact operations, employee retention,
and results negatively yet may not achieve the expected benefits (General Electric Company,
2019a).
GE invested early in virtual, instructor-led training curricula (DeRosa, 2017). The advantages
of virtual teaming are lower overhead costs, more satisfied employees, and higher scalability;
the pitfalls can be cultural clashes, dearth of social interaction, lack of trust, less cohesiveness,
poor team spirit, risk to reputation, and security and compliance issues (Bailey, 2013;
Management Study Guide, 2019).
Loss of institutional knowledge and loss of key personnel from restructuring mean that GE
should take steps to retain critical knowledge and—the very subject of this proposal—
upgrade and scale virtual teaming.

5. Idealized Design
"[An organization] creates its future by
continuously closing the gap between
where it is at any moment of time and
where it would most like to be"
(Ackoff, 2001, p. 3).
The idealized design approach "is
based on the belief that an
organization's future depends at least
as much on what it does between now
and then, as on what is done to it"
(Ackoff, 2001, p. 3).
Mission Statement
• Formulating the mess
• Ends planning
• Means planning
• Resource planning
• Design of implementation
• Design of controls
Idealization & Realization

6. Envisioning
"Good business leaders create a
vision, articulate the vision,
passionately own the vision, and
relentlessly drive it to completion,"
said former GE CEO Jack Welch
(Tichy & Charan, 1989, para. 7).
Without a compelling vision statement
for virtual teaming that encapsulates
decided purpose, GE will find it
difficult to promote enrollment,
commitment, and compliance toward
shared meaning.
Core
Questions
• What are strengths and assets
of GE's virtual teaming?
• What needs to be changed?
• What would the dream
end‐state of GE's virtual
teaming look like in a perfect
world?
Building
Blocks of
the Vision
Statement
• Actions
• Targeted beneficiaries
• Services
• Problems
• Partners
• Causes
• Time horizon

7. Formulating the Mess
Formulating the mess will be about identifying GE's Achilles' heel, the weakness that will lead
to downfall if GE cannot adapt to changing internal and external circumstances.
• The compass of investigations will include markets, services, organization, management,
personnel, facilities and equipment, and external affairs and relations, to name a few
parameters (Ackoff, 2001, p. 10–13).
A team drawing representatives from across GE will conduct a situational analysis including
• A systems analysis, viz., a comprehensive description and assessment of how GE operates
• An obstruction analysis, viz., an identification of features and properties of GE, especially
patterns of behavior and related influencing factors, that hinder progress
• Reference projections, viz., forecasts of relevant aspects of GE's future
• A reference scenario, viz., a prognosis of what will happen to GE if current behaviors and
activities do not change and the analyses and projections hold (Ackoff, 2001, p. 5).

8. Ends & Means Planning
Ends planning will be the primordial process of defining GE's desired present state,
principally by identifying gaps between the desired present state and the reference
scenario. Crucially, the idealized design for virtual teaming at GE will have to
demonstrably counteract the self-destruction prognosticated by the reference scenario
in the formulation of the mess (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6).
Means planning will be the process of determining what must be done (e.g., actions,
good practices, innovations, programs, projects, policies, strategies, etc.) to close the
gaps between the desired present state and the reference scenario. Vitally, means
planning must obey two constraints and adhere to one requirement: the idealized
design will have to be technologically feasible and operationally viable, which ought
also condition the scope and scale of virtual teaming, for example subject to industry,
function, business processes, etc.; also, the design will have to be such that GE can
learn from successes and failures and adapt in consequence (Ackoff, 2001, p. 7–8).

9. Design of Implementation & Controls
Design of implementation will the process of articulating the what, when,
where, who, and how of the idealized design so it might be put into
action: taking into account motivational, organizational, technological, and
other relevant factors, this will call for the creation of schedules and the
allocation of requisite resources to corresponding tasks (Ackoff, 2001, p.
6).
Design of controls will be the process of deciding how to monitor the
schedules and related decisions of the implementation phase of the
idealized design, recalibrating for failure to avoid the archetype of
Eroding Goals, accounting for unexpected success, and evaluating results
after all has been implemented (Ackoff, 2001, p. 7).

