THE FUTURE OF VIRTUAL TEAMWORK & COLLABORATION

We've Got To Do Better Than This!

2012-01-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, I'll get a request to allow a company to contribute to the blog or to advertise its wares. I haven't taken up any of these requests, and I don't plan to in the future. Today, however, I received an email from Dollie Todd who works for Best Colleges Online.com. As its name suggests, Best Colleges Online helps potential students to learn about top online colleges and choose the best program to meet there needs.

Dollie asked me if I would like to share an article they had just published on their website: 11 Unbelievable Group Project Horror Stories http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/11-unbelievable-group-project-horror-stories. How could I resist given my love for exploring human folly - including my own?

Although the stories are from the world of education, the same human foibles are demonstrated everyday in the world of business - plain ignorance; a lack of commitment; a vacuum where human caring and empathy should be; last minute - or no -contributions; disappearing into the black hole of virtual space, and so on.

Given that the stories are from education, I wondered to what extent our learning institutions are preparing people to engage in virtual collaboration? Research highlights the importance of this competency in the new workplace, but to what extent are students given any kind of training, guidelines, or processes for undertaking their projects. What are the rewards for collaborating, and were there any consequences for being a poor team player? Were students asked not just to produce a project report, but also a reflective review of how they worked - or didn't work - as a team? I would love to hear more about virtual collaboration successes stories in student education.

Just because most young people are technologically literate doesn't mean they have a clue about working together in virtual space. Being left to cope can be a lesson in itself, although rarely a positive one. Do we want young people entering the new workplace with only a negative mindset about virtual teamwork?

Yammer and Training

2012-01-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

First, I should make a disclaimer. I have no relationship with the Yammer organization or with anyone employed at Yammer. I have no self-interest in saying nice things about the tool. In coming up with ideas for using Yammer in training, I did scan some Yammer blog entries, but that is the limit of my contact.

At TMA World, we use Yammer as an internal social networking tool, but recognize that its potential goes beyond straightforward social and business communication.

We have built what we call our One World Curriculum (OWC) consisting of learning paths in global collaboration and management skills. Each learning path consists of the following:

Pre-session materials and activities, such as, e-learning, video overviews, and assessments
Session materials for either virtual or face-to-face classes
Deployment tools and resources such as short instructional videos, discussion groups, templates

We have also built our own Portal for supporting the delivery and deployment of our training, but if we didn’t how could Yammer contribute? Here are some ideas that could be of benefit to you in your training initiatives?

Pre-session

Facilitators who teach the program could form a Yammer Group to share their experiences and tips.
Participants can be asked to join a dedicated Yammer Group for the training. This will help forge a learning community before the session. It will also reduce time needed in the session for introductions and logistics.
Based on the Yammer conversations, the facilitator could adapt the training to the specific needs expressed by participants.
Yammer could be used to provide links to a program overview, agenda, objectives, expectations, and pre-session materials. The Yammer Events app can help schedule sessions and invite participants.
The facilitator could pose questions on Yammer to help identify the current mindsets, knowledge and skills in the group.

During the Session

Small groups of participants can use Yammer for recording outputs of their brainstorming and discussion time. These can be accessed and added to after the session; this provides those who don’t feel comfortable participating in live sessions, or those who like time to process (like me), an opportunity to contribute.
In virtual team exercises, Yammer could be used as a communication device between groups.
A participant(s) can act as a scribe during the session. His or notes would be immediately available on Yammer.
Various Yammer applications could be used to engage participants in the training, e.g. Pages combines real time collaboration on document editing with Yammer communication. The Polls and Ideas apps can keep things lively by identifying differences in the value given to specific topics.
Participants often mention favorite web sites about a topic, and links could immediately be posted on Yammer. Favorite books or articles in the group could also be referenced.

After the Session

The facilitator can keep the learning conversation going by helping maintain the training group on Yammer; participants could discuss experiences and lessons learned when deploying the training. All of the groups who have been through the training could become part of a mega exchange and support network.
Any action plans created in the session could be shared on Yammer. Group members could be encouraged to support one another in deploying them.
Yammer could also be used to identify totally different areas of expertise in the group and facilitate knowledge sharing.
Links to additional useful resources could be put on Yammer rather than add to email traffic congestion.
Using the Topics app, conversations can be tagged to facilitate their organization and accessibility.

Let me know if you have other ideas and I’ll share them on this blog.

'Moonshots' For a Much Needed Management Revolution

2012-01-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

I’m all for a revolution in management. Let’s reinvent organizations of all kinds to better serve humankind. It’s been a dismal few decades in which we’ve seen an epidemic of greed - and a mentality of ‘everything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught’ – bring economies to their knees and destroy trust in business, government, and other institutions. Human folly is always with us (just read history or great literature), but so too is the aspiration for human betterment. Business at its best creates individual and societal wealth, and I can’t wait for the corrosive ‘virtue of selfishness’ and ‘there’s no such thing as society’ ideas to be treated for what they are - hazardous waste to be handled with great care. Capitalism doesn’t need a PR job; it needs to engage in its own process of creative destruction and renewal.

As well as the broad issue of the economic system, we also need to revolutionize how we manage work. Some of my most miserable years were spent working in a U.S. corporation in which hierarchy, routine, aggressive internal competition, and control ruled. For a somewhat creative and initiative-taking person like myself who wanted to do the best job possible, it was a soul destroying - even degrading - experience.

I have a great respect for the work of Gary Hamel, and his latest book What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change (Jossey-Bass, 2012) addresses both of the critical issues I’ve mentioned above. It’s not only insightful, but also a good read. Hamel sees management as the technology of human accomplishment, but the old scientific-industrial paradigm that has defined this technology for at least a century is now more negative than positive in our growing creativity and innovation-based economy. The mechanical control view of management served us well when we were moving from an agrarian and craft-based economy to an industrial economy, but now gets in our way.

In 2008, Hamel was instrumental in bringing together 36 management experts in Half Moon Bay just south of San Francisco. Their mission was to “create a roster of make-or-break management ‘moonshots’ that would inspire business innovators everywhere.” Here are those ‘moonshots’:

Mending the Soul

1. Ensuring that management serves a higher purpose

2. Embedding the ethos of community and citizenship

3. Humanizing the language and practice of business

Unleashing Capabilities

4. Increasing trust, reducing fear

5. Reinventing the means of control

6. Inspiring leaps of imagination

7. Expanding and exploiting diversity

8. Enabling communities of passion

9. Taking the work out of work

Fostering Renewal

10. Sharing the work of setting direction

11. Harnessing the power of evolution

12. Destructuring and disaggregating organizations

13. Creating internal markets for ideas, talent, and resources

14. Depoliticizing decision making

Distributing Power

15. Building natural, flexible hierarchies

16. Expanding the scope of autonomy

17. Refocusing the work of leadership on mobilizing and mentoring

18. Creating a democracy of information

19. Encouraging the dissenters

Seeking Harmony

20. Developing holistic performance measures

21. Transcending traditional trade-offs

22. Stretching management time frames and perspectives

Reshaping Minds

23. Strengthening the right hemisphere

24. Retooling management for an open world

25. Reconstructing the philosophical foundations of management

To learn more about these ‘moonshots’ – and remember, we did get to the moon – get a hold of Gary Hamel’s new book, and if you want to join in the conversation visit the open innovation project www.managementexchange.com also known as the MIX.

Are You Getting Unstuck

2012-01-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

This really isn't my thing. I'm probably too old, or not in the mood for personal growth. Bah humbug! (I've had a sinus infection) Unstuck is a new iPad app that is creating lots of buzz; Oprah likes it apparently.

Unstuck was launched on December 8, 2011. Developed by SYPartners - a firm with nearly 20 years of experience in helping clients, leaders and teams transform themselves - it aims to help individuals from holding themselves back from achieving their goals and designing their futures. That's huge! Not bad for a free app.

Unstuck takes you through a process that helps you get out of stuck moments. First, it helps clarify what kind of stuck moment you're having, and what that says about your stuckness. You might be diagnosed as one of 11 stuck varieties that include the Tunnel Visionary, the Deflated Doer or the Perplexed Planner. I was defined as the Reluctant Adapter (along with 7% of other stuckees). But given a different stuck place, I could be another variety, and, therefore, be taken down a different path. As any good algorithmic personal coach does, it takes you on a trouble-shooting journey (via fill-in-the-blanks), and helps you work towards a solution.

Some people are going to love it; it's easy, and simple in every way you could imagine. You're not going to get challenged in any meaningful way, and you will undoubtedly end up with platitudes like 'trust your gut', but if it helps, why not?

Why am I talking about this? Well, Unstuck has community ambitions. As the number of subscriptions increase, you will be able to share your stuckness with others who are - or have been - in a similar stuck place. You will be able to "work as a team and share the goodwill to help one another get unstuck." Collaborative unstuckiness!

I don't know. If I'm stuck, I think I'll do things the old fashioned way and sleep on it, or reach for Angry Birds.

Link for a demo of Unstuck

Soccer and the Art of Collaboration

2012-01-02T17:29:00.000-08:00

Before writing another word, have a wonderful 2012!

I’ve played or watched soccer (or football in my country of origin - England) since I was a toddler. It’s sometimes called ‘the beautiful game’, and it can be. At it is best it is free-flowing and fast-paced; a game of skill, strength, and close teamwork. A game that can be intensely exciting, even if the final result is 0-0. Many times, a collaborative, cohesive and committed team will defeat a group of individual superstars.

One of the fundamental skills in soccer is anticipation – getting into the heads of teammates as well as those of opposition players. What do soccer players need to anticipate?

Anticipating needs

A teammate with the ball will very soon find him or herself challenged by one or more offensive players. I remember that getting caught in possession of the ball was a cardinal sin; you had to keep the ball moving between players by passing to teammates who were in a space where they could receive the ball without being put under too much pressure. The key word in that last sentence is ‘space’. When you don’t have the ball, one of your primary responsibilities is to create a space which provides your teammate with the ball a possibility of passing to you. You look at the situation and create options for your teammate – you see the challenge and anticipate his or her need. Barcelona is an example of a football team that plays this passing game extremely well; players without the ball are in constant motion creating open space and options.

Anticipating opportunities

Football is not just physical; it is also a thinking game. The best players can assess the possibilities in situations quickly, identify the best possible outcomes, and put themselves in positions that make those outcomes a reality. There are opportunities to attack even when defending heavily (the fast counterattack), and good players can anticipate and be prepared for such opportunities. The player that anticipates the next move is the one who is going to be in the right place at the right time.

Anticipate conditions and their consequences

Soccer is played in all kinds of weather, and the conditions can greatly alter how a team and individual should play the game. A ball bounces and travels differently on a wet or dry surface, and can be unpredictable on an uneven surface or on a pitch at high altitude. If you don’t anticipate and prepare for the conditions, you – and the team - are unlikely to perform at your best.

Anticipate strengths and weaknesses

Every team has strengths and weaknesses; the more you know about them on your team the better able you will be to anticipate how best to play to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. Whatever position on the field you play, what can you do to support teammates and achieve best results? As an attacker or midfielder, how can you help close gaps in defense, and as a defender or midfielder what can you do to push the attack forward?

Anticipation is critical to collaborative team success. As a leader or team member think like a soccer player (I don’t know enough about American football, but I am sure there are similarities):

Am I anticipating the needs of others and creating options that benefit my individual teammates and the team, e.g. by sharing information

Am I anticipating opportunities for the team and positioning myself (and others) to take advantage of them?

Am I anticipating the conditions under which we’ll be collaborating - both favorable and unfavorable – and preparing to adjust. A virtual collaboration is a different game to face-to-face collaboration.

Am I anticipating the strengths and weakness of myself and others in undertaking the project and being mutual supportive?

That Very Old Fashioned Idea - 'Truth'

2011-12-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

I came across a story today (in an AFCEA Intelligence blog) that relates to an abiding interest: Language, Context, and Meaning. Here it is:

A biker is riding by the zoo, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumps off his bike, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly.

A reporter has seen the whole scene, and addressing the biker, says - Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I saw a man do in my whole life.

- Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger, and acted as I felt right.

- Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a journalist, you know, and tomorrow's papers will have this on the first page. What motorcycle do you ride?

- A Harley Davidson. The journalist leaves.

The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on first page:

BIKER GANG MEMBER ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH

The headline is ‘accurate’, but totally misleading. Accurate and misleading! The problem is with the representation (or rather misrepresentation) of the data. Context is lacking, but knowing the context of the event was a zoo wouldn’t really create a more truthful picture. Looking at the wider context of modern journalism and the newspaper industry might give us a little more insight, but not much.

The problem is that we are all at the mercy of those who create the representations. This is why my skepticism antenna go on full alert when I hear a term like evidence-based. You’re going to have to tell me a whole lot more about why the data was collected, who funded the project, and how the data was gathered. You might need to let me see and explore the data for myself without your contextual spin.

The root of the problem is that we live in the Age of Propaganda. Spin is not limited to politicians, but is rife throughout our culture. Misrepresentation and hype are not the sole province of PR, advertising, marketing, and pseudoscientists, but are endemic in human relationships. In so many of our business – and even personal - communications we have adopted the language of ‘strategy’, ‘tactic’, and ‘technique’.

And so, in our collaborations let’s not just be ‘accurate’, but truthful (if that sounds old fashioned to you, we should talk). Let’s not waste time and effort in playing language games. Let’s challenge doublespeak (“language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words” - source – Wikipedia), hyperbole, manipulative phrasing, important sounding – but meaningless – jargon, bias, euphemisms, and manipulatively emotional allusions that give us credibility by association – whether deserved or not.

The story about the biker could be read as a joke, and as such, it’s a pretty good one. It could also be read as an object lesson for us all. Am I being naïve? Sure, but naivety can open up spaces in which we can freshen up our thinking and conversations; spaces that experience would ignore because they are ‘unrealistic’.

One final word: When I did a web search about the joke, it was interesting how different groups had shape-shifted it to fit their own agenda. Instead of just a biker, I saw “republican biker’, a ‘right wing biker’, an Israeli, a US Marine, and Canadian soldier!

Fascinating Look Into The Connected World

2011-12-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

Cisco published the results of a survey back in late September which has only just bubbled up to the surface of my world - The Cisco Connected World Technology Report. Those surveyed were 1,141 college students (age 18-24) and 1,412 employees (age 21-29) from 14 countries: US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia, India, China, Japan, and Australia.

Getting Information and News
The largest proportion of college students (45%) say their laptop is their primary way of getting information and news. This is followed by the desktop at 22%. For college students in Spain the Smartphone is the primary source (36%) compared with 10% for the total survey population.

The largest proportion of employees (36%) say that their laptop is their primary way of getting information and news. This is followed by the desktop at 26%. More than 1 in 4 of employees in France get what they want from TV. Only 4% in China use TV as their primary source, compared with 22% in both Japan and Russia.

The Internet as a Necessity
55% of college students say that they could not live without the Internet - it is an integral part of their lives. That number rises to 71% in China, and falls to 30% in Russia.

62% of employees say that they could not live without the Internet. That rises to 78% in China, and falls to 38% in Russia. The US (73%), Brazil (75%), and the UK (73%) are also high scorers.

Importance of the Internet
32% of college students say that the Internet is as important to them as water, food, air, and shelter. That number rises to 81% if you add students who say that it is not as important, but pretty close. 65% of college students in Brazil, and 64% in China say that the Internet is as important to them as water, etc. Only 13% of French students take that view.

32% of employees also indicate that the Internet is as important to them as water, etc. This rises to 69% for Chinese employees, and falls to 6% for those in the UK.

Most Important Technology in Daily Life
46% of college students say their laptop is most important to them in daily life. That rises to 66% in China, and falls to 24% in Italy. More than one-third of college students in Spain (40%) and the UK (36%) say that their Smartphone is most important in their daily life.

37% of employees say their laptop is most important to them in daily life. This rises to 51% in China and India, and falls to 15% in Italy (the desktop is more important to students and employees in Italy). In Australia (42%), the US (37%), and the UK (31%), the Smartphone is seen as more important in daily life than the laptop.

Internet vs. Social Activities
College students: What is more important in daily life, the Internet (40%), going out with friends/partying (25%), dating (13%), or music (10%)? Clearly, the Internet. France is the only country where college students place a greater importance on dating (54%) than the Internet (7%).

Internet vs. a Car
64% of college students prefer to have access to the Internet than a car. That number rises to 85% in China and 84% in Japan. In Russia (63%), the US (54%), France (53%) most students would prefer access to a car.

