the flexibility of virtual teams

In Academy28, we're a small organisation. This means that we have a limited amount of internal resource and experience and specialisms (and time) to call on. It also means that we have a limited range of type preferences within the team. So we build partnerships with external partners and suppliers to supplement our internal resources. This also is an opportunity to balance out the Type profile (with its biases and blindspots) of our organisation.

We are leading up to the launch of Academy28 and Your Preferences at HRD week in London in April, and will work with a PR company to help us manage that side of the project activities.

As part of the kick-off of this set of project activities, we did a Your Preferences Team analysis for us all. And our choice of these particular PR specialists shows how well they will fill the gaps. On our own, Tim and I are heavily NT biased (N big picture, T logical analysis). Great profiles for seeing into the future. But we have to work harder to do the detail in the here and now and steadily build personal relationships, get things delivered in the short term for short term impact (SF) (which is the foundation of effective PR). And hey presto - our new PR partners both have the SF preference - and solid organisational and planning skills to get things done and out to timescales and deadlines (J).

This means that we can all work to our strengths, respecting others' strengths - and be confident that we're on track to get the results we need.