We've been organizing (with great success) our Corporate High Potential Leaders into week long Action Learning Teams. It is very successful.

However with the downturn in the economy we're going virtual and are in the process of continuing the Action Learning Teams (ALT) virtually through the use of WebEx, telephony, and using Sharepoint. Anybody have any experiece doing this? If so - please let me know what to watch out for, what works, doesn't work! Thanks.

Hi Dan - Glad to hear about your success with the action learning teams. That methodology was one of the most successful and rewarding learning vehicles I ever developed / delivered.

In the program I created some of the teams had remote members from other locations. They used virtual elements including video conferencing as well as shared drives, e-mail, etc. But our teams worked together for ~3 months, so the dynamic was different. We had a 3-day launch workshop that was always attended in person by all participants.

If you could describe your one-week program in a bit more detail, maybe the posters will have an easier time offering their experience / advice.

I'm writing a graduate research report on a similar topic. I tried to upload a PDF of a study I'm using that would help you, but this ridiculous interface allows only plain text and images. Look for the following at your library:

Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams
Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa and Dorothy E. Leidner
Organization Science, Vol. 10, No. 6, Special Issue: Communication Processes for Virtual Organizations (Nov. - Dec., 1999), pp. 791-815