Facebook vs. Social Activities
39% of college students say that spending time with friends is most important on a typical day. 27% of college students, however, put keeping up to date on Facebook above dating (10%), listening to music (10%), and going to a party (2%). College students in Spain (54%), Brazil (50%), India (45%), and China (41%) give most importance to keeping up to date on Facebook.

Social Media Distractions
43% of college students admit to being distracted or interrupted by social media, IM, phone calls, or a desire to check Facebook 3 or more times in a typical hour. That rises to 54% in Italy and falls to 12% in Japan.

For old baby boomers like me, some of the results can seem mysterious and strange. Some can give rise to concern (e.g. the levels of distraction and putting checking Facebook over dating a real human being), but I'm not going there. It's nearly Christmas, and I'm looking forward to playing with a new iPad and Smartphone (maybe). I'll start worrying about the future of the human race again next year.

Reading 'Steve Jobs'

2011-11-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

I wasn’t going to post about Steve Jobs, but one of the things I did over the Thanksgiving holiday was to read SJ’s biography written by Walter Isaacson. I doubted it could maintain my interest for very long – especially as I was reading it as an e-book which is not my preferred way, and because I never really liked the Job's persona – but it did. It was a compelling read. Jobs was a complex person who could drive people to fury and despair while also being wonderfully energizing and inspirational. The lives of complex people always make for good reading –at least for me - because they take you onto the battlefield where internal, interpersonal, and external forces engage in a dramatic fight for dominance.

There is no doubt that Jobs was an arrogant, highly-charged, controlling, and narcissistic perfectionist who could be abusive, even cruel. According to Isaacson, “The nasty edge to his personality was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him,” although he did get people to do things they never dreamed possible. Through the force of his will and playing by his own rules (what others called his ‘reality distortion field’) he would make things happen – not by his own ability to invent, but by the attractiveness of his vision, and his mastery “at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future.” Here are a few of my takeaways from the book:

Collaboration: Job’s didn’t organize Apple into semi-autonomous divisions – a mistake made by companies like Sony, AOL, and Time-Warner. Instead, he closely controlled his teams and “pushed them to work as one cohesive and flexible company" with one profit-and-loss bottom line for them all. He was most fond of face-to-face meetings where ideas could be tossed around, but he was always in ultimate control. His product launches were well known for their presentations, but in everyday meetings, he hated Powerpoint slides. His argument was that if you needed slides in a meeting, you didn’t know what you were talking about.

Perfectionism: SJs adoptive father had taught him the importance of craftsmanship; to drive for perfection even with the look of parts unseen by users e.g., the circuit board. Jobs not only brought a powerful and engaging vision to the company, but also an obsessive eye for detail. One of his early mentors, Mark Makkula, had persuaded him that people do judge a book by its cover and so he gave a laser-sharp focus to the user experience. Colors, materials, shapes, and textures needed to convey creativity and professionalism. He might become best known for his contributions to product design.
Product: Jobs was a product man. He said many times that he wasn’t interested in profit and wealth per se (although he could be somewhat contradictory on that score). Profits were good because they enabled you to develop more outstanding products. He accused John Scully (who was recruited by Jobs in 1983 to be CEO) of putting profit before product. Macintosh lost to Microsoft,” he said “because Scully insisted on milking all the profits he could get rather than improving the product and making it affordable.”

Intuition: “I never rely on market research,” said Jobs. What was important was an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. His talent was for imaginative leaps rather than extensive information gathering and mental processing. He didn’t believe in giving customers what they wanted. What resonated with him was Henry Ford’s view that if had asked customer’s what kind of car they wanted they would have said a faster horse.

Simplicity: He had been a student of Zen Buddhism, and he loved the Zen gardens in Kyoto. Zen minimalism led him to aggressively cut out anything from a product that was non-essential, even though this could be extremely challenging for Apple engineers. But the simplicity he was after came from understanding and conquering the complexities, not ignoring them. Simplicity is very hard work.

Breadth: Jobs wasn’t narrow in his interests. Religion, art, music, design and technology all played a part in shaping his vision. He said, “I like living at the intersection of humanities and technology.“

Focus: When he returned to Apple – 10 years after being pushed out – Jobs cut 70% of Apple products. In one meeting he drew a box on a whiteboard and divided it into four quadrants. He labeled the two columns Consumer and Pro, and the two rows Desktop and Portable. He wanted one great product in each quadrant, nothing more.

Continuous Innovation: Jobs was not a person to stand still. He admired artists like Bob Dylan and Picasso who were always re-inventing themselves. One of his rules was never be afraid to cannibalize yourself. Tim Cook (current Apple CEO) said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will . . . So even though an iPhone might cannibalize sales of an iPod, or an iPad might cannibalize sales of a laptop, that did not deter him.”

Integration & Unity: Jobs wanted a tightly packaged of hardware and software. Rather than creating an open system, he decided on a closed system that would provide a seamless and simple user experience. It was a risk, but it paid off:

“Even with a small market share, Apple was able to maintain a huge profit margin while other computer makers were commoditized. In 2010, for example, Apple had just 7% of the revenue in the personal computer market, but it grabbed 35% of the operating profit.

More significantly, in the early 2000s Job’s insistence on end-to-end integration gave Apple an advantage in developing a digital hub strategy, which allowed your desktop computer to link seamlessly with a variety of portable devices.”

Today, when it seems that a decision can’t be made without a metric, I admire Steve Jobs for his imagination, courage and tenacity. In other words, his daring leadership.

With whom am I working, please? Person or process?

2011-11-14T14:02:00.000-08:00

Many commentators talk about the shocking levels of worker disengagement. According to the results of one Gallup survey published earlier this year only about 27 percent of workers worldwide are satisfied with their jobs.

There are, of course, many factors contributing to this phenomenon, but I want to highlight something that has been on my mind for some time. I am concerned that our work cultures (and our wider cultures, for that matter) have become technique and process-obsessed. When I go to a restaurant, I am very aware that I am being absorbed into a well crafted process for greeting, sitting, and serving me. When a salesperson calls me, I can hear the clanking of the process he or she is following, and the techniques most likely to be employed to get me to ‘Yes’. I am fully aware of the value business processes bring to efficient operations, but when technique and process become all-pervasive in our interactions with one another we’re in trouble.

Let me back up. By process, I mean a sequence of steps/procedures taken to achieve a defined result. By technique, I mean a specific method, routine or skill for accomplishing a task. Technique and process are closely interlinked – a technique can be part of a process or a technique can be made up of processes. From now on, I’ll talk about processes and techniques as PTs.

The problem with PTs in our interactions is how reductive and alienating they can be. PTs are all about ‘ends and means’ so that in a PT pervasive culture we can easily feel that we are being manipulated as a means to someone else’s end. You don’t interact with me as a person, but as a means to your end. I only become of value if I help you meet your goal. I seek to be known as an individual and relate to you; you seek to apply calculated, routine, and predictable procedures – devoid of context - that you think will lead to your desired outcome.

In a PT world, understanding of complexity is a distant second to application of pre-programmed thinking and actions. These types of interactions are, of course, alienating and dehumanizing, and unfortunately management has become synonymous with PTs. To try and escape engaging with real people, we have only succeeded in destroying emotional engagement and breeding cynicism.

In managing complexity and getting the very best from our people, we are increasingly dependent on collaborative relationships. Process and technique will always be important to getting work done, but let’s take a more sophisticated and mindful view about where they add value and where they undermine its creation.

Get the Collaboration Passion!

2011-11-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

John Abele co-founded Boston Scientific in 1979. When I was thinking about passion for collaboration, he was the guy who came to mind. This video is of a talk he gave to TEDMED back in 2009. A wonderful way to spend 18 minutes. If you've seen it before, watch it again! Vimeo.com/12049487

A Culture of Appreciation: From' What' to 'Why' Questions

2011-11-10T16:35:00.000-08:00

I recently picked up a report called Organizing Work for Innovation and Growth: Experiences and Efforts in Ten Companies. It was published by VINNOVA (the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems) in October 2009. The focus question for the report is: How do companies work in practice to create organizational conditions that promote innovation, competitiveness, and growth?

One of the chapters is called Creating cultures of appreciation: Organizational innovation through employee well-being by Tony Ghaye and Ewa Gunnarsson. One of the key messages in the chapter is that to create a culture of innovation we need to ask appreciative (positive) questions. In the view of the authors, we shouldn’t be surprised if questions beginning with ‘Why’ tend to lead to deficit-based (fault-finding) conversations, and by changing the conversations we can change the actions. ‘Why’ questions tend to be associated with critical thinking which can be detrimental to innovation. ‘What’ questions tend to be more appreciative (and reflective) in nature. Both critical and appreciative questions are needed, of course, but the weight has tended to be on the critical side.

Ghaye and Gunnarsson give 8 examples of the kinds of questions that can promote a culture of appreciation:

1. What is giving you most joy and satisfaction in your work right now?

2. What were you doing recently, in managing your time that enabled you to use your strengths?

3. What actions were you taking when you were successful at prioritizing those things that you are really good at doing?

4. What was happening when you found yourself thinking, that really worked well?

5. What did someone say, or do, to make you feel that your professional experience was greatly appreciated?

6. What did you do that prompted a colleague to say, ’thank you. It’s nice to be respected’?

7. What were you doing that prompted a colleague to say, ‘It’s great working here. It’s nice to be valued’?

8. What did you do that enabled a colleague to say, ‘That’s different. I hadn’t thought of that.’

The questions we ask are instrumental in focusing our attention onto assets or deficits

These particular questions are mostly geared to individual appreciation and reflection, but their true value would emerge when they promote appreciation and reflection in a team.

Will Digital Natives Be Technologically Literate?

2011-11-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a headline on one of my iGoogle pages caught my attention: Main Street to Silicon Valley: We don’t even understand PDFs. The post was written by Jessica Stillman on gigaom.com, November 2, 2011.

The post highlights the results of a poll commissioned by the software firm Nitro coinciding with release of their latest Pro PDF reader. It found that 45.7 percent of a representative sample of Americans are either only somewhat familiar with PDfs or are not familiar with them at all. According to Nitro, this means, “Don’t assume, train.” Nitro was shocked by the result, and so was I. Are we as technologically sophisticated as we like to think?

We all live in information bubbles, and in this very complex and pay-attention-to-me world we only have the capacity to live our lives in a relatively small number of bubbles without being overwhelmed. Through my work in virtual teaming and collaboration, one of the core information bubbles that forms part of my reality is the technology information bubble, but that is not the case for everyone. Unfortunately, many of us assume that everyone else shares our bubbles (especially if we are passionate about them, as most tech-enthusiasts are).

This got me thinking about the question: Would greater knowledge about PDFs have made the 45.7 percent more technologically literate? And, what is technological literacy, anyway?

One of the assumptions I encounter a lot is that when the new generation enters the corporate arena there will be few - if any - issues with using the latest and greatest technologies to get work done (technology use for digital natives is as natural as breathing air). You just have to look around you to see youngsters everywhere texting and social networking. My four year old grandchild – who can’t read yet – has no problem downloading TV shows to my iPad. And so, the evidence supporting technological literacy is right before our eyes; or is it?

It seems to me that being skilled in the functionalities of new technologies (e.g., texting or instant messaging, downloading or sharing) or understanding what a PDF is doesn’t actually mean that much. The critical question is: Does this this person have the competencies to employ the power of appropriate technologies – independently and with others – to create, access, analyze, process and communicate information and ideas – for improved problem-solving, decision making, and innovating?

If we just think of technological literacy in terms of skill in the use of tools and functionalities or understanding of technological lingo we’re missing the bigger picture and potential. Given my view of technological literacy, I’m not convinced digital natives will be as far along as some people might think.

Distortions: The Gift of Skeptical Colleagues

2011-11-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

Those of us who spend time thinking about and enabling collaboration talk a lot about the importance of trust. Trust really is very important, but what I want to do here is to highlight the importance of distrust or, at least, skepticism in successful collaboration.

In any collaboration, people make judgments and take decisions, but to what extent are we aware of the potential errors of judgment and choice our minds can put in our way? Recently, I wrote a post on cognitive biases, and I want to continue that theme here.

I’ve been reading Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow - which I recommend to anyone – and the core message is that we are not as rational as we like to think we are – even when we have all the information we need, and the logic is simple, we can still be very wrong. Let me begin by describing a core model in the book.

Kahneman divides cognition into two parts: System 1 and System 2. System 1 is the fast, intuitive, effortless part of the mind often running on simple heuristics (rules of thumb); it runs on automatic pilot – we have no sense of voluntary control. System 2 by contrast is slow, controlled, and more deliberative. On seeing a face, we don’t need to expend a lot of mental energy in determining that it is an angry face (System 1). If we are asked what is 17 x 24, System 2 is called upon; we need to expend mental energy and follow rules and procedures for calculating the answer. While System 1 can be very useful in situations requiring swift judgment and decision making (it is right a good deal of the time and often gets its way despite System 2) it is prone to mental traps, what Kahn calls cognitive illusions. Let me describe a few of these illusions:

Affect heuristic: Making judgments and decisions guided directly by feelings of liking and disliking - expert, professional intuitions do not all arise from true expertise.

Anchoring: When people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity – before estimating that quantity – the estimates stay close to the number considered, e.g., when asked was Gandhi more than 114 years old when he died you will end up with a much higher estimate of his age at death than if the anchoring question referred to death at 35.

Availability illusion: People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they retrieved from memory (often put there by the media)

Focusing illusion: Any aspect of life to which attention is directed will loom large in a global evaluation.

Framing: Participants asked to imagine that they have been given $50 behave differently depending on whether they told they can ‘keep’ $20 or must ‘lose’ $30 even though the outcome is the same. We dislike losses much more than we like gains of equivalent size. Losses loom larger than gains.

Priming effect: Exposure to a word causes immediate and measurable changes in the ease with which many related words can be evoked. If you have recently heard the word EAT you are more likely to complete the word fragment SO_P as SOUP. If you heard WASH you are more likely to complete it as SOAP.

Substitution: When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one, usually without noticing the substitution, i.e., we often revert to using a simplifying heuristic to try and solve a complex problem.

What you see is all there is: Making predictions based on what can be a momentary coincidence of random events; the exaggerated expectation of consistency is a common error. We are prone to think the world is more coherent and predictable than it is, and downplay chance. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence.

There are many, many more. What are some lessons for us?

We are not as rational as we think we are. The mind is a system for jumping to conclusions, and we are prone to be far more confident in our conclusions than we should be. We need cognitive diversity in our collaborations; people who can challenge the coherent stories we make up about how the world works. We need people who can sometimes disrupt our automatic pilot heuristics in System 1, and lead us into the more deliberate, effortful world of System 2. Basically, we need each other to help recognize and manage our illusions – to be skeptical when we feel most confident.

Beyond Peace and Harmony to Real Collaboration

2011-10-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

Many teams suffer from an oppressive preference for peace and harmony. Don’t get me wrong, I like peace and harmony, but it can breed complacency, laziness, neglect, and stagnation. When conflict, disagreement, ambiguity, and doubt are suppressed in a group – explicitly or implicitly – the most likely outcomes are a high level of passive-aggressive behavior and a superficial consensus.

I’ve just started reading Daniel Kahneman’s new book Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. In 2002, Kanheman won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for work he had done with Amos Tversky on decision making (work that helped launch the field of behavioral economics). What has engaged me in the book so far (and I’m convinced there is a lot more) is the way he describes his collaboration with Amos Tversky. Here I quote from the Introduction:

“Both Amos and I were critical and argumentative, he even more than I, but during the years of collaboration neither of us ever rejected out of hand anything the other said. Indeed, one of the great joys I found in the collaboration was that Amos frequently saw the point of my vague ideas more clearly than I did. Amos was the more logical thinker, with an orientation to theory and an unfailing sense of direction. I was more intuitive and rooted in the psychology of perception, from which we borrowed many ideas. We were sufficiently similar to understand each other easily, and sufficiently different to surprise each other.”

It is wonderful to see how they found ways to use their differences in approach to take the work forward. I also like how Kahneman describes them both as critical and argumentative, but that was understood to be part of their collaborative process, not something to suppress. I notice in some Western cultures (I’m thinking particularly of the US and the UK) that arguments are taken as a sign that a relationship is breaking down. We need to understand that it is the accompanying behaviors that turn an argument toxic rather than the argument itself.

Much of the advice I see about handling conflict on a virtual team (and here I switch to the more emotionally charged term ‘conflict’) can be summed up as: deal with it immediately. I have a lot of sympathy with that view. Virtual conflict can easily become toxic because of increased opportunities for misunderstanding, and the longer time it takes to handle conflict constructively. But . . . before adopting ‘immediate response’ as a universal principle, it might be best to understand the type of conflict being surfaced in the virtual team.

