Virtual Teams for Global Project Collaboration:
Project Team Communications Strategies
Lisa Kimball, Executive Producer, Group Jazz
The Nature of Virtual Teams
Teams aren't what they used to be.
The nature of project teams has changed significantly because of
changes in organizations and the nature of the work they do.
Organizations have become more distributed across geography and
across industries. Relationships between people inside an organization
and those previously considered outside (customers, suppliers,
managers of collaborating organizations, other stakeholders) are
becoming more important. Organizations have discovered the value of
collaborative work. There is a new emphasis on knowledge
management - harvesting the learning of the experience of members of
the organization so that it is available to the whole organization.
All these changes in organizations have changed how global teams
are formed and how they operate. Teams have changed:
FROM
Fixed team membership
TO
Shifting team membership
All team members drawn from
within the organization
Team members are dedicated
100% to the team
Team members can include
people from outside the
organization (clients,
collaborators)
Most people are members of
multiple teams
Team members are co-located
organizationally and
geographically
Team members are distributed
organizationally and
geographically
Teams have a fixed starting and
ending point
Teams form and reform
continuously
Teams are managed by a single
manager
Teams have multiple reporting
relationships with different parts of
the organization at different times
Although the technology that supports these new teams gets most of
the attention when we talk about virtual teams, it's really the changes in
the nature of teams - not their use of technology - that creates new
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challenges for team managers and members. Most "virtual" teams
operate in multiple modes including having face-to-face meetings when
possible. Managing a virtual team means managing the whole
spectrum of communication strategies and project management
techniques as well as human and social processes in ways that
support the team.
Managers of small and large organizations have known the importance
of facilitation for successful team process, but few people have really
grappled with the issues of trying to manage teams that are connected
by distance in space and time. With increasing relevance of distributed
communications systems (Internet, Intranets, groupware) in a diversity
of working groups' everyday lives, innovators in the field will need to
integrate these virtual practices into their current team building
strategies as well as learn how to continually improve virtual group
process.
Ten Reasons Global Project Teams Fail
I sometimes describe virtual teams as being the "canary in the mine"
for team processes in an organization. This refers to the old mining
practice of sending a canary into the mine before people entered.
Since the canary's system was small and sensitive, it reacted to bad air
or other inhospitable conditions before humans could sense them. If
the canary died, the miners knew that the air in the mine was bad. Like
the canary, virtual project teams are more sensitive than co-located
teams to conditions likely to undermine the team's effectiveness so
problems show up early.
Virtual project teams, like all teams, need to find ways to establish and
maintain focus, trust, and good communications. When virtual project
teams run into problems, the team's "virtual-ness" is often blamed for
problems that are really more fundamental.
Virtual teams most often fail for one or more of the following reasons:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Lack of identity
Fuzzy deliverables
No pulse
Weak role definitions
Boring meetings
No real interdependence
Missing social life
Shadow members
Poor lines of sight
10. Invisibility
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Lack of identity. Simply having the same job title, or being part of the
same department isn't enough to give a team a strong identity. In order
for members of the team to maintain the energy required to engage
over distances, they need a sense of who that team is and why they
are on it. What is the team's reason for being? What would be
missing if it didn't exist? There's a reason that sports teams have a fun
name and a mascot to provide an identity that the team itself (and
other stakeholders in the team) can use as an anchor to establish its
identity.
A key part of having an identity is understanding how all the parts of a
team and a team's work add up to a whole. One of the most difficult
challenges for a distributed team is maintaining an image of itself as a
whole. This is critical so that the team becomes more than just a loose
collection of related parts. Working as a whole is what makes a team
powerful.
When a team is co-located they develop a shared image of themselves
through experience - sitting in a conference room, meeting in
someone's office, having lunch together. A distributed team will lack
these images so you need other strategies for creating a sense of the
whole so the team doesn't feel fragmented. The goal is to have the
whole team present in all the individual members of the team.
What teams have you been on that really had a sense of identity? How
was that identity developed and maintained? What tactics could you
borrow to help distributed teams create a stronger identity?
