communication problems? not a problem
Last month, Inc Magazine announced they were going to leave their fancy office & become a virtual organisation.
At least for a month – for a test run. The April issue of the magazine will let us know how they went.
Along the way they’ve been talking to others who work virtually. I caught this video convo with Matt Mullenweg from Automattic /Wordpress.
Matt talks about their distributed organisation & something he said just clicked with me. When asked about the problems with the communicating to his staff around the world he said that communication problems aren’t a problem. That they’re just something to be aware of. Everything has strength & weakness.
That immediately took me back to a conversation I had multiple times with a former boss. Our video conference system was bad (fuzzy video, hard to hear audio). Everyone was aware the system was bad but not many seemed aware of the small things that could make it better… making sure you were close to the microphone when speaking, making sure everyone had received the file electronically before the meeting, letting 1 person talk at a time so the microphone could pick up that 1 sound, etc. Often I pointed out small things like this could make the difference but I could tell it went into the too hard basket. *
Each communication tool has strengths & weaknesses. You just need to understand what those are & how to work with the weakness. It’s not a problem. 
FANTASTIC!
(*Actually, the more video meetings we had, the more some people adapted but there wasn’t ever a mindset change)