Here are some conflicts that I think need to be given a chance to ‘breathe’ because new insights and possibilities might emerge:

Data: Conflicts about data gathering, interpretations, relevance and importance.

Interests: Conflicts caused by the perceived incompatibility of needs and wants

Process: Conflicts about tasks- what to do, when, where, and how

Structural: Conflicts caused by forces outside of the team, e.g., organizational policy changes, or changes in the economic environment.

What about Interpersonal Conflicts (e.g., conflicts arising from different personalities, styles, cultures, values)? From my experience, learning about each other needs to be upfront and ongoing. Everyone on the team needs to have their emotional antennae on full power because these types of conflicts are often masked or even hidden on virtual teams. Unless brought to the surface and acknowledge quickly these conflicts can quickly become toxic.

Whatever the source of disagreement/conflict the only productive ways forward are built on respect, patience, curiosity, and learning – not knee-jerk suppression or denial.

Think about what Daniel Kahnneman says above: “neither of us ever rejected out of hand anything the other said.” Right there, you have respect, patience, curiosity, and learning.

Online Collaboration Reinvents Invention

2011-10-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's a new world for collaborative inventing. Exciting!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15250373

A night of celebration - EFMD award ceremony

2011-10-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

We recently attended the EFMD Award ceremony in Maastricht, Holland, to pick up our Excellence in Practice Award for our partnership with ArcelorMittal.

The award ceremony was a great evening, filled with lots of opportunities to meet and network with some leading edge thinkers and personalities within the L&D industry.

The awards are actually part of a larger event held by the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development), called the 2011 EFMD Executive Education meeting, which provided a beneficial insight into current learning and training trends being used by multinational organizations. We were glad to discover that we seem to be ‘ahead of the game’ when it comes to virtual delivery, which was the central theme of this year’s conference.

Bias Awareness For Better Collaboration

2011-10-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

I am all for helping students of all ages engage in problem-solving – alone and with others – but is something missing in the process? If there is one area of study – apart from Dialogue - I would like all students to undertake it is Cognitive Bias. How can we collaborate effectively – or even live well together - when we have so little individual and collective awareness of the mental filters we use for acquiring and processing information.

What is a cognitive bias? Mostly, the term is used negatively although the needs of a specific context may determine a positive or negative evaluation (a tendency to make fast decisions may be harmful in many situations, but advantageous in others). In general, a cognitive bias is a mental filter formed by our own experiences (and our evolved comfort and discomfort zones), that distorts perception leading to poor interpretations and judgments. Let me highlight 15 that cause trouble for most of us:

· Anchoring: Tendency to make a final judgment in the same direction as an initial judgment even when conflicting data accumulate

· Availability cascade: Believing in something because we hear it mentioned repeatedly (“repeat something long enough and it will become true”)

· Choice-supportive bias: Remembering our choices as better than they actually were

· Confirmation bias: Searching for and interpreting information to confirm preconceptions

· Clustering illusion: Seeing patterns where none actually exist

· Egocentric bias: Recalling the past in a self-serving way

· Framing effect: Being overly influenced by how information is presented

· Fundamental attribution error: Over-emphasizing personality-based explanations for others’ behavior while under-emphasizing influence of role and situation

· Illusion of control: Overestimating one’s influence on external events

· Overconfidence effect: Excessive confidence in one’s answers to questions

· Planning fallacy: Tendency to underestimate the time it will take to complete a task

· Self-serving bias: Interpreting information in a way that benefits one’s own interests

· Stereotyping: Applying expected characteristics for a group to an individual member

· Sunken cost fallacy: Continuing to invest (to recover past costs) when the likelihood of success is minimal (throwing good money after bad)

· Wishful thinking: Overestimating the likelihood of a pleasing outcome

If you want to see a more comprehensive selection of cognitive biases see the List of Cognitive Biases on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Virtual Work: Increasing, but a Necessary Evil?

2011-10-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

In December 2010, Brandman University had Forrester Research conduct a survey of 135 senior leaders and hiring managers in some of Americas Fortune 500 companies. These were supplemented by a series of telephone interviews in January 2011. The survey report is called Virtual Work Environments in the Post-Recession Era:
http://www.brandman.edu/pdf/virtual_teams_brandman_forrester_white_paper.pdf

Here are a few data points:

· 56% of hiring managers expect that virtual teaming will steadily or greatly increase in their company

· 61% said their company will allow more people to telecommute or work from home in the next 3 years

In terms of the challenges faced by virtual team managers:

· 57% said building trust among employees

· 49% said communicating effectively

· 43% said managing projects and deadlines with employees not physically present

To be effective, virtual workers need:

· 61% said solid communication skills

· 53% said an ability to self-pace and work independently

· 51% said taking accountability for their own work

The primary motivations for the increase in virtual teaming and working are:

· 61% said cost containment

· 59% said recruitment

While the majority of leaders and managers believe that virtual working will increase, it tends to be seen as a ‘necessary evil’. Many see virtual collaboration as a barrier to worker accountability, creativity, and innovation.

Whenever I hear the term ‘necessary evil’ in business it usually means there is too much management (push) and not enough leadership (pull). Do we have to wait for a new generation to trigger a management revolution?

Agile Learning

2011-10-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

There are different perspectives on what social learning (or what I tend to call agile learning) is, and at the risk of adding more confusion or uncertainty to the mix, I thought I would stir in my own flavoring.

The domain of social or agile learning concerns the:

· Use of new media and collaborative technologies

· To create and leverage knowledge exchange communities

· For accelerating operational and transformational learning in distributed individuals and groups

Let me deconstruct this a little.

Technology: The new media provide ever expansive digital spaces for accessing, co-creating, and sharing of ideas, knowledge, and know-how. We have always learned from one another through talking, listening, observing, and imitating; now we have technologies like public and private social networks, microblogging, podcasting, videocasting, photosharing, social bookmarking, wikis and RSS to exponentially increase our ability to learn together.

Knowledge: I use ‘knowledge’ in a very broad sense to include: data, facts, information, expertise, theories, concepts, models, stories, feelings, visuals, blogs, experiences, principles, processes, procedures, know-how, feedback, and insights – anything that increases the capacity of someone to perform better.

Learning: Rather than the one-way transmission of expert content to a learner (the “I teach, you learn model”), social learning facilitates non-linear engagement with distributed knowledge. It enables higher levels of self-managed learning with increased relevance to real-time issues. Sometimes the learning will be specific to an individual learner and at other times to a wider group. The learning might be of an operational nature (e.g., changes in how to perform a task more efficiently) or transformational (e.g., changes in values, beliefs, mindsets, and worldviews).

Some Tips

· To make the business case to senior executives, you might want to change the name social learning to, for example, agile learning or rapid learning

· Get real top-down organizational support & commitment beyond the short-term

· Define the synergistic roles of HR, Learning & Development and IT early

· Think open learning communities as an organizational principle – you need a sense order and serendipity/cross-pollination

· Identify champions and role models for seeding and nurturing social learning (to create critical mass)

· Integrate social learning with existing technologies; keep access and participation simple, non-burdensome, and mobile-friendly

· Leverage existing communities of practice and collaborations for sandbox experimentation

· Try starting with formal learning (push learning) on social learning technologies, and then blend in the more informal (pull learning) elements later

· Create and communicate simple rules of engagement

Remote Working & Virtual Teaming: Understanding the Difference

2011-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges of working in the management field is that definitions can be very fluid, and that any interpretation is open to interpretation. There are times when we just have to say, “This is our working definition of . . . does this fit with your understanding?”

One area of confusion is between ‘remote working’ and ‘virtual teaming’, and so let me try and add some clarity. The key distinction is in the level of interdependence between those engaged in doing the work.

Remote working is when people are performing tasks at a distance from corporate HQ or other employment center where employees are physically co-located. They work and communicate via technology for all or most of their time, but not necessarily with each other. Let’s say we have 10 programmers working from home who all report to the same manager. Reporting to the same manager doesn’t mean the programmers are dependent on each other for performing their tasks, or that they share the same goals, objectives or even projects. Interaction between these remote workers may be minimal (weak ties), or only on an as-needed, ad hoc basis. Some managers may want to create something of a community for their remote workers (e.g., for sharing best practices or reducing isolation), but this isn’t a necessity for getting work done.

Virtual teaming is when people are working together via technology to achieve a shared goal, and they are highly dependent on one another for achieving this goal. Specific roles and responsibilities will be divided among team members, and high levels of cooperation, coordination, and communication will be needed between them (strong ties).

Some people will throw a spanner into the works by talking of remote teams. That's when a conversation needs to take place because do they mean a group of remote workers or a virtual team? There are, of course, shades of grey – sometimes remote workers may be asked to work as a virtual team for a specific project. Likewise, virtual team members may find that certain of their tasks can be performed autonomously.

Confused?

Before You Climb the Collaboration Mountain: Identify Risks Upfront

2011-09-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

I often work with groups of smart people who can’t collaborate. Why is it so difficult? There are, of course, multiple reasons, some of which have to do with individual egos, mindsets, skills, and behaviors, as well as a history of bad experiences in the past.

What I find most often is not a lack of good intentions or goodwill, or a surfeit of anti-collaboration behaviors, but a lack of awareness and respect for the causes of collaborative pain. Smart people believe that it should be relatively easy for them to come together and solve problems (after all they are smart), but often their expectations are dashed. Greater realism and awareness can empower people to collaborate by raising the level of risk alertness in the group.

Chris Huxman and Siv Vangen developed the concept of collaborative inertia, and they see it as happening when, “the output from a collaborative arrangement is negligible, the rate of output is extremely slow, or stories of pain and hard grind are integral to successes achieved.” (1)

Be alert to risks associated with:

· Overly idealistic views that see collaboration as always desirable

· Differences in organizational cultures, processes, tools, and policies represented in the group

· Different interests and goals

· Likelihood that benefits will only be realized long-term

· Likely complexity of collaboration structures and processes

· Likelihood of political maneuvering, game playing

· Differences in professional languages, practices, and cultures

· Differences in fluency of the group’s working language

· Tensions and conflicts already existing between members (the burden of the past); lack of trust; competition for scarce resources

· Sharp differences in power and authority levels

· Pronounced skill level differences in using technology

· Too little understanding and connection with key stakeholders, sponsors

· Poor likelihood of maintaining group continuity

· Collaboration fatigue among members

There will always be unknown risks and uncertainties, but with a greater awareness and respect for possible risks, a group can be more proactive and vigilant.

1. Managing to collaborate: the theory and practice of collaborative advantage by Chris Huxham & Siv Evy Vangen. Routledge, 2005.

For Collaboration to Take Flight: Cultural Intelligence

2011-08-31T12:33:00.000-07:00

In a global economy, high flying collaboration is very dependent on cultural intelligence.

There have been a lot of additions to the ‘intelligence family’ over recent years with emotional intelligence (EQ) being the most famous. Cultural intelligence (CQ) has evolved out of previous approaches to cultural competence, e.g., the Do’s and Taboo’s school and the underlying value orientations of national cultures school. Neither approach really enabled people to understand how culture works nor how to adapt across a range of different cultural contexts.

Professor Martha Maznevski at the IMD business school describes CQ as “emotional intelligence across contexts.” Unlike emotional intelligence which deals with forming and maintaining positive relationships with different individuals, CQ is about forming and maintaining positive relationships with different social groups. EQ can be said to be an essential prerequisite for CQ.

As a simple working definition of CQ, let me give you the following: CQ is the ability to form and maintain productive relationships across cultures by making appropriate adaptions to difference.

CQ isn’t just for business travelers. In today’s workplace, most people work and collaborate across cultures without travelling anywhere. New communications technologies enable us to interact with colleagues worldwide, and even those who only work domestically will need to form productive relationships across cultures.

What are the key elements of CQ?

Mindset: A way of looking at the world that is (1) respectful of different values, beliefs and behaviors, and (2) is open to seeing, thinking, and doing things differently.

Knowledge: Of cultural orientations, in general, e.g., differences in task-relationship focus or individual-group orientation, along with an understanding of how these differences influence assumptions, interpretations and behaviors.

Adaptive Skills: An ability to analyze a cross-cultural interaction, decide on how to adapt, apply the chosen adaptation(s), process what happens, and tune the adaptation(s) as needed.

I’ll outline what I call The ADAPT Cycle in a future post.

Collaboration: The Six Cs Revisited

2011-08-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Six Cs developed out of my experiences with a number of French-Japanese virtual teams. There was a lot of dysfunction on the teams, and the client was making the mistake of thinking that all the dysfunctions were caused by cultural differences. Some of them were, but many were not. Mostly they were caused by a lack of what I came to call a ‘shared collaborative architecture’ – a scaffolding of performance indicators to help start, develop, and run a team.

Once the core indicators were identified, it became relatively simple for the teams to use them for creating shared operating agreements and behaviors. The performance indicators came to be known as the Six Cs. As well as best practices, I also identified a critical mindset needed for each C (post-book).

The Six Cs and critical mindsets are:

The Six Cs	Definitions	Mindsets
Cooperation	Developing supportive relationships across geographies, time zones and cultures	We help each other
Convergence	Maintaining a clear purpose, direction, and shared set of priorities across distances	We pull in the same direction
Coordination	Sharing processes, routines, tools, standards, and structure	We work together
Capability	Leveraging the knowledge, skills, and experiences on the team	We share what we have
Communication	Creating shared understandings across the team	We pay attention to one another
Cultural Intelligence	Developing an inclusive virtual workplace	We play well together

Too many teams – either co-located or virtual – lack a shared set of performance indicators for their teamwork. Performance indicators are often created for desired team outputs, but not for the quality of the teamwork itself – which, of course, is critical to achieving the outputs.

It is the responsibility of the team leader to create the conditions needed for high performance in each of the Six Cs

It is the responsibility of team member to ensure that their participation contributes to high performance in each of the Six Cs.

Enterprise-Wide Learning, Collaboration, and the Power of Alignment

2011-08-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Globalization used to be a race to create company footprints around the world. Today, those early globalizers are seeking greater integration and alignment – organizing and enabling distributed resources, like talent, to fast-track along a common strategic direction. From the title of this posting, you might think that I’m going talk about enterprise-wide learning management systems, but that’s not the case. Learning management systems are excellent vehicles for delivering consistent enterprise-wide learning, but I want to talk here about something much more fundamental.

Building consistency and alignment

Let me begin by distinguishing between consistency and alignment. Think about geese swimming on a pond. Their individual behaviors are consistent with being geese (we see the same behaviors repeated by geese everywhere), but they are unaligned behaviors. Now think about the same geese in the air, flying in their ‘V’ formation; their individual behaviors are still consistent with being geese, but those individual behaviors are now collectively aligned to achieving a shared purpose – migration to a common destination. Consistency is related to repetition; alignment adds the power of unity and direction.

Looking at training program portfolios offered in many companies, you will find that individual programs promote a consistent approach (e.g., process) to executing a particular skill, like collaborating. When many managers in the company learn and repeat the same process, the company will have established a consistent approach to applying the skill in the manager population. Alignment takes consistency to another level – it connects a skill like collaborating to shared purpose, direction, and strategy. What I’m saying, therefore, is that while many training program portfolios help develop consistency in skills and knowledge they fail to develop the power of alignment.

Taking a holistic view of your training program portfolio

One of the critical skills needed in today’s highly complex business environment is systemic thinking – the ability to understand not just the parts, but also the linkages and relationships between the parts – the ability to connect the dots. Associated with systemic thinking are abilities to synthesize, identify patterns, and understand interactions within the whole system.

The traditional response to a skill development need is to create a program on Systemic Thinking - which is a great first step - but such a program would most likely be, and remain, an autonomous ‘product’ within a training program portfolio. If such a skill is critical to business success, we need to be asking where else in the portfolio could this skill be explored, linked to, and reinforced. We pay a great deal of attention to individual program development in specific areas of knowledge and know-how, but very little to connective knowledge and know-how between programs.

One of the ways toward greater alignment of people resources would be a comprehensive training portfolio review. Look at your portfolio of programs as a whole, and not just the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

How?

First, start by placing every program in the context of your collective vision, mission, values and business strategy. Is the program helping generate alignment power as well as consistency? Does each program make connections to the greater why, as well as the specific what and how?

Second, look at the portfolio as a whole and look for existing connections and contradictions between programs. Yes, I’ve seen individual programs that seem to work against other programs in the portfolio; eliminate the contradictions. Then examine the existing connections between programs, e.g., reinforcement of vision, mission, values, skills, models, tools, strategies, concepts, key messages, and terminology, and ask:

• Do any of these inter-program connections need to be strengthened to deepen alignment?
• Are some connective knowledge threads missing between programs that could strengthen collective alignment?
• Can we add this connective knowledge and know-how without creating too much redundancy in the portfolio?