Fuzzy deliverables. Think about the extent to which you do (and
don't) identify with your local community or neighborhood. When do
you feel the greatest sense of identity with that group? For most
people, it happens when you are actually DOING something together
(having a block party, helping a neighbor with a problem, organizing a
political action, coming together to deal with the aftereffects of a big
storm).
The need to have clear deliverables is important for any team. For a
remote team, this is even more critical because it's so easy for
members to "lose the plot" of what they are doing together. "Increasing
our market share" or "share best practices & learning" are too vague
for a remote team to organize around. Members may be willing to sign
up for these goals as having value, but there isn't enough grit there to
be an energy attractor.
All the research on virtual and networked organizations shares the
conclusion that having a clear, explicit, compelling, shared purpose
around which everyone is aligned is the most important factor
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associated with organizational success. But for a networked
organization, feeling purposeful requires more than agreement on the
global purpose of all the groups. It’s also important to have many small
goals in addition to the larger overall purpose, which are achievable
early in the group’s existence. You can begin to build trust among
group members via team-building exercises at an initial face-to-face
meeting. However, trust really develops when group members count
on each other for specific tasks. Therefore, it’s important to create
opportunities for group members to come through for each other early
and often in the life of the group.
Some short-term goals may fall naturally out of the work of the group.
But many good candidates for these early exchanges can emerge from
processes related to building the group and establishing working
relationships. It’s important for the tasks to be relevant and valuable
rather than busy work, but they don’t need to be difficult or timeconsuming.
For example, the group might decide to gather answers to a survey
about a particular problem from the perspective of each country
represented on the group and share those. You might decide on a
common format for describing and sharing the experience, skills, and
interests of individual group members for a collective resource bank.
You might ask each group member to take on the task of exploring a
particular communications option available to the group and work up a
profile of it in terms of accessibility, group preferences, and where it
might be used most effectively.
Create a process where the group can decide together on one or more
short-term projects so that they can share, succeed and celebrate as
soon as possible.
What are some candidates for tasks/projects for this group that can be
delivered in a week? Two weeks? A month? Do your distributed teams
have a clear idea of something tangible for which they are mutually
accountable? Are these deliverables "real" for team members, things
for which they will be rewarded?
No pulse. Human systems that thrive have a pulse ... a rhythm ... that
connects and aligns them with the source of life. The essence of
relationship is being in rhythm with others. To co-conspire, to breath
together with a group is a big challenge for collaborative groups in the
same room together. It's even harder for groups that are not in each
others' physical presence. Many virtual teams meet synchronously via
teleconference, Netmeeting, or other web-based presentation-ware
technology. But they rarely take the time to pause and connect before
jumping into the agenda. Members come and go at different times,
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which makes the group feel a bit frayed around the edges. In
asynchronous meeting environments, we have the advantage of being
able to engage at any time from any place. But that can make it hard to
feel that we are "in the groove" with the other members of our team. In
distributed communications environments, pace is an important
dimension to facilitate.
Different group members may access various parts of the group’s
communication systems more or less frequently. Some group
members will sign on to get e-mail four times a day and some will let a
whole week go by before signing on again. The term rolling present
can be used to describe a phenomenon of networked organizations
where the sense of group-time varies among the group. Generally,
people consider material current if it has been entered since they last
signed on. If you have several members who sign on four times a day,
they may make it difficult for most group members to engage with the
virtual group: it will all go by too fast. You may need to do some things
to slow down the pace.
Ideally, the group should establish norms for how often everyone will
engage with the group. However, it will inevitably happen that
differences in pace will develop. One way to even out the rolling
present is to provide cues that let participants know what’s important
so that they can catch up easily, for example via e-mail updates which
summarize the ongoing discussion.
In addition to paying attention to the ongoing pace of the group’s
communication you also need to think about patterns of
communication. A living system has a pulse. High performing groups
operate as living systems. Collocated groups have natural
mechanisms for creating this feeling - they’re in the same time zone,
have coffee together, say good-bye as they leave for the day.
Virtual teams need to have a pulse too. One way to do this is to create
cycles of activity so that group members start to feel the pattern - a
weekly phone call, an online check-in item, monthly celebrations.