10. Potential Pitfalls & Strategies to Avoid Them
Idealized design promotes understanding of what is to be designed (or redesigned), boosts
creativity, generates new approaches to what is feasible, expedites planning, and speeds
implementation (Ackoff, Magidson, & Addison, 2006, p. 11). However, three potential pitfalls
in the process of idealized design for virtual teaming stand out and demand that
countervailing strategies be formulated.
Synergizing organizational
forms
Reconciling integration,
differentiation, and
fragmentation
Enriching idealized design

11. Synergizing Organizational Forms
The relevance of idealized design of virtual teaming is heightened
in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that
increasingly calls for network forms of organizing to complement
hierarchies and markets.
Virtual teams are more important than ever; this is a strength and
clear evidence of the growing power of networks. Nonetheless, the
blend of virtual and face-to-face teaming must be determined
according to criteria. What might they be?
The degree of dependence on the means of communication, the
worth of the information provided by the tools, and the need for
synchronicity of information exchange are three factors that will
condition the level of virtuality in GE; that said, the languages and
cultural make-up of virtual team members as well as the sheer
number of work sites will be other factors (Management Study
Guide, 2019).

12. Reconciling Integration, Differentiation, & Fragmentation
Martin (2002) distinguishes three perspectives on organizational culture: integration,
differentiation, and fragmentation.
Given the control the integration perspective typically exerts, GE will need to make sure it
arrives at a shared vision for virtual teaming that also draws from the differentiation and
fragmentation perspectives.
Future Search conferencing is a 3-day event designed to represent an organization's system in
one room; explore the entire system in context before seeking to act on its parts; and take
responsibility for action (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995).
In sessions lasting half a day each, participants look at the past (highlights and milestones),
the present (external trends, responses to trends, and owning actions), and the future (ideal
scenarios) (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995). GE can intersperse the four or five sessions of Future
Search conferencing across the six phases of idealization and realization when it initiates
idealized design for virtual teaming.

13. Enriching Idealized Design
For higher chances of success, GE's experience of idealized design for
virtual teaming should make the most of such tools as force field analysis,
organigraphs, participatory methods, the premortem technique, social
network analysis, stakeholder analysis, etc. throughout the six phases of
idealization and realization.
It does not use such tools, GE will miss out on opportunities for more
"outside–in" by not being in sufficient dialogue with the many interrelated
and interdependent components of its very open system.

14. References & Select Reading
Ackoff, R. (2001). A brief guide to interactive planning and idealized design. Unpublished
Paper, Interact Consulting, May 31.
Ackoff, R., Magidson, J., & Addison, H. (2006). Idealized design: How to dissolve tomorrow's
crisis … today. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Bailey, S. (2013, March 5). How to beat the five killers of virtual working. Forbes. Retrieved
from https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianbailey/2013/03/05/how-to-overcome-the-five-
major-disadvantages-of-virtual-working/#1442b78f2734
DeRosa, D. (2017, October 5). 3 companies with high-performing virtual teams. [Blog post].
Retrieved from https://www.onpointconsultingllc.com/blog/3-companies-with-high-performing-
virtual-teams
Flexjobs Corporation. (2019). Flexjobs. Retrieved from https://www.flexjobs.com/

15. References & Select Reading
General Electric Company. (2019a). 2018 annual report of General Electric. Retrieved from
https://www.ge.com/investor-relations/annual-report
General Electric Company. (2019b). General Electric Company. Retrieved from
https://www.ge.com/
Howard, M. (2002). Clausewitz: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Management Study Guide. (2019). Different types of virtual teams. Retrieved from
https://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-articles.htm

16. References & Select Reading
Serrat, O. (2012). Future Search Conferencing. Manila: Asian Development Bank.
Weisbord, M., & Janoff, S. (1995). Future search: An action guide to finding common ground in
organizations and communities. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Tichy, N., & Charan, R. (1989). Speed, simplicity, self-confidence: An interview with Jack
Welch. Harvard Business Review, 67(5), pp. 112–120.

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