Factoring in company values and connective language

Reinforcement of company values in a portfolio is particularly important for creating alignment and integration, and so is the issue of creating shared terminology or connective language. So much energy and time is wasted in individuals using the same language across a business, but meaning different things.

Will an enterprise-wide learning management system guarantee people alignment in the business? Not necessarily. Greater consistency should result, but greater alignment power will depend not just on the quality of individual programs, but the vertical connections to business strategy, etc., and the integrative connections across the portfolio.

The bottom line
And so, bottom line, we need to help people see connections, make linkages, and arrive at shared understandings. New social media being introduced into organizations will help people gain connective knowledge in their individual networks, but we must complement this informal connecting of the dots with a more rigorous and systematic approach to alignment in our training portfolios.

Managing Remote Workers

2011-08-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a friend the other day who works full time from her home. She’s employed by a major US bank investigating possible account fraud. I know she enjoys her work, and gets a thrill from the chase and capture! While enjoying what she does – and eliminating the hours and costs spent commuting every week – I could tell she wasn’t thrilled by the remote working arrangement.

What were some of the issues?

· Isolation – very rare contact from her manager

· Increased misunderstandings – when the manager is heard from, the communications tend to be vague, imprecise

· Working longer hours – what was commuting time is now considered to be part of the normal working day, or that the boundaries between work and home disappear altogether

· No feedback – no expressions of thanks or “Let’s see if we can work together and streamline that process.”

· Perceived unfairness – those in HQ doing very similar work are on higher pay grades

· Out of the loop regarding opportunities – “No, I didn’t hear about that new position!”

Simply put, my neighbor’s major problem was that she was caught in the ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’ trap – a not uncommon feeling for remote workers.

The problem is not with remote working per se, but with the management of remote working. If anything is going to reveal deficiencies in management skills, it is management of remote workers.

Ten Tips

Switch perspectives – put yourself in the remote worker’s shoes for a while. What kind of positive and negative feelings and thoughts would you most likely experience? Show empathy for the tough sides of remote working.

Make contact frequently – you might think you give each of your remote workers a lot of your time, but they will perceive the time you spend as far less. And don’t make every contact about work; build a relationship and develop trust.

Make expectations clear – don’t leave remote workers trying to read your mind. Distance amplifies uncertainty, and it is the role of the remote manager to provide a sense of structure through clear roles and responsibilities, precise objectives, and performance measures. Create ways by which remote workers can monitor their own performance and not always have to wait for your feedback.

Be accessible – don’t disappear into the virtual black hole, never to be seen again. Let remote workers know how they can best contact you, and when. Share your calendar.

Promote network building – remote workers may not work as a team, but they can still support each other, share knowledge and best practices, and establish a ‘virtual water cooler’ – through social media, for example.

Standardize – create standard tools, templates and processes where you can. The research points to higher productivity levels among remote workers, but they can’t be if they often have to invent and reinvent their own ways of working.

Stay alert – look for warning signs that all is not well, e.g., being unresponsive, changes in the tone of communicating. Act quickly to resolve any issues because distance tends to make small problems big problems very quickly.

Close the feedback loop – feedback and coaching can be wonderful gifts, but sometimes distance causes them to be left open-ended. It is easy to lose track and miss following through effectively, and that can feel like neglect leading to resentment.

Inspire - it’s so easy to lose sight of people’s emotional needs when they’re at a distance. In my view, remote management should be made up of about 40 percent management and 60 percent leadership. The management side can facilitate work getting done efficiently and effectively, but that by itself doesn’t engage people. Let remote workers know how their work is important to the bigger picture - how it contributes to the success of the unit, the division, the organization, to the wider community. We all need to feel we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, and for remote workers to feel that way requires the inspirational touch as well as the transactional instruction.

Focus on what matters – results are what matter, not whether someone has sat handcuffed to a computer for 8 hours or more (the ‘presenteeism’ school of management thought). For some managers this requires a mindset shift, and a letting go of fears about ‘What are they doing out there?’

With clear accountabilities, objectives and measures – and with treating people with respect and consideration no matter where they are located – our remote colleagues can be extraordinarily productive and successful.

Fast Track Your Collaboration Through Patterning

2011-08-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

Good collaboration requires the formation of collaboration patterns. What are these?

Any collaboration contains problems that recur repeatedly, and a collaboration pattern is a reusable methodology - or repeatable set of behaviors or activities - used by people when working together to solve these problems. According to Ellen Gottesdiener, “A pattern is a description of a known solution to a specific type of problem. It documents a core insight or instructive information, so people can solve problems quickly and effectively.” (1) Context is a critical factor; specific patterns are right for some contexts, but not others.

Over time, collaboration patterns will emerge in a group, but productivity can be established quickly if primary patterns can be identified and agreed upon early. Patterns save time; reduce uncertainty, learning, fragmentation, and redundancy; and develop cohesion.

In Where in the World is my Team? I presented what I call a collaborative architecture - The Six Cs. (2) One way to think about this architecture is as a form/container for collaboration patterns. In the chart below are the Six Cs along with associated ‘problems’ and some potential collaborative activities that could benefit from patterning early in the game.

The Six Cs	Problems	Some Candidates for Patterning
Cooperation	Developing supportive relationships across geographies, time zones and cultures	Partnering Managing conflict Negotiating Sharing
Convergence	Maintaining a clear purpose, direction, and shared set of priorities across distances	Goal setting Strategizing Planning Prioritizing
Coordination	Sharing processes, routines, tools, standards, and structure	Designing Decision-making Resourcing Monitoring
Capability	Leveraging the knowledge, skills, and experiences on the team	Eliciting Capturing Transferring Problem solving
Communication	Creating shared understandings across the team	Dialoging Running Meeting Sensemaking Using technologies
Cultural Intelligence	Developing an inclusive virtual workplace	Learning Adapting Leveraging Co-creating

By forming and integrating collaboration patterns early, a group can accelerate its drive to high performance.

(1) Ellen Gottesdiener, Decide How to Decide, Software Development Magazine, vol. 9, no. 1

(2) Terence Brake, Where in the World is My Team: Making a Success of Your Virtual Global Workplace, Jossey-Bass, 2008

Do You Speak VUCA?

2011-08-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

Never the same wave twice

VUCA is an acronym describing many of the conditions and situations we face today – from battlefields to business environments. It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. It derives from military vocabulary used in relation to strategic leadership at the U.S. Army War College, and has been in use since the late 1990s. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Volatility: The rapid rates of change in information and situations. Rapid changes in an environment require adaptive and innovative decision making. Also required are better ways to anticipate the future (foresight).

Uncertainty: The inability to know everything about the current situation and the difficulty of predicting what the effects of a change now will be on the future. Leaders must be willing to take measured and prudent risks, assess risk accurately, and develop risk management strategies.

Complexity: The web of cause and effect relationships have become much more complex in a global and technologically connected world. Leaders must avoid the temptation to address symptoms quickly and apply short-term solutions.

Ambiguity: The difficulty of understanding what is happening in many situations or of identifying what is significant. There is an increased chance for misreading situations because the reality might be interpreted in more than one way, or observers might have insufficient mental models to make sense of what is happening. Leaders need to create a climate of openness and questioning to uncover different perspectives.

In his book, “Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present,” Bob Johansen of the Institute of the Future says:

· Volatility yields to Vision

· Uncertainty yields to Understanding

· Complexity yields to Clarity, and

· Ambiguity yields to Agility

Speaking VUCA doesn’t grant us a greater degree of control, but it does enable us to look at challenges in a more sophisticated way, as well as help us calibrate our expectations appropriately. It also provides a compelling rationale for why it is so important to bring diverse perspectives, experiences, and skills together in collaboration.

Collaboration Defined: Back to Basics

2011-08-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

Let’s get down to basics.

What do we mean when we talk about ‘collaboration’? And how does it differ from words with a family resemblance like ‘cooperation’, ‘coordination’, and even ‘teamwork’. Let me start with a broad definition of collaboration:

People with different skills and perspectives co-creating ‘something’ that none of the individual members could have created alone.

The ‘something’ could be anything from new understandings about a problem or solution, a new process or product or event. As Michael Schrage says in his book Shared Minds: “. . . there is nothing routine about it. Something is there that wasn’t there before.”

So how does this differ from related terms?

Cooperation: Is about saying and doing things that make making working with others an agreeable and constructive experience. A group can be cooperative, however, while only producing a routine outcome. Cooperation can simply be compliance.

Coordination: Is about all the parts of a system working together efficiently – each part knows what to do, when to do it, in what order, and where the output needs to go next. It’s about efficient and effective relationships between the parts, but like cooperation it may not produce anything that wasn’t there before.

Teamwork: Is about working together to achieve a shared purpose, but teamwork itself doesn’t necessarily reach the level of ‘collaboration’. Some teams might be geared toward achieving relatively routine, non-surprising outcomes. You want the team to comply with policies, procedures and processes rather than collaborate and create.

That said, in today’s complex environment in which new and unexpected challenges occur frequently, a good degree of collaborative effort is likely to be necessary in most teams.

Defining a Global Mindset

2011-08-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

Global Mindset: Beyond Diversity

The term ‘global mindset’ is used here, there and everywhere, but what does it mean in the context of business leadership?

Recently, a client sent me an article that they had been using to educate their global leaders. It was called, ‘Cultivating a Global Mindset’ by Professors Anil K. Gupta and Vijay Govindarajan, Academy of Management Executive, 2002. Vol. 16. No. 1. It was a very good article in many ways, but I felt its view of a global mindset was far too narrow:

“We would define a global mindset as one that combines an openness to and awareness of diversity across cultures and markets with a propensity and ability to synthesize across this diversity.”

Taking account of cultural and market diversity is an important element in a global mindset, but it is only one element. It doesn’t take into account the range of issues and decisions that a global leader is faced with, many of which lie outside the diversity space per se.

In my view, a global mindset is:

An expansive way of seeing and thinking that grasps the individual, team, and organizational challenges and opportunities triggered by operating in a complex global business environment.

For the advantages of this expansive mindset to be realized, we need to connect it to leadership decision making via four global operating principles (principles I had first outlined in The Global Leader, McGraw-Hill, 1996).

Integration: Making decisions that promote the ability of the organization to capture the economic benefits of global standardization while learning from, adapting to, and leveraging value-generating market, psychological, cultural, and operational diversity.

Flow: Making decisions that speed the flow of resources around the company to where they can add most value at any point in time. Resources include: people, information, knowledge, skills, and capital.

Leverage: Making decisions that use ‘global leverage points’ to best advantage (leverage points being points in a system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything).

Optimization: Making decisions that produce best possible results for the business as a whole, not just the parts for which we have primary responsibility.

Going global is as much about mindset as capital investment, but let’s make sure what we call a global mindset takes much more than diversity into account.

Virtual Velocity: The Speed to Human Connectivity

2011-08-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons that people like me exist is to help increase virtual velocity. I’m not talking about the speed of technological connections (instantaneous takes some beating unless we can create technologies that connect us even before we have thought about connecting – would that be pretaneous?)

No, I’m talking about the speed to human connectivity – in other words the speed at which we can create a shared experience of mutual understanding about how we each feel, think, and do. I’m not saying we would agree with each other’s feelings, thinking and doing, but we would each have a clear understanding of one another.

Even working face-to-face we might not come to know and understand each other very well; the virtual dimension just adds another layer of complexity to building relationships.

Working in a virtual network – as many of us do – requires partnering, and partnering requires what Gervase Bushe in his book Clear Leadership calls ‘collaborative organizing’. His intent in the book is to address two problems detrimental to collaborative organizing:

1. We each create our own experience although we think others create it. We each have a unique experience, so who is having the right experience?

2. We are sense-making beings and make up stories about others so that we can fill in the gaps of what we know about their experience.

The result is ‘interpersonal mush’ - interactions based on stories people have made up about each other, but have not checked out. The antidote is interpersonal clarity generated from learning conversations in which we get to know each other’s experience. With interpersonal clarity we are able to change and improve our communication, problem solving, and conflict resolution.

Virtual space is one big petri dish for forming and developing stories about those we may never meet in person. Typically, virtual communications give fewer clues about what we are experiencing. Given differences in cultures and communication styles our stories can be extremely distorted and damaging.

And so, virtual velocity is our speed in achieving interpersonal clarity (human connectivity) in our virtual space. A space in which we have mutual understanding about how we each feel, think, and do.

Designing a Collaboration Strategy

2011-08-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

Many organizations want to develop greater collaboration across their geographic, business, and functional borders. What do they hope to accomplish?

We have to understand that collaboration can mean different things to different people in different contexts, but, in my view, organizations are usually seeking benefits in one, or more, of the following:

Productivity: As more jobs become increasingly interdependent, greater cooperation and collaboration is required between individual knowledge workers across borders.

Coordination: More and more work is being carried out by project teams of distributed knowledge workers, and greater collaborative efforts are needed to ensure the efficient and effective functioning of these teams.

Solutions: Many business problems today cannot be solved with limited individual expertise or one- dimensional thinking. Expertise collaborating across the organization – and even with those ‘outside’ of the organization, e.g., customers, suppliers, partners, distributors – is often required to solve the ‘wicked’ problems and dilemmas resulting from today’s complex business environment.

Game Change: Innovation is high on the list of many businesses because today’s competitive advantage can easily be tomorrow’s old news. Diverse thinking and perspectives working together help generate game-changing ideas and create new competitive spaces and sources of revenue.

Different metrics are required for each of these areas of performance. For example:

Productivity: Speed, cost, quantity and quality of knowledge outputs, e.g., data gathering and analysis, reports, technical or customer support.

Coordination: Speed and cost from project initiation to project completion; quality of project outputs; knowledge sharing, learning, and application rates; process improvements identified and implemented.

Solutions: Speed and cost from problem identification to quality solution creation and implementation.

Game Change: Speed, cost, and quality of new innovations generating new competitive advantages.

One way of looking at these different areas of performance is to think of them as being on a spectrum between Surface and Deep Collaboration:

Surface Deep

Productivity Coordination Solutions Game Change

In developing collaboration strategies, we need to be thinking about what is most important for us to accomplish along this spectrum – now, short-term, and long term. Do you know which benefits of greater collaboration are most important to your organization, in what timeframe, and when and how they can best be realized?

Before going further, let’s think about some of the potential elements of a collaboration strategy (1):

Culture: How to develop shared values, assumptions, norms, and behaviors that support collaborative mindsets.

Structure: How to organize to achieve our goals more efficiently and effectively through greater collaboration, e.g., power/authority distribution, roles and responsibilities.

Processes: How to manage flows of activities and communications between knowledge workers and groups to generate collaborative advantage.

Incentives: How to create rewards and recognition systems to support the difficult balancing of competitive and collaborative behaviors.

Talent: How to identify, develop, and sustain competencies needed for working and leading in a collaborative environment.

Technology: How to utilize new technologies/platforms to enable quality cross-border collaboration.

Now, all of these elements can be important contributors to a collaboration strategy, but given the benefits you are seeking – and over what timeframe – which elements might it be best to focus on. For example, changes in the organizational culture are likely to be needed over time, but culture change is very difficult to accomplish. If quicker results are needed, in productivity say, it is probably best to focus your immediate collaboration strategy on technologies, talent development, and most importantly, incentives. By incentives, I don’t just mean financial rewards, but those that support intrinsic motivational factors like “engagement, communication, and a sense of common purpose and identity.” (2)

There is no easy formula for deriving the benefits of greater collaboration, but be sure to think carefully about what benefits you are looking for, whether they require surface or deeper collaboration, what elements of a collaboration strategy will help you achieve those benefits now and in the short/long term, and if you have appropriate measures to support your efforts.

(1) Elements inspired by Jay Galbraith’s Star model of organizational development.

(2) Quote from “The Unselfish Gene” by Yochai Benkler in the Harvard Business Review, July-August, 2011.

Economies of Expertise

2011-08-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

Access to talent worldwide, broadband connectivity, powerful collaboration tools, and fierce global competition are causing a recalibration of thinking about sources of economic advantage. Traditionally, the key sources are associated with economies of scale and scope, so let me start by defining those:

Economies of scale: cost advantages gained from efficiencies when a firm produces a lot of the same product – when production increases the average cost per unit falls due to fixed costs being distributed across a larger number of units.

Economies of scope: cost advantages gained from efficiencies resulting when a firm produces a variety of products that draw on the same resources. For example, research & development, design or marketing costs being used across product lines, and not just one.

