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)

her tips include:

• get better at using email
• using IM so you are ‘present’ in the office for those quick off the cuff conversations
• use online tools that fit the client & the project (like shared calendars & docs or wikis)
• have regular voice/webcam chats

i agree with all 4 of those but want to put extra emphasis on the last item. i recommend organising regular (1-2x a week) voice communication from the very first day of the team or remote working relationship. depending on the stage of the project, increase the frequency (launching in 4 weeks? testing and need quick turn arounds? schedule a phone SCRUM for everyday).

it’s also a good idea to prepare and encourage folks to pick up the phone or use skype IMPROMPTU just as they would if the person was at the other end of the same building. perhaps it’s a hangover of thinking how much this long distance call will cost but email seems to be more popular.

having any sort of real time conversation takes more planning. check a time zone calculator! no one wants to wake someone up at 3am. make sure there’s at least an hour overlap in both people’s schedules and rotate the pain of the 10pm phone call if that’s required.

i have seen situations where emails went back & forth for a week or more with no resolution and only increasing frustration on both sides until a phone call clarified the situation (and then everyone realised the problem was small and easy to fix). This continued frustration hurts the relationship & trust and damages the ability of the team to continue working together.

making sure you have ‘f2f’ time is important. if you’re lucky enough to have overlapping time zones, make sure you use IM and other collaborative tools. being able to look at the same document/picture/video/etc in real time and discuss or mark up the object will save hours of work and cut down on mis-understanding.

It seems IM created conversations which were shorter than if the person had called or had a face to face conversation. People who used IM felt they were interrupted less. Finding out when people were available to have a longer conversation or to get quick answers were some of the IM uses mentioned.

Quite a great finding for those companies who still block IM b/c it’s seen as a productivity drain.

The study, by researchers at Ohio State U & U of California, has been published in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. It involved 912 randomly selected participants from 12 metro areas who worked at least 30 hours per week in an office and used a computer for at least five hours in a workday.

• irregular contact – have meetings at regular times, keep regular contact!
• lack of leadership
• lack of responsibility
• sudden disappearances (i kid you not – i had a virtual team leader go on holiday for a week. the person didn’t tell any of the folks outside his office, didn’t have an out of office email set up, and finally on the friday one of his coworkers told us he was on holiday all week. of course we were wondering why our emails weren’t getting replied to!)
• lack of member info (trade IM, facebook, linkedin, etc. mix & match both your communications methods & let them see your world in some way

in the past (and very much the present), lots of virtual teams comprised of a hub of individuals in one location (like a head office) with a smattering of individuals in different offices or telecommuting. the long hallway is about companies who are more virtual than physical and have turned our HQ reality on it’s head. the internet, wireless connectivity & the focus on collaboration & productivity of ‘web2.0′ have made it a lot easier for organisations not to have a headquarters.

from a virtual working perspective, this is very exciting. when there’s no hub, no head office, no concentration of people in one singular office, EVERYONE has to think about communication. it’s those little conversations we have in offices that get things moving, that solve problems and if you can’t bump into someone on the way out the door to lunch or chat with them about project A while you’re waiting for a meeting concerning project B to begin, you begin to think about how you can recreate that online. When virtual teams are a mix of HQ & satellite folks, this situation doesn’t get the same front of mind priority.

the article also touches on process, how important scheduled play is, writing skills & setting boundaries (time zones folks!).

while it is a short piece it includes some very smart tips!!! they talk about preparation a lot! deciding on a tool to use (basecamp, mindmapping, etc), making sure both the client and team members know how to use the tool, buying webcams & getting everyone setup and comfortable with them, plus making sure everyone is on IM. this is something i feel isn’t done enough. how often do we say ‘oh yeah, we have email. that will work’ and that’s the extent of the planning. in my thesis research, barely anyone used progressive technology such as blogging, wikis, mindmapping, etc. the bulk of communication was via phone and email.

they also mention being alert to people’s different communication styles – some people will love the video cam while others will hate IM (those that type slow might not be the biggest IM fan, especially when paired with someone who does type fast!) – and setting expectations around when communication will occur.

i think these are all very important tips. frequently not enough time is allocated to get people up to speed on their required toolkit and it will negatively impact the group. taking these early steps, making mistakes together (oops, i guess i do have to plug in the camera’s usb!) will assist in fostering trust amongst the group.

business week has several articles about working virtually (as part of their special report: virtual life) the virtual meeting room touches on companies who let their employees and partners meet as avatars in virtual worlds. companies like qwaq provide second life style avatars & spaces where you can share documents while getting the visual aspects virtual teams are missing out on (the bulk of the way we communicate) . (disclaimer: i haven’t tried qwaq) this is an exciting new area i will probably get addicted to.

