This Deloitte Insights article draws on survey research to identify what most strongly predicts team effectiveness in distributed, digitally-mediated working environments. Although written for a broad organisational audience, its findings translate directly to the research context: researchers leading time-limited, multi-site projects who need to assemble and sustain productive teams across institutional boundaries. The research is particularly valuable because it moves beyond assumptions about tools and technology to identify the relational factors that most reliably determine whether distributed teams succeed or struggle.

The article’s central finding is striking – whether a team member has strong digital skills or access to good employer-provided tools matters less than whether they are part of a well-functioning team. For those leading complex, multi-institutional projects this reframes the challenge: the priority is building the conditions for team effectiveness, not just getting the logistics right. Three factors are identified as critical:

• Psychological safety – team members need to feel able to raise problems, admit uncertainty, and improvise solutions, especially when working across different institutional environments with different norms and systems
• Collective digital competence – not everyone needs to be digitally skilled, but the team as a whole needs to be able to navigate and adapt its shared working tools and norms
• Management support for flexibility – empowering sub-teams to find their own solutions to unanticipated problems, rather than relying solely on pre-determined tools and processes