If you think about how you work with others get the job done, it’s unlikely, even when working remotely, that it’s the technology that makes it successful (or not).
 
For a couple of years I worked in a regional role based in Shanghai China. This meant communicating with a global team of professionals based in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. Just about all of our interactions were enabled with technology of some description including email, phones and computers (running Webex).  
 
We were a highly effective team and it had nothing to do with technology. There were a number of factors that I think contributed to our success and I believe it came down to three fundamentals:
 
How did we RELATE to each other? What was the depth or breadth of the relationships between team members? This was typically something that was fostered daily and outside of formal meetings or interactions. We invested time regularly in building, maintaining and sustaining high quality relationships. Not just about work, but also at a personal level. Frankly, we made the effort to genuinely get to know and like each other.
 
How did we DEBATE issues? How did we facilitate effective conflict to enable us to collaborate in solving problems?  We had a structured meeting cadence and process for group discussion. We met weekly as a team to identify key focus areas, monthly to discuss strategic or longer term planning. We were in daily contact via email, phone or instant messenger for the adjustments required on a daily basis. We also had a number of facilitation techniques or processes that enabled us to manage contributions, disagreements and decisions.  Understanding and valuing difference was critical.
 
How did we CREATE the future? How did we do our visioning and planning? This was the one area that face to face helped. Once a year we would try and bring as many of the team physically together as we could.  We didn’t always manage to get everyone in the room however agreements up front about how we would engage our distant colleagues, how their opinions would be included and how they could communicate their support (or not) for initiatives were critical. Timing discussions on key decisions to include remote involvement meant we had to design our agendas very carefully.  It’s a bit harder to manage this one, but provided you have a strong intention, focused attention and flexibility you can make it work.
 
I think we have to try harder to make virtual work, but the fundamentals that apply to face to face teams are still applicable in remote teams. Even when faced with different cultures, different languages, different time zones. Fundamental human needs described by Max-Neef (1991) are, I think, are also relevant to working in teams (remotely or otherwise):