Are these still important? Yes, absolutely! But as the world around us changes, so must our thinking.

A prime candidate for being factored into the economic equation is economies of expertise, although you won’t find many references to this concept on the Internet. I first came across the term in a blog posting by Rod Brown (http:investmentinnovation.wordpress.com) in which he summarizes a speech in Sydney by Michael Cannon-Brookes (IBM VP – Business Development, China and India). Some essentials of the speech are:

· Work flows to places where it is done best

· Economies of expertise describe firms that take advantage of skill sets wherever they are

· The horizontalization of business needs collaboration to deliver maximum results

This isn’t about reducing costs by finding cheap labor overseas to perform low skill jobs. In a speech given by Glen Boreham, also of IBM, he says “Global sourcing . . . once purely a cost play . . . is now an expertise play.”

One response to leveraging skill sets has been the creation of centers of excellence. These centers can be located where the skills are. IBM Asia has HR functions mostly in Manila, procurement in Shenzen, accounts payable in Shanghai, accounting in Malaysia, and help desk/customer services in Brisbane, Australia where there is a significant multilingual pool of expertise.

Locating a function where specific skills are advanced and abundant certainly can yield economic benefits – possibly lower salaries (although salary gaps between the developed and developing economies are closing all the time), but also economies of scope in that each specialist function provides services across businesses and product lines. A concentration of skills will also generate higher levels of productivity and quality.

Before continuing, let me say that I see the economies I’m talking about here as being combinations of efficiency (producing results quickly with little wasted effort or resources) and effectiveness (producing the desired effect). You can do something efficiently, but without producing the desired effect. You can also do something effectively, but in an inefficient way. It is the optimal combination of the two that generates powerful results.

If we take the essence of economies of expertise to be: Taking advantage of skills sets wherever they are (which I believe to be correct), we can distinguish between at least three sources of economic benefit:

Individual Expertise (IE): Utilizing the expertise of a specific individual in completing a task most efficiently and effectively - no matter where that individual is located.

Distributed Expertise (DE): Utilizing the expertise of two or more individuals - at different locations - in efficient and effective collaborative efforts to produce outcomes that no individual could have produced alone.

Concentrated Expertise (CE): Utilizing the combined expertise of a specialized, defined group efficiently and effectively across multiple business areas.

Accountability for achieving global economies of expertise lies principally with the Chief Learning Officer, but responsibility lies with other senior executives, managers, and project team leaders who make frequent decisions about the organization of work and leveraging of expertise. Scale and scope economies must make room for another family member.

Beyond Selfishness

2011-08-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, I come across a piece of writing that makes me want to punch the air and shout, “Yes!” That happened just recently when I read Professor Yochai Benkler’s article – “The Unselfish Gene” in the July-August 2011 edition of the Harvard Business Review. What Prof. Benkler does so well, is to counter the pervasive and pernicious view that we are all born selfish; that we are driven by a narrow rationality focused only on advancing our own material interests.

I first met this view of humankind – homo economicus – many years ago in undergraduate economics classes. I remember telling my professor at the time that I thought that this was a highly reductionist and false assumption, and a very crude platform on which to base economic theory. But what professor listens to undergraduate views?

One consequence of the self-interested rationality theory is that when building human systems we assume the worst of everyone. We develop incentive systems based simply on self-interest, the carrots and sticks approach. Prof. Benkler gives a number of examples where self-interest doesn’t adequately explain behavior – Wikipedia, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and open source software like Apache. The Web is full of cooperative activities that offer little in terms of personal gain.

As well as common examples, Prof. Benkler also points to growing evidence that cooperation is not an aberration. One interesting study, showed that in experiments about cooperative behavior, about 30% behave selfishly. About 50%, “systematically and predictably behave cooperatively. Some of them cooperate conditionally; they treat kindness with kindness and meanness with meanness. Others cooperate unconditionally, even when it comes at a personal cost. (The remaining 20% are unpredictable, sometimes choosing to cooperate and other times refusing to do so.) In no society examined under controlled conditions have the majority of people consistently behaved selfishly.”

What this means is that most of our incentive systems based on rewards, punishments, and monitoring are optimized for only 30% of the population! We need systems that stimulate intrinsic motivations, engagement, and a shared sense of purpose. This doesn’t mean looking at the world through rose-colored spectacles; it means having a deeper, more complex, appreciation of human nature.

I Wish There Were More Fools in the World!

2011-07-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

What do I mean? Aren’t there enough fools in the world?

I can only describe some of the corporate cultures I’ve worked in as toxic. For example, during the first week in my first job in the U.S., my manager gave me two guidelines for working effectively in the organization (a Wall Street firm):

1. Trust no one, and

2. Murder before suicide

I was expecting a different kind of new employee orientation, but at least it was honest. It wasn’t one of those orientations where only the public ‘sweetness and light’ face of the organization is on display. Medieval royal courts were not so dissimilar from some modern organizations – powerful monarchs surrounded by fawning courtiers wheeling, dealing, backstabbing, and manipulating to gain favors from the king or queen. They are typically ‘survival of the fittest’, bullying cultures where anything goes and winner takes all. There is often, however, something missing from the modern organization – the Fool or Court Jester.

The Fool wasn’t in the Court simply to amuse – speaking truth to power was a dangerous job, but a necessary one. The Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear continually points out the mistakes made by the King (until he disappears mysteriously in Act III). Elizabeth I rebuked one of her Fools for not being severe enough with her, and it seems that James VI of Scotland was tricked by his Fool into abdicating his crown for a number of days. The Fool was making the point that the King’s habit of not reading documents before signing them could lead to unintended consequences.

We’ve seen the aftermath of toxic cultures in the recent banking crises, and the goings-on in the Murdoch media empire.

Make sure your collaborations can tolerate a Fool – someone able to uncover and challenge unexamined assumptions and beliefs, prick overinflated egos, attack conformity for its own sake, and deflate preposterous delusions of grandeur.

We are award winners!

2011-07-01T04:02:00.003-07:00

Stop press! I am delighted to announce that together with our client ArcelorMittal we have won an Excellence in Practice Award 2011 from the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD).

Everyone at TMA World and ArcelorMittal is very excited by the recognition that this win provides to the transformational enterprise wide learning partnership that we have undertaken together.

When ArcelorMittal merged to form the world's largest steel company, among a number of competing priorities were two substantial learning and development challenges; the upskilling of its management population across the globe and the need to support organizational change and alignment on an enterprise wide basis.

Through our strong and ongoing partnership with ArcelorMittal's Corporate University and global learning and development network, together we've made significant progress in addressing these challenges. You can read the details of this partnership here.

More details about the awards are available here.

The Awards ceremony takes place in October, when it'll be time to dust off our dinner suits and ball dresses!

We are emotion workers as well as knowledge workers

2011-06-15T02:15:00.017-07:00

Human beings are great imitators and mimics, In groups - whether face-to-face or virtual - we often 'catch' the strong feelings of others and converge, or synchronize, emotionally. Emotions can be triggered by what we see, what we say, how we say it, what we don't say, what we do or don't do, and how often. There are multiple emotional triggers and reactions which make our emotional lives complex and tangled - rather like my photograph of trees on the left which itself can trigger a mix of emotions (or so I'm told). But because emotions are complex and messy doesn't mean we can ignore them. No matter how rational and objective we try to keep our professional activities, we all know that emotions impact our team decision making, engagement, actions, cohesion and performance. What's interesting is how unconcious emotional contagion can be.

Very recently, Facebook data scientist Adam D.I Kramer analyzed postings by about 1 million English speakers and their roughly 150 million network friends in many countries. He found that people who used emotionally powerful words like 'happy', 'hug', 'sick' and 'vile' in their status updates generated similar emotions in later postings by their friends; friends were using more negative or more positive words (or at least fewer negative words) for up to three days after the original posting. Were people concious of this emotional contagion? Perhaps, some.

Other research indicates that negative emotions are more powerful than positive emotions, and, of course the emotions of the leader of the can have great influence. Distance can reduce awareness of - or even caring about - our emotional impact on others on the team, which is a problem. Whether we lead or participate in virtual teams, we must become more aware that we are engaged in 'emotion work' - work aimed at creating a productive emotional climate.

What does performing this 'emotion work' involve? Increased:

- Self awareness about our moods, our emotional triggers and their possible negative and/or positive impact on others

- Self-awareness about how our moods are demonstrated in our verbal, non-verbal and written virtual communications

- Ability to switch from one mood state to another - from negative to positive

- Awareness of how culture can influence the impact of emotional triggers

- Sensitivity to signals that emotions - positive or negative - are being transferred virtually and how to redirect, if necessary

- Caution about our judgement of other's ideas when under the influence of strong negative or positive emotions

- Resistance to the strong emotion of others

Some might say "Isn't this emotional intelligence stuff a bit passe?" That suggests emotional intelligence can be treated as a passing fashion, and that perhaps we need to get back to the real work of generating team performance - like setting up effective rules, processes and systems. Well, those are important, but they are only part of the performance equation. Emotions can be difficult, tangled, unpredictable, a real challenge; but it's in such challenges that profound opportunities for a team - and individual - development reside.

What Color(s) Describe Your Virtual Team?

2011-06-08T02:55:00.004-07:00

Anyone who has read my book 'Where in the World is My Team?' knows that I identified six key performance zones for successful global teamwork

Cooperation

Convergence

Coordination

Capability

Communication and

Cultural Intelligence

While effective virtual and face-to-face operational performance is critical, I've been thinking lately of the underlying emotions that support or hinder levels of performance in these zones. Can a team be given insights into its emotional profile as well as its operational profile? The two are surely related.

Obviously, there isn't one positive and one negative emotion that impacts performance in each zone, but rather a range of positive and negative emotions that impact performance across the zones. The negative emotion of fear, for example, will degrade performance in all six zones.

People often associate emotions with colors, and although I am partially colorblind, I've decided that color (and associated emotions) might be a useful way to visualize a team's emotional profile.

And so, if we take four basic colours - Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green - we can categorize positive and negative emotions associated with each one. In general, the four basic colors would be associated with these high level emotions:

Red: Desire
Yellow: Energy
Blue: Confidence
Green: Well being

Positive emotions would be signified by a light shade of each color, and negative emotions by a darker shade. If we take the color Red, a positive emotion would be excitement, while a negative emotion would be aggression. With Yellow, a positive emotion would be happiness, while a negative emotion would be frustration. For Blue, a positive emotion would be calmness, and a negative emotion would be anxiety. A positive Green emotion would be growth, and a negative emotion would be stagnation.

By identifying the type and weight of positive and negative emotions on the team, we can go deeper into the underlying dynamics of what makes the team effective or ineffective in relation to the Six Cs.

I'll continue thinking such thoughts, and will update in later posts.

The 11th Mind

2011-05-25T08:54:00.003-07:00

I recently came across the work of Fred Keeton who is Vice President for External Affairs and Chief Diversity Officer, Harrah's. Harrah's is the world's largest gaming company.

While Mr. Keeton ensures there is diverse representation of identity groups in the business, he also has another intent - cognitive diversity. His goal is to 'yield-manage' diversity to generate views radically different from the norm, and generate solutions to customer needs in new and compelling ways. He says in one interview, "The performance potential of any team depends upon the number and relevance of diverse cognitive tools it possesses".

The approach to collaboration at Harrah's can be summed up in the phrase - Diversity by Design. The term 'design' points to the fact that to yield-manage diversity a structured approach is needed, rather than simply putting a diverse team of people together and saying, "OK, show me the magic." The approach consists of the following steps:

1. Have a clearly defined business goal
2. Put together a diverse team with relevant dimensions of diversity considering the business goal
3. Create a safe environment - no fear of repercussion
4. Ensure all team member ideas are heard. The best idea wins
5. Ensure a formal structure and process to both synthesize and distill from the many ideas an actionable, scalable and sustainable solution

What struck me most was not so much the process, but an image (which, perhaps, tells you something about my own cognitive processing style). It is the image of the 11th mind.

Suppose you have a team of 10 diverse people, what the collaboration should produce is a collectively generated team member - the 11th member resulting from the active collaboration. A mind smarter than the other ten; the mind holding the best business solution.

To end with more words from Fred Keeton - "Rather than simply counting heads, our approach ensures that we make heads count."

Building Cooperation in Virtual Teams: General Guidelines

2011-03-30T06:30:00.001-07:00

Many of us work in virtual teams so often that it can be easy to forget how to make the best out of these relationships. Cooperation is key to truly productive and effective virtual team working, here are a few tips for building cooperation and collaboration:

• Meet face-to-face early in the life of the team (if at all possible) to build relationships, shared ownership and personal commitment; meet face-to-face at regular intervals if you can
• At the beginning of a project focus on establishing relationships, and not just assigning tasks; promote a shared sense of identity and belonging
• Establish a climate of enthusiastic, open, honest, and respectful communication in which all ideas are valued, listened to and explored
• Quickly demonstrate your capabilities, your integrity, and your caring for others
• Maintain a sense of presence through frequent and thoughtful communications, and fast responses
• Problem solve rather than assign blame; deal with problems in a calm, confident way
• Establish transparency, keeping promises, confidentiality, and mutual accountability as key operating principles
• Develop shared understanding of the different contexts in which team members are working - the local constraints
• Keep the whole project visible to team members, not just the parts
• Work together to determine the best way to handle conflict on the team
• Recognize and celebrate the achievements of the team

Global Working: It's Not All About Culture!

2011-02-24T10:48:00.004-08:00

This week I delivered a webinar to HR managers. Before the webinar, a colleague of mine conducted some interviews to gather more context about their specific issues. Let me say that that the topic of the webinar was to be developing cultural intelligence for managing a global workforce. Although the interview questions were specifically related to challenges of managing cultural differences, the feedback to the questions was wide ranging.

Some of the challenges were related to underlying cultural orientations like differences in value placed on individual vs. group, or shared power vs. concentrated power, but many were not.

The problem with the concept of culture is that it can be like a waste basket into which everything is thrown. This is a problem because when we do that culture becomes everything and nothing. Having just moved to California, I am now much more aware of the value of unbundling waste into various types so that it can be treated more appropriately - and maybe value derived from the treatment of different types.

Let me give you my definition of culture: The learned set of assumptions, expectations, values, beliefs and behaviors that distinguish one group of people from another. It's all about the inner world of the group, and how that inner world drives the behaviors of group members.

The challenges raised during the interviews were as much about the difficulties of global working as they were about 'culture'. Challenges raised can be divided into:
Logistics - for example, setting up and running meetings across time zones.
Infrastructure - for example,the unreliability of phone systems in emerging markets along with issues of bad roads, traffic, crime, and lack of a sophisticated technological infrastructure. When remote managers are unaware of such ground realities are very likely going to make wrong assumptions, incorrectly diagnose performance discrepancies, and make unrealistic demands - while all the time giving cultural explanations.
Expertise - for example,a lack of training given to people in local facilities in relation to company systems or necessary working methods.

The simple issue is, no amount of cross-cultural training will solve the challenges of logistics, infrastructure, and expertise. They must be dealt with on their own terms. Putting them into the catch-all of culture doesn't help managers sort through and manage the varied challenges of global working.

Collaboration: Socio and Technical Are One

2010-11-04T07:15:00.008-07:00

Despite the recession (or because of)HR leaders are preparing to expand into new markets/geographies over the next three years. This is according to a survey - Working Across Borders - published by IBM in September, 2010 (see link below). Such expansion, of course, means finding ways to work more efficiently and effectively across many types of boundary. The study found three workforce gaps Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) need to address:

Cultivating creative leaders: nimble leadership in complex, global environments
Mobilizing for greater speed and flexibility: developing greater capability to adjust underlying costs and faster ways to allocate talent
Capitalizing on collective talent: generating more effective collaboration across increasingly global teams

The CHROs rated their organizations as least effective in fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing. Seventy eight percent of the HR leaders interviewed did not think their organizations were effective at fostering collaboration and social networking. Only 19 percent of respondents regularly use collaborative technologies to identify individuals with relevant knowledge and skills, 23 percent to preserve critical knowledge, and 27 percent to spread innovation more widely. Even if companies have the IT infrastructure, they are not using it to make the best use of their global talent and intellectual assets.