What kind of pace does this group need and want? (fast, slow, cyclical)
How are we going to give our group a pulse so it feels alive? What are
some strategies you could use to give a virtual team a pulse?
Weak role definitions. Christopher Alexander, author of A Pattern
Language, describes a healthy community as one where there are
more roles than people. He uses big and little schools to illustrate the
point. In large schools there are a few kids who are on teams, in
student government, in cliques - and everyone else is one of the
crowd. In small schools, each kid has to take on multiple roles - in the
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theater production, on the team, planning the parties in order for
everything to happen. There are many studies that show that a larger
number of students in small schools are more engaged and successful
in the school community.
In many of the teams I've experienced, there is a poverty of roles.
Somebody is supposed to be leading or facilitating the team. Then
there is everybody else who is a "member" of the team. Although there
are sometimes additional roles defined around team projects (I am
doing Task A, you and Sally are doing Task B), this isn't the same as
having a role on the TEAM itself. On many virtual teams the team
leader or facilitator spends a lot of time flogging the other members to
get them to participate more actively in team communication that puts
everyone else in a defensive role.
In a virtual team it’s easy to default to a pattern where everyone looks
to the group leader to play all the needed roles because we lack the
skills necessary to sort out who is going to play which roles when we’re
not in the same room. This makes the group weak and over-dependent
on one person. When we’re together face-to-face, it’s easy for a group
of people to look at each other and naturally work out who is going to
do what. It’s much harder in a distributed to group to figure out where
the gaps are, where a vacuum exists, where it’s appropriate to step up
and volunteer to take something on. We don’t have the experience and
skills to “feel out” the group and be comfortable with informal
mechanisms to negotiate roles.
In addition, roles are more complex in a distributed group because
there are more roles needed and many of them are new and
unfamiliar. Networked organizations may need technical support,
knowledge archivists, and specialists in using different media. You
might want to designate someone to notice when a group member
hasn’t been heard from in a while and follow up with them. The group
could decide to take turns with the tasks of serving as liaison to other
groups or functions.
For both traditional and new group roles, distributed groups need to
spend more time being explicit about mutual expectations for
facilitators, managers, and members because the patterns of behavior
and dynamics of interactions are unfamiliar and it’s easy to fall into
misunderstandings and become frustrated with each other.
What roles does our group need? How will we define these roles? How
will we share the roles? What’s our strategy for reevaluating roles and
players as we go along? What is your role on the teams you're on?
What other roles are available? How do teams define and distribute
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roles effectively? Are there some special roles that we could define for
virtual teams?
Boring meetings. Ok - this may seem obvious. But really - how many
boring meetings (face-to-face or virtual) did you attend in the past
month? How many times did you think to yourself, "Why am I here?"
(Ok - raise your hand, how many times did you read your email during
a telephone conference?) It's hard enough to be fully present in a team
meeting when you've moved your body in space to be at least
physically present. When most of your physical self can be "checked
out" of the interaction, it's even more challenging.
My hypothesis is that distributed teams have a higher ratio of boring
meetings than collocated teams (maybe because you at least get to
have some interesting conversations walking out to lunch afterwards
when you are together in person). I'll be interested to see if it matches
your experience. Some reasons include the tendency to try to do way
too much (I think any teleconference call longer than 1
hour is usually abusive), the reduction of interaction to not much more
than object exchange (swapping documents or slides), and a very
limited repertoire of interactive processes (all meetings tend to be the
same).
The best team experiences are those where you can really feel the
energy of the team. It feels synergistic. It's exciting.
When a team meets in physical space, the room itself serves as a
"container" which amplifies the energy of the team. At a great creative
meeting it can feel like energy is bouncing off the walls and being
absorbed by members of the team. Distributed teams experience a
kind of entropy effect where energy dissipates and drains out of the
system because there is no container for it.
It's critical to find ways to identify energy in the distributed team and
make it available to the whole so they can feel it and build on it. Blow
on the distributed embers of energy to help the whole team catch fire.
