8 ways to build collaborative teams from HBR – by Lynda Gratton, Tamara J. Erickson

after researching 55 large teams (no distinction made if they were f2f or virtual so assuming f2f), gratton & erickson came up with 8 ways to build collaborative teams:

1 – ‘signature’ relationship practices. building bonds btwn members in memorable ways suited to the business
2 – having role models of collaboration in higher management levels
3 – managers supporting/mentoring employees via a ‘gift culture’ instead of a transactional ‘tit for tat culture’
4 – relationship skills training (like conflict resolution!)
5 – a sense of community
6 – leaders who are both task & relationship oriented
7 – teams consisting of members who know & trust each other
8 – role clarity & task ambiguity

i found out recently a friend of mine is in the digital vision program @ stanford so i was having a look at the various projects and this one by nita goyal called Project Open Books: Multiplying Resources through Online Communities caught my eye.

it blends a few of my fav things like online communities, education and libraries. there’s only a brief summary on the page but it seems people will be able to list the books they own and lend them to people in their local community using schools & libraries as the drop off points. the project is running (or will run, i don’t think it’s operational yet) in india but i think it could work anywhere. there is most definitely a difference btwn the melbourne city (and burbs) and nyc libraries. i’m a big user of the libraries & there’s a lot of times when the book i want isnt available here.

this type of community would tie in extremely well with some of the book communities already on the web (like library thing and books well read) but calls out for some reputation management software. i hate to lend books to anyone b/c i’ve had such bad luck in getting them back. my really prize books don’t get lent at all. not everyone feels the same way i do but you’d need some sort of reward/punishment for those who don’t contribute to the system or return the books.

very cool idea to keep an eye on.

danah boyd has a rough copy of her talk at e-tech (march06) on her website. the talk was about g/locization. it’s a great article to read if you are involved in an online community or virtual team. danah focuses on culture. that’s a huge topic and she does a great job giving an overview of what culture can mean to the online world.

she briefly mentions language, ecomonics, norms, symbols, and how we are all a part of multiple cultures (national, religious, organisational and even our interests such as motorbikes or web2.0). she also looks at online communities (namely craigslist, flickr and myspace) and how their cultures come from a person (in these cases, one of the founders of each group). she discusses ‘embedded observation’ which is these founders living & breathing their virtual space to create & manage:

You cannot segment the people who engage with the users from those who build for them. You cannot test for community practices by running user studies on individuals. You cannot populate a community by marketing to people who have used similar software before. You cannot boil down culture into static representation of people. You must live the culture that you are creating.

i have experienced this sort of personality driven community both from a community owner and member side and can vouch for how difficult it can be as the community grows and things change in that person’s life. it can be damaging to the group so she she has 7 good tips for continuing that culture as the community grows.

while she is focused on online communities, i believe this all relates to virtual teams. perhaps it’s my interest with conflict but i enjoy this bit:

Glocalization is the ugliness that ensues when the global and local are shoved uncomfortably into the same concept. It doesn’t sit well on your palette, it doesn’t have a nice euphoric ring. It implies all sorts of linguistic and cognitive discomfort. This is the state of the global and local in digital communities.

from an academic standpoint, this is where it’s very interesting… at that point of discomfort and when you mix your audience so drastically. from a practical point of view…. this is when it’s SOOOO frustrating. when you want to bang your head against the wall (or at least i’ve felt that way). while this does occur in communities, the tangible effects are felt a lot quicker in a team. it damages the goals, team effectiveness and output in a way that’s different to communities because they are different beasts.

i am very intersted in how you manage these situations but also how can software assist these situations… be it communities or virtual teams. i wholeheartedly agree when danah points out:

This means thinking about all sorts of squishy stuff like language, economics, policy, culture, social relations, and values. These are not just issues for marketing or business; they directly affect how people use your technologies and, thus, how you must design them.

there’s an intersting article about mediation here. any conflict is an ‘unmet need’ and it as mediators we need to look at our own unmet needs in order to help others. the article is really just a teaser, not filled with detail. it did lead me to another article on the same site about a self-inquiry process called the ‘work’ by byron katie. the process consists of 4 inquiry questions to be used when any thought or belief causes pain.

the first two questions are: Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it is true?

the mediator expects to get a yes to the first question and a no to the second question. how can we every absolutely know when something is true. the idea is to put some cracks into the story & truth you’ve been believing and arguing for.

question 3 is: How do you react when you think that thought?
the thought being your side of the story in the conflict. you’re really getting to the impact your side of the conflict has on you.

and question 4: Who would you be without the thought?
if you didn’t feel this way, or keep going with the same story w/in this conflict, how would it change your life?

and you can also work on ‘turning around’ the original statement from something like ‘she’s not nice to me’ to ‘why should she be nice to me’ or ‘i should be nice to her’ as ways to think creatively and differently about the conflict.

there’s an example in the mediate article and lots more ways to elaborate on those 4 questions is on katie bryon’s site.

i had some conflict this afternoon so i think i’ll give this a go with that issue.

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