The New World Of Work

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

Here!

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Something to play with in the virtual playground.

'Rules' For The Virtual Playground

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

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

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

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

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.