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)

cisco & musion teamed up to create this holographic video conferencing. how insanely cool!!

i do a fair amt of work over the phone. while we have a video conference with one of our other offices – it’s not very good. the video doesn’t show body language very well but the biggest issue is the audio. wonder how these 300k systems sound?

more here:
http://www.humanproductivitylab.com/archive_blogs/2007/11/15/cisco_experimenting_with_an_on_1.php

and an article on other systems

dave also has a fantastic decision tree to help you decide what technology you should use to communicate.

in the underuse article, dave asks the following questions, puts them on writely & asks for people to go there to edit/answer. he said he granted permission to 31 people but only 12 participated.

1. Why are conversation and collaboration tools so underused? Is my list of 7 reasons missing anything? Are any of the reasons predominant?
2. Is the answer making the tools better? If so, how? If not, what is the answer?
3. Given time, do you think people will eventually learn to use these tools, despite their shortcomings? Which tools, current or envisioned, will be the winners, the killer apps for online-enabled conversation and collaboration, and why?
4. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better conversationalists, and how would we do this?
5. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better collaborators, and how would we do this?

. personally i think tools are underused because people don’t know about them or are afraid of them or just don’t understand what the benefit could be. i think a lot of the tools could be better (and they will get better). i recently experimented with a wiki during a project at work. there were definite benefits to using it, there was resistance to using the technology, and even though i think the technology was pretty damned good, i saw definite places it could have been more user friendly .

i think several of the contributors to that post make very valid points re: generational differences. the usage of collaboration type items makes the newer generation not only more computer savvy but also willing to share (instead of the ‘i produced this’ mindset of other generations).

it’s also not surprising that 89% think the net is an important media but i did find it interesting that email & IM are the two most important services. of late there’s been a few items in the news about how IM and sites like myspace are the important communication services for youngsters. supposedly they feel email is the domain of old people (to be used for work or school or communicating with grandparents). this study shows a different side. i wonder if it’s the international vs (most likely) usa only folks surveyed.

there’s new research (wired article here) that shows we have a 50/50 chance in figuring out the tone of emails although we think we have successfully ‘read’ an email correctly 90% of the time.

this would definitely be leading to conflict, confusion and mis-communication (among other things).

the results of this research provide evidence to what we probably already felt but what i find very interesting is this research was done with undergrad subjects – people who you would think would have a lot of experience with email as they have been using it and growing up on it for years. yet, they do not seem to understand tone any more than folks who may not have a lot of experience with email.

ref:
Egocentrism Over E-Mail : Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?. Kruger, Justin; Epley, Nicholas; Parker, Jason; Ng, Zhi-Wen; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 89(6) December 2005. pp. 925-936.

abstract:
Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail (e-mail). Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators “hear” a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not.

flow is the concept of enjoying what you do and thus getting lost in it. that sense or feeling that everything is right in the world and you can experience flow in any aspect of your life.

IMO, finding flow wasn’t as interesting or detailed as good business. it’s a smaller book and hence a quicker read but if you want a better understanding of flow, read good business. it concentrates more on the idea of ‘happiness’ and ways you can create flow for your product, business, employees and self.

there was one bit of research mentioned in the finding flow book which drew my attention. a 1984 study by csikszentmihalyi and larson showed friendships ‘offer both the most emotionally rewarding contexts in the immediate present, and the greatest opportunities for developing one’s potential in the long run’. the authors then say ‘contemporary life, however, is not very suitable for sustaining friendships’ because of americans ‘geographical and social mobility’ and how we ‘reshuffle’ friendships based on our situation. for example, as we move from job to job or city to city or university to university, we change our friends. they state ‘lack of true friends is often the main complaint of people confronting an emotional crisis in the second half of life’.

i’m definitely a ‘shuffler’ in this is sense. i switch jobs, i have multiple degrees, i’ve moved cities and countries, meet people while traveling and develop friendships online. i have never thought of this as a problem (except i would love some better friend management technologies) and in fact, think this has greatly enriched my life.

this contrasts to what i have experienced in australia. here people have a circle of friends who have they made when they were quite young (elementary/jr high level) and they continue that friendship forever (ok, maybe not forever but you get the idea). australians travel a lot but they don’t seem to be as mobile in other ways. my impression is people stay in the same job longer. they don’t go away to university but attend uni in the same place (or nearby) to where they grew up. quite often they will go overseas for their working holiday but afterwards they come back to the same circle of friends and live in the same area.

it would be very interesting to see some research comparing flow or at least satisfaction of friendship/life using these differences in american/australian culture.

also, there was one bit in good business that i take exception to.

‘In a large organisation it is frequently difficult for a leader to have an accurate sense of the company’s affairs because reports are often afraid to be candid about problems. The head of a large multinational corporation employs the following strategy to keep the lines of communication and feedback open:’

i agree with this statement but i had to read the following quote a couple times to make sure i was really reading this correctly. remember, this is a quote to illustrate how to keep feedback and communication open in a large organisation.

Two weeks ago, I spent one entire week – five days – travelling to seven different cities and having meetings with employees. I talked to two to three hundred employees twice a day – different employees – for maybe an hour, giving them my views and then leaving an hour and half for them to ask me any questions they had. That’s how you keep your finger on the pulse.
… I’ve got to get out there and be with customers and be with employees and be in the field and watch what goes on and provide motivation. Last week I was in asia all week. The same thing. I was visiting our staff, visiting out plants, showing an interest in what they’re doing. That’s how you do it. You don’t do it sitting here.

i think, perhaps, this person has their heart in the right place. you do need to talk to your staff and show an interest in what they’re doing. what struck me as odd was the way this person went about doing it.

now math has never been my strong suit but if you spend 5 days in 7 cities, that’s less than a day per city. if you are talking to 200-300 employees twice a day (so 400-600 a day), that would equate to a minute per employee (10 hour day, 60 minutes per hour is 600 minutes). obviously this isn’t what was happening … they were in a group setting… but it’s interesting to look at the numbers this way. the person says they left 90 minutes per group to let the group ask questions of (after an hour of their presentation). again, obviously not what was happening but interesting to look at the numbers … 90 minutes divided by 200 people leaves everyone 45 seconds. 300 people get 30 seconds each – not including the leader’s reply.

while the leader in this quote was hoping for feedback and open communication, i doubt they were receiving much of it. IMO there needs to be more personalised communication to encourage the honest, open communication leaders would hope to have with employees. somehow i doubt these 200-300 person forums brought out in the open any issues and created the message that the company/leader was really concerned with problems/issues.

and that (to use an aussie phrase) gives me the shits.