The report makes some useful suggestions for HR leaders:

Weave collaboration into the way employees work:
Promote the formation and use of cross-organizational communities around strategic topic areas
Build collaborative capabilities directly into business processes and project management activities

Raise the visibility of ideas and insights
Sponsor online collaborative events to identify ideas, prioritize them, and then resource them
Incorporate all parts of the internal and external business network into the innovation process
Increase the visibility of connections between individuals/work teams to identify new trends and their dissemination

Create and share assets to drive productivity improvementCreate value through the systematic capture and reuse of individual work outcomes

While these suggestions are very useful they have a technical/process-driven flavor that will take enterprise collaboration only so far. Making the best use of a collaborative IT infrastructure to produce results requires an equally powerful set of collaborative values (backed up with highly supportive reward and recognition incentives). Once upon a time 'socio' and 'technical'were spoken of together in the same breath. We need to breathe new life in the 'socio' side and make sure it always accompanies the 'technical'.

On the 'socio' side, what sort of shared values will help you create the climate for collaboration?

Professionalism over politics
Trust over suspicion
Conversations over commands
Transparency over secrets
Problem-solving over blaming
Opening over closing
Creativity over conformity
Inclusion over exclusion
We and me over me
Yes/and over yes/but

The list could go on and on. You might want to be a bit more creative:

Circles over triangles
Fire over ice
Fluids over solids

Just as long as you share the same meaning!

And, the link to the IBM report is here!

A post by Terry’s Shameless Promotion People!

2010-10-19T06:58:00.008-07:00

Latest Reviews on ‘Where in the World is My Team’ from Amazon.com

Superb flow of thoughts into the complex topic of virtual teams, August 20, 2010
This book is a recommended course reading, which implies I had to read it. Fortunately, it turns out to be great fun while acquiring knowledge. It's the same point the main character "SHE" articulated in her TV interview... working (gaming) could be fun. If the goals are set properly and each team member knows with clarity what to undertake... he or she will always look forward to beginning the game the the next day. This is a highly recommended read for those working within a multicultural environment not necessarily only for virtual teams.

Structure with a sense of comedy, August 11, 2010
Appreciated both the technical detail as well as the fiction aspect of making this a more interesting read. The human theory side of it has been very useful in working with my teams as well as working with local HR staff in defining gaps in our training procedures.

Innovative business book that is ahead of its time, June 4, 2010
Great book that is very useful to anyone working with global and/or virtual teams (and who isn't these days?!) It is not your average 'business' book and is all the better for it. Written from the perspective of Will adds humour and realism to the problems we all face every day, yet the recommended actions at the back are extremely valuable. I really like the easy to follow, logical structure and the issues that are easy to relate to. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to work better in teams.

Find out more about the trials and tribulations of Will Williams as he navigates the tricky waters of virtual collaboration in Where in the World is My Team.

Virtual Imagination

2010-07-28T07:53:00.009-07:00

Wow! When I first saw this video on YouTube, I was lost for words. It takes 'virtual' to another level, and demonstrates that we haven't even begun to explore where we can go in virtual space.

Eric Whitacre is a conductor and composer. He composed a piece call lux aurumque, and made a video of himself conducting the piece - no singers or instruments; he conducted the piece in silence just from hearing the music in his head. He watched the video and added in the piano accompaniment track, and created the sheet music. These he made inro a free download to the web.

Singers began posting their individual tracks, obviously without hearing or seeing anyone else. Eric did call for virtual'auditions' for the soprano solo. Putting all the tracks together was managed by the very talented Scott Haines. The result is stunning. Eric's ultimate goal is to write an orginal piece for a virtual choir and have its world premiere in cyber-space, with hundreds or even thousands of people singing alone, together. Go nowto! Let your virtual imagination soar.

Speak With Your Mind, Not Just What's On Your Mind

2010-06-21T12:43:00.003-07:00

Speaking comes so naturally to many of us that we often lose sight of those who are listening. If we kept our listeners in mind, we would speak with our minds engaged. Here are a few tips for speaking in a virtual space:

Environment: Try to eliminate any background noise or distractions - anything that could interfere with you understanding others and others understanding you

Pace: Think about who you have on the line. Are there any non-native speakers on the call or individuals who might find your accent challenging? If in doubt, slow down. Check with those on the call if you are speaking at a comfortable pace

Clarity: Articulate your words and phrases clearly. Don't rush over words or speak in a low voice that causes people to strain to hear you

Precision: Try to avoid abstract and vague words and phrases, e.g., 'as soon as possible'. Be specific

Simplicity: Use simple words and short sentences. Make sure everyone on the call will understand any jargon or acronyms you use. Stay away from using slang as it can cause great confusion

Intonation: Be expressive. Put verbal emphasis on important words or phrases. A monotone voice will also cause people to lose attention faster. Use your voice to highlight and engage. Smiling while speaking can also make the voice sound brighter

Courtesy: Keep interruptions to an absolute minimum. Let non-native speakers finish their thoughts, and don't try to finish their sentences. Ask permission before putting anyone on speaker phone

Length: Be concise. Keep your continuous talk time short; people lose attention and could miss important information. Break up what you have to say into small chunks

What Kind of Web Animal Are You?

2010-06-09T09:43:00.004-07:00

According to the BBC I'm a Web Elephant. What does that mean?

Slow-Moving - Web Elephants browse the Internet at a stately, methodical pace. They rarely see a reason to rush things.

Social - Web Elephants often use social networking sites to keep track of friends and family, and are happy to to rely on information from sites whose content is created by its users.

Adaptable - Given their large brains and multi-purpose trunks real elephants are very adaptable. Web elephants are also adaptable and certainly capable of multi-tasking.

It's all fun stuff, and a diversion from task, task, task. What Web Animal are you? Find out at the BBC's Virtual Revolution site http:www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution. Consider this blog a virtual watering hole - all Web Animals welcome, unless -of course - all you want to do is snarl and bite.

Don't Collaborate Unless You Have To!!!!!!

2010-06-03T12:06:00.009-07:00

Occasionally, I will review the books I have on my shelves. Actually many are not on the shelves, but standing in piles on the floor and on various pieces of furniture. There is no real order among my books; my theory is that if books are scattered randomly the weird juxtapositions that occur will stimulate my creativity. It does happen, but the time spent searching for a specific book can be painfully long. Why don't I put the books into some kind of order? Well, it's hard to let go of a theory once you've adopted it. But I digress!

On a recent safari through my books, I came across one that deserves to be brought back into the light. It's called Managing to Collaborate: The theory and practice of collaborative advantage by Chris Huxham and Siv Vangen, Routledge, 2005.

In this age when everyone seems to be talking and hyper-ventilating about collaboration, it's always good to stay rational and ask the simple question, "Do we need to collaborate?" The authors mentioned above developed the theory of collaborative advantage which, to paraphrase,is the synergistic result of collaborative activity; the achievement of something beyond what could have been achieved by individuals working alone. To read some of the current commentary on collaboration, it seems to be collaborative advantage all the time! No one should underestimate the difficulties of achieving successful collaboration; it's tough, tough work. I'm not talking about mass collaboration here which is another animal.

What I like about about Huxham and Vangen is how they also hightlight the opposite of collaborative advantage - collaborative inertia (the dark side). In a paper in Organizational Dynamics, Vol 33, 2004, they say "collaborative inertia captures what happens very frequently in practice: the output from a collaborative arrangement is negligible, the rate of output is extremely slow, or stories of pain and hard grind are integral to successes achieved." They leave with the sage advice - DON'T WORK COLLABORATIVELY UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Good collaboration begins with understanding the value that collaboration can bring (or not) to solving a problem, innovating,executing a plan, or working through an issue. Good collaborators know when not to collaborate, as well as when to bring others on board.

Think about collaborating when the problem and the solution are unclear, or the problem is clear but the solution is not. When problems are 'wicked' - collaborate. Don't waste time forcing collaboration on relatively simple problems with simple solutions.

Book Review on "Where in the world is my team?"

2010-05-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:Where in the World is My Team? As you'll see from Slide 5, my virtual gym membership is really paying off!

Book Review on "Where in the world is my team?"

View more presentations from alevates.

HIPerWall: Really Big Collaboration, Really Big!

2010-04-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Photo: Anne Helmond

I just learned about HIPerWall from John Sviokla's blog posting "It's Time to Reinvent Knowledge Work." You can access the blog here!.

The HIPerWall - or Highly Interactive Parallized Display Wall - is a spinoff from the University of California at Irvine (UCI, and is based on research and technology at UCI's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). Basically, the HIPerWall's software, enables a very large electronic canvas for creating very large video walls out of standard computer, monitors, and an Ethernet network. John didn't mention the wall itself, but a link in his blog took me to an article about two Calit2 affiliated professors (Steven G. Potkin and James H. Fallon) who were using a wall to help them identify the genes associated with schizophrenia (something one of my sons is also working on, and so I was further intrigued).

The researchers had to try and find patterns in a huge amount of data that could help them connect the millions of dots into a genetic picture. The 200-million-pixel,40 by 10 foot wall gave them larger-than-life views of their data sets at very high resolutions. As the Calit2 article said, ". . . they could scrutinize multiple data set sets simultaneously, comparing and contrasting images while they rotated, dissected, spliced and superimposed them." The wall also facilitated collaboration with other researchers in cognitive science, physics, informatics, computer science, neuroanatomy, statistics and genetics. The data was dynamic, could be grouped in many ways (e.g., gender, severity of illness). Before such a high-tech visualization tool, researchers had to grind their way millions of data-gerated numbers.

Use of the wall led to the identification of two genes associated with schizophrenia, and the researchers are now investigating genetic risk factors for Alzheimers.

As John says in his blog, other organizations (such as businesses) need to learn from these labs and consider how their own knowledge workers and potentially high-value teams think together, use information together, innovate together, learn and re-learn together. Tools like the HIPerWall not only help generate new knowledge, they feed curious imaginations that will disturb and overturn existing paradigms,and so present us with new ways of seeing. As Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Imagination is where knowledge begins life.

To learn more about the HIPerWall you can visit here. You can also see a number of videos on YouTube, including ones where researchers are playing Guitar Hero 2 on the wall. Fun times!

Emerging Markets Are Pretty Developed on the Collaboration Front

2010-04-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

In May 2009, Frost & Sullivan conducted an online survey of 3,662 Information Technology and line-of-business decision-makers in 10 countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States. The study - sponsored by Verizon and Cisco - wanted to find out how professionals work together using advanced collaboration tools. Here are some of the most interesting findings:

China is embracing unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) tools - 89 percent use some form of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as their primary phone service

India sees the biggest return on their collaboration investment They have the lowest average spend on UC&C, but the highest return on capital

India is the most telecommute-friendly country, followed by Hong Kong, and with the US and China third

China has the largest proportion of its firms currently having both desktop videoconferencing (69 percent) and immersive video (62 percent. India is second and the US third

Chinese organizations ranked first with the highest percentage of companies giving advanced collaboration tools to their non-management employees. The US ranked second and Australia third

Differences in regional perceptions are very interesting:

Asia-Pacific
Feel that communications technologies give them control over their lives, and allow for a better balance between life and work
Are most concerned about the security of their information
Like the ability to telecommute
Find the technologies are invalauble to help them stay in the loop and keep business moving forward

Europe
Like to work in the office, as opposed to working from home
Are least likely to multitask while on a conference call
Prefer in person meetings
Are least likely to disconnect from communications technologies in order to preserve their privacy

US
Highest percentage of all regions who believe that they lead busy professional lives
Readily substitute communications technologies for business travel
Like the ability to telecommute, and if possible, would do most of their work from home
Guard their privacy, often sending calls to voice mail or disconnect instant messaging so as not to be disturbed

The global collaborative infrastructure continues to develop at a rapid rate. Unfortunately,work cultures usually drag behind for many years, and so the value-generating potential at the Talent-Technology interface remains just that - potential. But, let's change that!

The Web is . . .

2010-02-17T11:30:00.000-08:00

I am a great admirer of the BBC. Born into a working class family in England, and attending not-so-stellar schools, a good deal of my education came from BBC programming. I learned recently that the BBC is trying something different. They are producing a documentary on the story of the World Wide Web with the working title of Digital Revolution. The plan is to create an open source documentary, meaning it is opening up the production process as much as possible. Everyone is invited to join the process of answering the question 'The Web is . . .?' Not that there can be one answer, of course.

Everything about the production is a work in progress - from the thinking, the website, and even the program title. The production team will be blogging and sharing their thinking as the project moves forward, and even putting up rushes from the filming. Throughout the process, the team will be seeking advice and asking for stories from those who join in.

Want to join in? Click here!

Talkin' 'Bout Our G...G...Generations: The Hip and the Sage

2009-12-08T10:20:00.001-08:00

You probably know that there are currently four generations functioning side-by-side in today's workplace. I use the term 'functioning' loosely because much of what I read about generations fits into the 'WhineLit' genre - "Who are those people!!!!". Not so with Lisa Haneberg's new book Hip & Sage: Staying Smart, Cool and Competitive in the Workplace (Nicholas Brealey, 2009). Lisa's ambitious goal is to catalyze a revolution - "There is nothing so powerful and transformative as a strong partnership and collaboration between our sages and our youths." Her view is that those professionals who nurture hipness and sageness will have a competitive advantage over those that don't.

What does it mean to be 'hip' and or 'sage'?

Hipness is an ability to communicate, connect, and collaborate with those in younger generations. It is a key factor in one's ability to engage and influence younger workers like the Millenials.

Sageness is our natural strengths and characteristics, goals and priorities, and experiences that show up in our skills, drive, judgment, and knowledge.

Hip & Sage isn't just a philosophical text on the need for the generations to learn from one another. It's also very practical with lists, worksheets, web resources, reflective questions, and examples to guide the way. I particularly like the section where she asks us to reflect on how our beliefs fuel our behaviors and our ability to change. I also like where she talks about collaboration - as opposed to participation - and how it is as much a mind-set as a set of actions.

The book begins with the wonderful story of how the veteran singer Tony Bennett came to collaborate with the relative youngster k.d. lang. They were both backstage at a Grammy show and he simply walked over to her and said, "I'm Tony Bennett and someday I'd love to sing with you." How many of us Boomers can walk over to a young Millenial and say, "Please teach me about social networking." The world is changing much too fast to try and learn everything by ourselves.

Check out her book, and also visit her Hip & Sage website
here

How Long Before the Virtual Smile Scanner?

2009-11-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting piece in the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper today about a Japanese train company that is scanning employee faces to see if they smile properly. The smile scanning software is used to make sure that employees are greeting passengers with enough enthusiasm.

Every morning, employees smile into a camera attached to a computer. The smile is analyzed in terms of factors like eye movement, lip curvature, and facial wrinkles. A smile is rated on a scale of 0 (suicidal) to 100 (delirious).

Advice is given to those who need it - "You are too serious," "Lift up your mouth corners". An ideal smile will be printed out for the employee to carry around as reference during the day.

They do say that when a person smiles on a telephone call, you can hear the smile in the person's voice. It certainly doesn't do any harm to smile when you're writing an email or an instant message. A smile does have enormous communicative power. But do I want the webcam sitting on my computer screen to scan my face each morning and print out an ideal smile for me? Nah!

What To Look For When Hiring People To Work Virtually

2009-10-30T11:12:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's a picture of me working virtually in what I call Attic World - my real world office. I don't look my jolly old self because I probably haven't spoken to anyone on my virtual team in days. That can be the nature of some virtual work.

While there is no one profile for an effective virtual team member, we can, I believe, point to some very desirable characteristics. The following set of characteristics - that I first introduced in Where in the World is My Team? - can help guide recruitment, interviewing, training and development,and coaching and feedback. Ironically,given that we are talking about the new workplace, I call the framework TRADITIONS. While the new virtual workplace is different in some ways from the old, we don't need to throw out what we have valued before in our people, and start again.

Technological Competence
High comfort level with available collaborative tools
Ability to select and use the right technology for the right objective
Ability to troubleshoot and fix small technical problems
Ability to stay calm and not panic when technology fails
Understands when not to use techology

Results Orientation
Ability to stay highly focused on the virtual team's purpose and goals
Is not satisfied with just being busy, but wants to add value
Is highly self motivated to get things done despite the challenges of distance

Accountability
Has a strong work ethic
Takes personal responsibility for completing own tasks without continuous supervision
Sets high standards for own work
Doesn't free-ride on the work of others on the virtual team
Reconciles the needs and priorities of the team with local demands

Discipline
Avoids procrastination
Establishes personal routines and systems for managing own work efficiently
Follows processes and uses tools agreed to by the team
Minimizes disruption to others on the team by, for example,keeping all promises

Initiative
Spots problems early and acts proactively
Doesn't always wait for permission to fix a problem for the team
Shows great willingness to present ideas and solutions

Time Management
Responds to others on the team in a timely way
Meets deadlines and commitments
Manages workload and doesn't become overextended

Interpersonal Effectiveness
Connects with others through engaging conversations
Has ability to develop and maintain trusting relationships across distances via technology
Understands that distance can give rise to many misundertandings and demonstrates patience
Communicates clearly and precisely
Can sense and respond to the feelings and needs of others even though working at a distance
Listens very carefully to others and gives well thoughtout responses
Works hard to be constructive when things get tense

Openness
Welcomes ideas from everyone and everywhere
Demonstrates curiosity and a learning mindset
Shows a great willingness to share knowledge and skills across the team
Shows adaptability to change

Networking
Understands the importance of relationships to getting things done
Reaches out to others - internally and externally - to help build team capability
Maintains a high presence level with other team members; stays in close contact

Self Sufficiency
Works well in relative isolation with little direct supervision
Can tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty and keep going
Takes responsibility for own personal development

While it's not a polished and finely-tuned framework, it can function as a starting point for understanding the virtual worker.

