The Web is . . .

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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