fyi, biz week also has some screen shots of leo burnett’s SL area and how it’s being used in house with players in 3d collaboration such as qwaq & tixeo.

skrbl is a within your browser whiteboard. you can sketch or do text in a limited range of colors and print or email it. i couldnt figure out how to erase a scribble which was annoying. good for when you need to share a quick sketch.

a new GTD tool, nozbe lets you run 5 projects for free, list your to-dos & next stops and categorize them. nice ajax interface.

but when you read the article, you realise the research (subjects = grad biz students) really showed one extra idea for IM than with email which suggests IM might be more beneficial than email for idea generation. not a very strong result.

there wasn’t any significant difference btwn the task satisfaction of the 2 groups, nor was there any difference in ‘user playfulness’. hence IM can be used as a serious business tool and people are satisfied with both options. that’s good information but i hesitate to say IM is better for idea generation than email just based on this research.

article details:
An exploratory investigation of two internet-based communication modes
Albert H. Huanga, Shin-Yuan Hungb and David C. Yenc

Abstract
Instant messaging (IM) was first introduced in the late 1990s. It has a relatively short history of adoption compared to other electronic media such as e-mail. In the first few years, the majority of IM users were teenagers. Only a relatively small portion of adult Internet users used IM. Recently as the young IM users gradually enter the workforce, an increasing popularity of IM among working professionals is expected. Consequently, the use of IM in the workplace for job-related task becomes more likely. The potential impact of IM will also become a more important organizational issue. This study compares the use of IM versus e-mail as the communication tool to facilitate group task for geographically dispersed teams. An experiment using 44 teams in the United States was conducted. The results show that teams using e-mail are more effective in terms of generating ideas than teams using IM. There are no significance differences between the two communication methods, in terms of task difficulty, playfulness, and ease of use.

the article says toshiba and about 10 other companies (westpac, telstra, foster’s, pfizer, etc) worked together to promote flexible work practices. wow! that is so encouraging and fantastic!

the article points to the group’s output as – producing a ‘detailed and practical guidebook that issues such as setting up flexible working practices, managing people by performance rather than attendance and dealing with workplace culture and attitudes’. you can get that guidebook at toshiba’s flexible working website.

i’m not quite sure what to make of the SIG. there’s some major names and i know some of the smaller companies involved. i’m sure the work was done with the greatest intentions. it’s hard (at this point) to comment more because to receive the guide i had to fill out a form with my physical address and they will mail it to me. nope, you can’t download the guide. there are individual files you can download but it’s unclear if they’re part of the guide or extra bits. i’ll let you know.

one bit from the article i want to pull out – toshiba did research in 2004 on the attitudes of managers and employees towards flexible working. it seems like the SIG resulted from this research. a quote from the SMH article:

“One thing that came though very strongly in our research was that working from home was almost seen as a modern term for having a sickie,” Whittard says. “People would assume you’re out shopping, down the beach or playing golf. So before you let people work flexibly you have to look at their workload, clearly communicate what’s expected of them and measure their work fairly against that. Otherwise you get a level of mistrust, which is what our research found – that managers are less trusting of flexible workers and believe that employees disapprove of their colleagues who sometimes work away from the office.”

a sad state of affairs and probably the reason why a small step such as a guide was produced. you CAN download their research results entitled ‘Mobility & Mistrust. they list 5 key findings in their executive summary but actually 4 of the 5 can be read as issues around trust or rather not trusting employees. no wonder i had such a hard time finding companies to work with while i was doing the thesis.

will post more when i get the paper version.

AbstractDiversity in the national background and culture of team members is common in virtual teams. An experimental study, with short term teams, was undertaken to examine the effect of cultural diversity on team effectiveness and to examine if this effect changes depending if the team worked face-to-face (F2F) or virtually. Heterogeneous teams were created that had greater diversity than homogeneous teams of individualism/collectivism values, different languages spoken, country of birth, and nationality. The teams worked on a desert survival task either F2F or virtually (via audioconference and electronic chat tools). The overall results indicated that heterogeneous teams were less satisfied and cohesive and had more conflict than the homogeneous teams, although there were no statistical differences in team performance levels. However, examining just the heterogeneous teams found that the performance of the virtual heterogeneous teams was superior to that of the F2F heterogeneous teams. The results support Carte and Chidambaram’s (2004) theory that the reductive capabilities of collaborative technologies are beneficial for newly-formed diverse teams.