Virtual Productivity Destructors

2009-09-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

VitalSmarts and the authors of Crucial Conversations recently completed a survey about workplace problems. According to the research, 13 out of 14 common relationship problems occur far more frequently in virtual teams than in co-located teams. Problems with remote colleagues are more difficult to solve, and they last longer. Common strategies for dealing with difficult remote relationships are:

Screening telephone calls
Not returning calls or e-mails
Leaving challenging people out of the loop on decisions
Avoiding working with certain people

And those are the "nice" strategies.

As the authors of the study point out, the solution isn't co-location, but communication, and they give 5 important tips:

Talk before problems start - establish ground rules for handling future difficulties
Praise early wins - acknowledge individual successes
Never raise individual concerns publicly - keep it one-to-one
Start by clarifying what you DON'T want say - point out any possible misinterpretations of what you want to talk about
Gain allies before raising problems with a group - air your concerns with others beforehand and ask for help in having a productive dialogue

X, Y, and Boom! I'm Glad I'm Virtual

2009-08-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

A recent survey (Technology Gap Survey)published by LexisNexis, and conducted by WorldOne Research takes us into the fascinating world of generational differences in the use of technologies at work. A heavy majority of white collar and legal workers - of all ages - believe that the use of devices such as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones have made people more productive; but that is where consensus ends. Let me begin by defining the generations in the study:

Gen Y - aged 28 and under
Gen X - aged 29 - 43
Boomers - aged 44 - 60

Let's look at some of the findings:

Almost three times as many Gen Y workers (39%) report using gaming programs at work than Boomers (14%)

62% of Gen Y report accessing a social networking site from work versus only 14% of Boomers

While over two thirds (68%) of all Boomers agree that PDAs and mobile phones contribute to a decline in proper workplace etiquette, less than half of Gen Y workers do

While over two thirds of Boomer workers think the use of a laptop or PDA during in-person meetings is 'distracting' (68%), less than half (49%) of Gen Y workers think so

While almost half of Gen Y workers (47%) think it's acceptable to befriend a client on a social networking site, only 24% of Boomers do

Only 35% of of Boomers say they use music playing software at work versus 60% of Xers and 58% of Yers

Twice as many Gen Y workers use video playing programs at work (51%) compared to Boomers (25%)

There is no doubt that differences such as these lead to generational tensions and contribute to sub-par teamwork and productivity. What was surprising in the study was the fact that it was the younger generation who were most concerned that the unrestricted use of software, hardware and the Internet at work may be bad for their productivity:

32% of Boomers think the Internet can decrease workplace productivity, whereas 50% of Gen Y workers think this is the case, and

53% of Gen Yers agree that personal devices such as Blackberries and mobile phones encourage too much multitasking

I'm a Boomer, but these differences cause me very little tension - I work virtually! I've often said to colleagues, "It's a good job we don't work in the same location, we would have killed each other long ago!" I can see another bumper sticker - "Work virtually and achieve World Peace."

You can download the study at a very useful site called docstoc.

Click here!

Uncovering the Implicit Message

2009-07-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

Every summer, I spend a week teaching a class on global virtual teams at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon. Working through some papers recently for the 2009 session, I came across the results of an exercise I did in 2008. The exercise aimed to demonstrate challenges when explicit and implicit communication styles encountered one another.

In the exercise, I took a blank piece of paper and at the top I (Person 1) wrote an explicit statement ("Don't do that!"). I then passed the piece of paper to the person on my right (Person 2). Her task was to look at my statement and write the same meaning, but in an implicit way. She then folded the top of the paper over my original statement, and passed it over to the person on her right (Person 3). He/she would look at the statement passed over by Person 2 and write the same meaning, but in an explicit way. Person 3 would fold the paper over Person 2's statement, and so the paper would go around the group with people writing explicit or implicit statements.

Here are the results (explicit statements are in bold):

Don't do that!
Would you mind not to do that
Don't do that!
Could you please find something else to do
Stop doing that
If you wouldn't mind focusing on something else
Look over there
When you get a chance, glance over in that direction
Look over there
If you look in that direction, you may find what you need

Things went well until the 6th person shifted from the word 'do' to the much more indirect phrase 'focusing on something else'. 'Focusing' implied something visual, and so the meaning shifted away from stopping a certain action to looking in a certain direction.

These types of exercise are always fascinating because they demonstrate just how fragile human communication can be.

Global virtual teams are often working across high context (indirect)and low context (explicit) cultures, as well as through communication media that restrict the social cues we use to interpret meaning. The chances for miscommunication increase exponentially on global virtual teans.

What's to be done? I said in Where in the World is My Team? that we must work hard to make the implicit, explicit. If we don't, we sow the seeds of confusion and conflict. Being explicit, of course, is easier for those who come from low context cultures (at least in terms of language; their actions and thinking can still be hidden from view). As a global virtual team leader, it would be my responsibility to create the conditions in which greater explicitness and transparency is the norm. How?

Create greater awareness on the team of the different styles (explicit and implicit)
Demonstrate the potential impact of the differences on team communications
Talk with the team about the challenges of working virtually, and of the need for everyone to adapt and be alert for actual or potential misunderstandings
Raise awareness of - and examine - the assumptions people have about the different styles, e.g., explicit is rude and aggressive while implicit is noncomittal and even deceptive
Provide opportunities for the team to use rich communication media so that people can see and hear more of the communication context, e.g., facial expressions, tone of voice
Establish the principle of what I will call "sitting in the audience seats" - am I saying or writing something that the audience could find vague, confusing, or worse?
Encourage team members to talk and to ask open-ended questions of one another so that misunderstandings come more easily to the surface
Role model and encourgae a style of communication that is straightforward, transparent and friendly

What's Up Doc?

2009-05-15T08:27:00.002-07:00

I'm not much of a Twitterer myself, but I can see the value for members of virtual teams who want to feel more connected. There are, of course, multiple uses for such a tool, including learning. I just came across this piece from ABC News about the use of Tweeting during surgery. It opens your eyes to the potential of this microblogging service.

Don't be alarmed! I'm sure the patient survives.

See Why Doctors Are Tweeting here!

Making a Business Case

2009-05-12T12:22:00.002-07:00

Annoying executives want to know WHY? When making decisions about introducing new ways of working (among other things)they're usually not satisfied with what, where, when, who and how? Tell me, WHY?

Here is something to tell them:

British Telecom is saving itself $355m a year through efficient use of conferencing. That figure is worth repeating - $355m or 238m British pounds! Whatever way you look at it, that's a lot of money. This figure comes from BT's Agile Working Practice, and was reported by economist.com (thanks to my TMA World colleague, Steve Pritchard for pointing it out to me).

In 2007, BT's 107,000 employees held some 751,000 audio, web, and video conferences with an average of 12 participants in each one. Conferencing is part of a holistic approach to thinking about how work gets done - making better use of company property, reducing CO2 emissions, flexible working and improvement of work-life balance, and reducing business travel. In the last 12 months,BT has reduced its expenditures on air travel and accomodation by around 70 percent.

So, there is something to say when you're asked "WHY?"

You Got Virtual Rhythm?

2009-05-05T12:23:00.004-07:00

A recent research report (Synchrony and Cooperation, Psychological Science, Volume 20-Number 1)) by Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath of Stanford University reinforces the view that human beings - along with much else in the natural world - are built to synchronize - coordinate their actions. Cultures abound in rhythmic rituals like group dancing and chanting (e.g., football fan singing)that have the appeal of enabling us to perform together in time. Synchrony appears to be built into our brains in the form of mirror neurons - imitation has been key to the emergence of cultures and human survival.

The researchers wanted to find out if collective movement triggered a more cooperative spirit, and to do this they devised some experiments. In one experiment, To quote from a Scientific American article about the study, "Relative to students in a control condition, who had simply ambled about, the students who had walked in lockstep around the campus were more cooperative in subsequent economic games, felt more connected to each other and trusted each other more . . . Participants were willing to incur direct costs to themselves to cooperate with the students with whom they had synchronized."

In both of the experiments, the participants were physically together. How do we support the 'urge to merge' in a virtual environment and build the cooperative spirit. Rhythm is the key, creating that sense of marching, dancing or singing together - finding the heart beat of the team. Rhythm created in team rituals, communications, meetings, and processes. Without rhythm, a virtual team loses any sense of cohesion.

The New World Of Work

2009-04-28T10:53:00.002-07:00

Interesting facts, interesting music. Check out this video from e3unlimited on what's going on in the global workplace.

Here!

Do You Know Wordle?

2009-04-20T09:48:00.002-07:00

title="Wordle: Where in the World is My Team?"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/763515/Where_in_the_World_is_My_Team%3F"
alt="Wordle: Where in the World is My Team?"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

Something to play with in the virtual playground.

'Rules' For The Virtual Playground

2009-04-08T10:40:00.007-07:00

As I said in an interview for a magazine recently, I'm not the kind of person who takes one idea and stretches it over two hundred pages in a business book. I tend to come up with many ideas and see where they take me. Some of the ideas will not be fully formed when they get to the page. I tend not to see ideas as objects, but as organisms that grow and evolve and yes, even die. I remember someone once telling me that my drive to tweek and change was my greatest weakness. So be it. I value the creative process and learning above any idea fixed in time.

In Where in the World is My Team? I proposed a set of ten rules that should guide members of virtual teams. Looking at them again recently, I slashed the number in half to make them more user friendly (but without losing substance). And here they are:

Be Present
Be Aligned
Be Transparent
Be Thoughtful
Be Accountable

And, if you like acronyms - PATTA.

Be Present: Use all the tools at your disposal to stay connected with the team as much as possible. Let people know 'you're there' and whether or not this is a good time to contact you. Do what you can to create a 'one team room' feel. Being Present is not just about building and maintaining relationships, it's also about staying aligned.

Be Aligned: Distance can create havoc on virtual teams because it is so easy for members to lose touch, become distracted, lose sight of what the team is trying to accomplish. To maintain focus and direction continuous information flow and feedback is critical, and this requires deep presence.

Be Transparent: Also, how can alignment be strong if a member's presence lacks transparency. All the presence in the world won't support alignment if there are hidden agendas,a lack of sharing, or vague communications.

Be Thoughtful: When working across distances via technologies team members must never lose sight of the fact that people are at the other end of the cable or satellite signal. Showing consideration for what others need in the virtual space is part of being transparent, but also provides the emotional threads that minimize distance.

Be Accountable: None of the above rules can contribute their full power if personal accountability on the team is weak. Distance can dilute the feeling of accountability and give rise to highly dysfunctional behaviors like freeloading - not keeping promises and relying on others to carry the workload of the team.

I would recommend that when virtual teams are forming they work together to embed these five interdependent rules into their way of working together. The rules don't need to be called rules, and each one doesn't need to be analyzed to death in terms of specific behaviors. Sometimes in our desire to be value-added we over-engineer. Give a team the 'rules' of the virtual playground and let them play.

Mass Collaboration Invite

2009-04-01T08:09:00.004-07:00

Don Tapscott, author of such books as Wikinomics,is inviting people (via The Times of London) to engage in a mass collaboration effort. The Internet and Web 2.0 tools are having a huge impact on businesses in all sectors. They are opening up new possibilities for how we innovate and bring together capabilities to compete. Over the next several months, you can look at Briefs posted by business leaders describing their major challenges in the new environment. You can then contribute ideas for solutions to those challenges.

You can link to the invite here! If this link doesn't work copy and paste the following into your browser http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/related_reports/business_wisdom/

Always Look On the Bright Side Of Life

2009-03-25T10:24:00.007-07:00

The work of Marcial Losada is not well known, but deserves to be. He describes two states of human functioning - Flourishing and Languishing. Flourishing is a state of goodness, generativity, growth and resilience. Languishing is the opposite - impairment and limitation. According to Losada, a key predictor of flourishing - whether of individuals, marriages, teams or organizations - is the ratio of positivity to negativity affect (the Positivity Ratio).

Working from within a nonlinear dynamic systems approach, Losada represents flourishing and languishing in a set of mathematical equations. Being mathematically challenged, I'm not going to go there except to highlight some findings.

In his work with teams dating back to 1999, Losada learned that higher functioning business teams (based on the criteria of profitability, customer satisfaction, and 360 degree evaluations) had significantly higher positivity-negativity ratios than low performance teams. Based on extensive sampling of speech acts over time, Losada found that flourishing is associated with positivity ratios of 2.9. Those identified as languishing had positivity ratios that fell beneath 2.9. There can be too much positivity on a team (that upper limit was found at a positivity ratio of 11.6346).

In a paper I will reference below, Losada and Fredrickson connect the positivity ratio to Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. What lab experiments have shown is that negative emotions narrow people's thoughts and actions (e.g., fight, flight), while positive emotions widen the range of thoughts and actions (e.g.,play, explore). Flourishing teams - those with a high positivity ratios - are characterized by:

Goodness - happiness, satisfaction
Generativity - broadened thought-action repertoires
Growth - enduring personal and social resources
Resilience - survival and growth in the aftermath of adversity

Positivity is nonlinear - small inputs can yield large outcomes. Low performing teams exhibit linear control while high performing teams exhibit nonlinear control. In the language of chaos theory, low to moderate teams are associated with point attractors (like being confined in a small cell) and repetitive limit cycles (like being confined in a slightly larger cell where you can walk around in a repetive pattern). High performing teams are associated with chaotic attractors (a space in which behavior doesn't repeat itself, but still remains within certain bounds). An example of the latter might be a team guided by a shared vision with a few simple 'rules' guiding interactions).

What does all this mean? To put it very simply and crudely good feelings go a long way to making good, adaptive, flourishing teams. Generating a culture of positivity, however, can be difficult because there is also what is called a 'negativity bias' - the bad is stronger than the good! One study at Penn State University showed that independent of culture and age, we have a 2.667 bias toward recalling more negative than positive emotions. The challenges of working together across distances probably increase that negativity bias, so always be on the lookout for mindsets and behaviors that drop you below the Losada line at 2.9!

A Changing Digital Landscape - Yes and No

2009-03-17T10:11:00.006-07:00

The International Telecommunications Union (an agency of the UN) recently published its new ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) Development Index (IDI). It looks at developments in ICTs across 154 countries between 2002-2007. End-2008 figures for key ICT indicators are also included in the report.

What does the Index tell us?

There has been a clear shift to mobile cellular technology. Last year there were an estimated 4.1 bn mobile subscriptions (6-in-10 of the world's population), up from 1 bn in 2002. About two-thirds of the mobile phones in use were in developing countries, up from less than half in 2002

Internet use has more than doubled - 23 percent of people used the Internet last year, up from 11 percent in 2002. Only 1-in-20 Africans went online in 2007.

Five percent of people worldwide have broadband Internet at home, compared with 20 percent in developed countries

The most advanced countries in ICT are from Northern Europe with the exception of the Republic of Korea. The top ten countries are:

Sweden
Korea (Republic)
Denmark
Netherlands
Iceland
Norway
Luxembourg
Switzerland
Finland
United Kindom

Eastern Europe is the most dynamic region on ICT developments

China ranked 73 in 2007 up from 90 in 2002

Countries with high income levels pay relatively little for ICT services, while those with low income levels pay relatively more - often due to high tariffs for fixed Internet broadband in some developing countries. Countries with the lowest ICT prices are:

Singapore
United States
Luxembourg
Denmark
Hong Kong (China)
United Arab Emirates
Taiwan
Sweden
Norway
Finland

Overall, the magnitude of the global digital divide remains unchanged between 2002 and 2007

Find the press release here

Lessons From Virtual Warfare

2009-02-26T05:24:00.002-08:00

I don't usually read books about war but Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P.W.Singer intrigued me. I heard the author interviewed on National Public Radio, and some of his stories seemed highly relevant to those of us soldiering in the virtual team space.

