the cranky middle manager podcast has an interview this week with john blackwell about virtual work.

the interview is targetted at people who manage virtual teams and goes heavy on the people side – have informal conversations, don’t make people wake up at 3am for meetings. blackwell says they’re seeing 50-60% of workplaces having some degree of virtualness and even gives a quick case study of some benefits of virtual working.

blackwell highlights that traditionally we have had mentors and might have ‘managed by walking around’ whereas today we don’t have those role models when it comes to virtual teams. what a fantastic research area!!!! there was a study concerning people in virtual teams not growing as much as people in f2f due to this sort of mentoring/training that occurs at the watercooler & while walking around. or perhaps it was the perception they weren’t growing at the same rates. i’d have to dig to find it.

i love one phrase blackwell uses – communication continuium. that means ‘the whole array of tools we have to communicate’ and stresses we need not forget about that human touch. have informal calls not just meetings. use video. broaden human interaction.

have a listen. it’s a good podcast.