The focus of the book is on the emerging RMA (revolution in military affairs)driven by the introduction of increasingly sophisticated robotic systems into war zones. Most of us are familiar with images of the unmanned Predator drone flying over the landscapes of Iraq and Afghanistan. These planes are operated by pilots sitting at video-game-like consoles in distant places like Nevada. The drones are just one example of robotic systems that gather and transmit information about potential targets, and then carry out operations to destroy or nullify those targets. They are all part of the new networked and information-rich military force.

This is not the place to discuss the ethics of using such systems. All I will do in this posting is to highlight some of the lessons we can learn from the experiences of the virtual military.

1. Taming irrational exuberance - many people are seduced by the thrill of new capabilities while not comprehending the complexities they bring. Some in the military thought new networked capabilities would basically solve the problems of 'the fog of war' (the difficulty of getting good information in the midst of battle) and the 'friction of war' (actions rarely working out as planned). But, of course, they didn't. New capabilities bring new complexities - in battle and in our teams.

2. Creating Doctrine - tools are being generated at a rapid rate, and how we use them is driven largely from the 'bottom up'. We typically lack a workable plan or doctrine for making the best use of the technologies. At the start of the Second World War, the French had more tanks than the Germans, but it was the Germans who developed the doctrine of the 'lightning war' that coordinated air, artillery, and infantry into a concentrated force. This doctrine drove the Germans to build faster and more reliable tanks, and ones that could communicate and coordinate with one another via 2-way radios. In 1942, the US Army had to rip out radios from Rhode Island State Police cars for tanks being shipped out to North Africa. And so, we need to stop thinking of our new technologies as useful bits and pieces, and to start thinking of them holistically. Creating collaborative advantage depends on our ability to make the best use of our new technologies, not simply to use them. The emerging doctrine in the military is swarming, but that's for another day.

3. Sensing The Disconnect - the military is in the process of creating a new class of soldiers - 'cubicle warriors'. These warriors experience war differently. Pilots of the Predator drones might witness terrible events during their shifts, but then they drive home to their families, watch TV, coach soccer, and attend Parent-Teacher meetings. He or she is disconnected from the reality on the ground, even though the emotional intensity can be very high. All virtual team leaders need to be very conscious of their disconnection from the ground reality. They must be very careful of not projecting their own reality onto those of others on the virtual team - the ground realities (e.g., cultural orientations) can be very different from location to location. Just because you have an abundance of information doesn't mean you fully understand the context - realities that lie outside of your information-gathering systems.

4. Working Hard To Build Cohesion - cubicle warriors will carry out operations together, but might never actually meet. As one air force lieutenant colonel says, "Make no mistake, this war is being fought on chat." The impact of relative anonymity on cohesion can be enormous. Virtual space is isolating, and it is much harder work to build trust and connection. Without trust, units "just become chess pieces on a board." "Ninety percent of the time, you don't know who you are talking to," says one cubicle warrior and in virtual chat everyone thinks they have a vote. Military chat rooms, therefore, would often become free-for-all contests. This raised the need for chat-room etiquette - no e-mailing in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, no explanations!!!!!!!!, and no emoticons. These rules helped a smoother flow of information, but problems remain - you lose the emotions, the sense of urgency, the seriousness.

5. Doing What Adds Value - the new systems have also given rise to others classes - 'tactical generals' and 'strategic corporals'. Strategic corporals are the younger, junior troops who now have the ability to call in airstrikes, for example - something a 40 year old colonel would have done in the past. Empowerment on the ground carries a lot of responsibility, and it is the role of the distant leader to provide the parameters and guidelines for decision making. Too often on virtual teams, confusion abounds because of unclear roles and responsibilities and vague decision criteria. What about the 'tactical general'? As generals become more virtual and distant from the actual battlefield, the power of the technologies also gives them greater power to micromanage troops on the ground. As Singer says, ". . . unmanned systems are blurring the line between timely supervision and micromanagement." Because of the abundance of information, generals often overestimate how much they really know about what is happening on the ground. As one Major said, "You get too focused on what you can see, and neglect what you can't see." Generals want to get involved in the battle details and direct the action. The result is often delay and inappropriate decisions. Ground units may also get caught up in power struggles between 'tactical generals' in different locations. One ground commander talks about receiving three sets of conflicting orders for one operation. The need is for generals to practice 'enlightened control' - set the right goals, objectives,and strategy, and resist the seductive urge to intervene tactically at the micro level.

6. Focusing - it is difficult to keep virtual warriors focused and in 'battle rhythm'. A commander, therefore, must continually reinforce the criticality of the mission. One colonel talks of helping his troops have the mental and emotional sense that they are in the battle space they are looking at. He tells them that when they step into their place of work, they are stepping into Iraq or Afghanistan. As virtual team leaders, we need to think about the virtual project space we are creating, and how to keep our people focused and high engaged in that space.

7. Humanizing The Workspace - there's no doubt virtual communication can feel highly impersonal. In one study of drone pilots, two Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs were given different personalities. The one had a humanlike voice and mannerisms, and would say things to the pilot like "Hey [Joe] we did an awesome job -great working with you!" or it would even tell a joke. The other would say "Hello" in a monotone voice. During the mission, the personable AI would advise and inspire. The other would just say, "Pay attention, high priority." The personable AI team finished tasks faster.

Learn whatever you can from wherever you can even if the source gives you nightmares.

The Reality of Perception

2009-02-19T13:11:00.005-08:00

The Conference Board recently published a report on Managing a Distant Workforce. As Linda Barrington, Research Director and Labor Economist, says in the press release, "The issue of whether or not to allow employees to work at a distance is no longer a cost benefit issue - it is simply the reality of doing business."

First, I'll just bullet point a number of the findings, and then I'll think a little more about perception and reality in the virtual workspace.

Some Findings:

More than 60 percent of those surveyed agreed that managing same-site employees is easier than managing distant employees.

Nearly 80 percent believe the extra costs of enabling employees to work at a distance do pay off.

Five practices were found to be shared among effective distance teams: in-person meetings; clear agreements on accessibility; good use of group software; adequate company support; clearly defined roles for members.

Great distance managers must first and foremost be inclusive, empowering, supportive, and trustworthy. Then they must have mastery of management fundamentals, e.g., setting goals, evaluating, giving feedback and coaching. Finally they must have a very high level of competence in cultivating relationships, focusing on outcomes,, and developing employees.

One more finding points to a difference in perception between managers and distant employees: 53 percent of managers reported spending more than an hour a week developing working relationships with distant employees, but only 18 percent of employees believed that their managers spent that much time with them. Hmm . . . a perception gap.

I can't afford to purchase the report, but I would love to dig deeper into why this large gap exists. Managers who are connecting with a number of distant individuals might well feel they are spending a lot of time building working relationships with their people. Each individual, however, is only feeling a fraction of that connection time. I also wonder what managers mean by 'developing working relationships' - is delegating a task by e-mail perceived by the manager as developing working relationships'? Does the employee perceive it in the same way? A manager might spend a considerable amount of time crafting an e-mail that an employee reads in a few minutes, and so the subjective perception of time spent in developing a working relationship can be very different from manager to employee. Would the employee perceive the delegation interaction differently if it had been conducted via a telephone call? Perception is complicated and slippery, which is why I find statistical data often raises more questions than it answers. Don't get me wrong, statistical data has a place as a complement to thought (but not as a substitute for thought).

Whose perception is more accurate, the manager's or employee's? As in communication, we must look at effectiveness from the point of view of the receiver. If the message received is not the intended message the communication fails, regardless of how much time or effort the sender spent in communicating. In terms of the amount and effectiveness of time spent on developing working relationships, the focus must be on the perceptions of distant employees (receivers), not those of the managers (senders).

Get The Picture

2009-02-13T06:31:00.006-08:00

I just found an interesting press release issued on Dec. 10 2008 by Gartner Inc. (OK, for some it's ancient history). The release highlights the findings of a Gartner Report called "Video Killed the Document Czar". To summarize:

About 73 percent of the Internet audience watch a video online at least monthly

The popularity of online video with consumers will trigger a similar interest in video within enterprises

Software for the management of images and video is the fastest segment of the content management market - 44 percent of enterprises having such products today, but 22 percent intending to install it in 2009

Users will find the ability to incorporate video into other document types to be compelling, so that by 2013 more than 25 percent of content that workers see in a day will be dominated by pictures, video, or audio

Some might be shocked and horrified at the prospect of all this visual and auditory information transfer (another nail in the coffin of 'The Word'). Others might be concerned that this will lead to employees at all levels becoming star-struck, concerned more with performing and posturing rather than efficiency and effectiveness. As always, the problems won't be with the tools, but with how we use them and for what purpose.

Some years ago, my late father-in-law built a wonderful grandfather clock for my wife's older sister. When she picked it up in Virginia - in pieces - he gave her a video of how to put it together when she got home to New York. My father-in-law was too ill to travel at this time, and what he was able to do in the video was to show not just tell. He was able to communicate more of his tacit knowledge than if he had just tried writing down instructions. Sine that time, we have seen an explosion in short instructional videos on sites like VideoJug and YouTube. Imagine the power of that learning medium in virtual teams; imagine the possibilities for knowledge transfer and skill development.

Are there challenges to be overcome, and likely downsides? Of course! But for now, imagine the possibilities!

Make An Impact in 99 Seconds!

2009-02-06T10:43:00.003-08:00

Next week, I'm speaking twice at the Training Magazine 2009 conference in Atlanta, GA. My first session is the normal one hour event, and I'll speak on leadership in a virtual global workplace. The second event is called Virtual Communication: Is It For Real? and must only last for 99 seconds! Naturally, I've struggled more with the 99 second presentation than with the 60 minute one.

And so, the gist of what I'll say in just over a minute and a half is as follows:

Can virtual communication be real? By real, I mean is the result shared understandings across distances and cultures. I believe it can be, but we need to pay attention to four factors:

Regularity: We must create a communication heart beat. With regular and frequent communications we support the development of human connectivity, not just technological connectivity.

Explicitness: We must make the invisible visible, and the unspoken spoken. Distance creates many blind spots in our understandings. Clear, precise communication is a must, but so to are deep questioning and dialogue to uncover differences in assumptions and meanings.

Alignment: We must select technologies based on our objectives, not for their convenience or familiarity. Align the tool with the need. Relying on e-mail alone might help you exchange lots of information,but doesn't do an awful lot in helping you win hearts and minds.

Language: We must be vigilent in making sure we are speaking the same language, even if we are speaking the same language. What does 'keep me posted' mean to you, and what does it mean to me?

So, when virtual, think REAL.

I feel sure that's over 99 seconds. What are they going to do? Drag me off the stage kicking and screaming! Actually, I think that was mentioned in the invite e-mail.

Who's Cranky Then!

2009-02-05T11:42:00.005-08:00

Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed about Where in the World is My Team? by Wayne Turmel. If you don't know Wayne,he's a former stand-up comedian, corporate drone, and Director of Faculty at Communispond. He's now president of Greatwebmeetings.com and host of one of the world's most successful business podcasts - The Cranky Middle Manager Show.

For some reason, he's decided - out of the goodness of his heart - to run a free (yes, free)webinar on Managing Remote Teams - Using Webmeetings To Keep Them Engaged. The date is February 26, 2009 and the time is 1pm (US - Eastern Standard Time).

You can register now. Dress is optional.

Making Expertise Visible and Potent

2009-01-15T08:22:00.004-08:00

Happy 2009!

It's a fact of the human condition that we relate to one another as partial selves (I'll call it the Partial Self Axiom). Can you ever know another person completely? We would often like to, but in reality we can't. I think I know some people very well, but they can never be totally accessible or predictable to me no matter how long I have known them or how intimate the relationship has been.

But let me come down from the lofty heights of the 'human condition'to thinking about capabilities on virtual teams.

It's often the case that virtual team members have little knowledge of one another. If we are working together on a virtual team, we are unlikely to be anonymous, but we are likely to each have a high degree of partiality. We certainly don't need an intimate knowledge of each other to collaborate effectively, but we should - to maximize team strengths and potential - have a rounded picture of each other's individual capabilities and expertise. If we don't, we are likely to be quilty of waste and neglect.

Even if it is as simple as posting team member CVs on a team intranet or taking time to share work and educational experiences in a virtual meeting, find a way to conduct a Capability Audit (although that sounds rather grand). Here are a few simple, but important questions:

Team Expertise (Knowledge, Skills, and Experience)

Who on the team has what expertise?
How can we share and make best use of this expertise?
What expertise gaps do we have in relation to our goals?
Who can fill our expertise gaps and how?

Interior Design: Virtually Speaking

2009-01-10T12:02:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting at my desk in Attic World. In front of me is a large computer screen, speakers, wireless keyboard, lamp, some reference books, and a clutter of papers. On a desk extension to my left is the rest of my desktop, and a combined fax/copier/scanner. The room is full of books, more piles of papers, and filing cabinets (the piles of papers should be in the filing cabinets, but they're not). This - you could say - is my virtual workplace; the place in which I work virtually with others around the world. It's not too bad as far as Attic Worlds go, although a coat of paint and an intense cleaning wouldn't hurt.

The fact is, however, this room isn't really my virtual workplace at all. Actually, I rarely use the term 'workplace' any more prefering instead to talk about my virtual 'workspace'. That workspace only comes into existence when I interact with colleagues via the technologies available to me. It is constructed everytime I interact with them collectively or individually, and is deconstructed when the interaction ends - although, very importantly, the spirit of that space can linger and even influence future virtual workspaces.

Here's one way to think about our virtual workspaces - mindsets are the rooms we work in and move between, communications are the windows, and behaviors are the furnishings.

Ideally, the rooms will be light and well-ventilated, and stimulating to the senses. The windows should be crystal clear,and enable you to see what you want and need to see. And the furnishings should be both comfortable and flexible. Something to think about when you next interact with your virtual colleagues. We are all designers of our virtual workspaces.

Digital Leadership

2008-12-12T11:17:00.003-08:00

In February 2009,at the Training Magazine Conference, I will be running a session on "Successful Leadership in a Global Virtual Workplace." As economic conditions worsen, businesses must seek opportunities to further leverage global talent to develop new sources of competitive advantage.

Evolving digital information and communication technologies are making possible the creation of virtual workspaces (what I call WorkWebs or WoWs). What are the questions that digital team leaders need to be asking to create the most productive environments for their teams?

You can read my thoughts on the emerging world of digital leadership in a recent article in Training Magazine. You can access the brief article here.

The Training Magazine Conference will be held in Atlanta, GA - February 9-11.

Virtual Distance Unbundled

2008-12-10T13:27:00.003-08:00

In Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise, published by Wiley in 2008, Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly help us deconstruct the concept of 'virtual distance'. Virtual distance is defined as "a psychological distance created between people by over-reliance on electronic communications."

Virtual distance is said to be responsible for a:

50% decline in project success
90% drop in innovation effectiveness
80% drop in work satisfaction
83% fall off in trust
65% decrease in role and goal clarity
50% decline in leader effectiveness

It was to help minimize these potential consequences of 'working together apart' that I developed The Six Cs of Global Collaboration. But how do the authors help us unbundle virtual distance so that we can better manage its effects?

Virtual distance is comprised of three different types of distance:

Physical Distance - psychological gaps created by geographic, time, and organizational distances. "People tend to "cooperate less, deceive more, and are less persuaded when just the 'perception' of physical distance increases."

Operational Distance - psychological gaps that grow because of day-to-day problems in the workplace. Issues that are generated by:

Communication distance - a feeling of disconnectedness resulting from a lack of
shared context or from a less than optimal communication medium is used
repeatedly.
Multitasking - feeling distant from everything because of attention to
everything
Readiness distance - feeling of detachment when technical problems (particularly
those that persist) disable our ability to cooperate.
Distribution asymmetry - a sense of disconnected either by being isolated or of there being too many people in one place where a lot of power is located.

Affinity Distance - psychological gaps resulting from the feeling of emotional disconnectedness between virtual team members. Gaps can be generated by:

Cultural distance - resulting from differences in team member values
Social distance - resulting from differences in status
Relationship distance - resulting from a lack of past connections and a high
level of unfamiliarity
Interdependence distance - resulting from a sense that there is no shared vision a feeling of mutual dependence

Data gathered by the authors indicates that when virtual distance is managed properly, results can be very positive:

Innovation behaviors increase by 93 percent
Trust improves by 83 percent
Job satisfaction is better by 80 percent
Role and goal clarity rise by 62 percent
On-time, on-budget performance is better by 50 percent
Helping behaviors go up by almost 50 percent

I think Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard Reilly have made a real contribution to conceptually mapping virtual distance. Definitely worth checking out.