What makes any meeting engaging, fun, worthwhile? What makes you
say to yourself, "Wow! That felt satisfying!" rather than "Geez I wish I
was ANYWHERE else!" How could we create some of those qualities
in synchronous meetings? Asynchronous meetings?
No real interdependence. One of the biggest issues for ALL teams is
around real interdependence. Many of the top thinkers about teams
have included something akin to interdependence on their list of things
that make a group of colleagues into a team. Yet, many of the groups
we think of as teams in distributed organizations, don't meet that
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criterion. They may be interest groups or stakeholders in a particular
organizational function but they are not really interdependent members
of teams.
What kinds of interdependence are possible for members of remote
teams? Is there always a potential for interdependence? What can you
do to help a team recognize and work with interdependence?
Missing Social Life. One of the characteristics of high performing
teams is that they operate in a relationship context broader than their
immediate tasks. A lot of members of these teams describe their
experience as "work hard, play hard." But how do we "play" with each
other across large distances? In their book, Hot Groups: Seeding
Them, Feeding Them, & Using Them to Ignite Your Organization
(Oxford University Press, 1999), Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold
Leavitt describe a lot of characteristics of Hot Groups. One of them is
that hot groups occasionally get silly. "They may suddenly decide to
take an afternoon off for a picnic. They may play some light-hearted
game on company time. They may decide to redecorate their workspace in weird, wild ways. Every now and then, they may break into
uncontrolled laughter. They may put together spontaneous party when
they need to come down off a high, or when they have worked
extremely hard for an especially long time, or when they have made a
breakthrough or hit a wall." The authors point out that foolishness is
functional and services the purpose of stimulating creative thinking,
moving the group toward more uncensored communication, and
reducing tensions.
What can you do to expand the palette of your team's interactions to
include a broader range of experiences? How can you "party" with a
virtual team?
Shadow members. One of the temptations of virtual groups is to
include everyone - just because you CAN (logistically). The most
obvious instance of this is the e-mail cc' list where you put everyone on
it because it's easier than figuring out who really needs to be in that
loop. The problem with this habit is that we all become numb to these
communications and our level of engagement with the teams and
relationships we really need to pay attention to is lessened because of
the total volume.
In many distributed teams, there are "shadow members" who are there
- sometimes and sort of. There may be some good reasons to feel that
they should be included - they are stakeholders, sponsors, links to
other part of the organization. But, these shadow members aren't able
(and aren't expected) to participate very actively. The engagement of
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the whole team is often brought down to the lowest common
denominator of participation, it becomes the norm.
How can you differentiate between core team members and others?
What boundaries are possible/useful in virtual teams?
Poor lines of sight. When teams work in the same building, they gain
a lot of understanding about what's going on - with the team, in the
organization, with other related projects - informally just by being
around each other. Nancy Dixon, author of Common Knowledge, wrote
a great article called "Hallways of Learning" where she talks about how
everything important that is learned in organizations is learned in the
hall. Virtual teams tend to have very poor lines of sight - their frame of
reference can be limited to their own piece of a project without
important contextual cues.
One of the most difficult things for distributed teams is for members to
"see" and feel what's happening above and around them in the
organization. They don't have a "line of sight" to key parts of the
system and so feel disconnected reduces their effectiveness.
When teams are co-located, members often sit in on briefings,
company announcements, and meetings of related teams. In
distributed teams, it's not unusual for the team manager to be the only
one in regular contact with the team sponsor or other key players in the
system and, therefore, the only one with a good view. This problem is
exacerbated when there is a critical mass of members in one location
and smaller groups elsewhere who will always feel that they are
missing out on the action.
CC'ing people on meeting minutes isn't adequate, they need the
stories, the feel, the picture, the emotional tone which is the essence of
what they are missing.
How can you provide ways for every member of the team to "see"
what's going on in all other parts of the team? What are some
strategies to create lines of sight to the other teams and important
activities above and around a distributed team? How can we create
virtual hallways?
Invisibility. Out of sight, out of mind. There's a reason that that's a
cliché'! When there are no physical reminders that the team exists, the
members can forget to check in and others in the organization may
forget to include the team in their thinking. Think about all the ways
that a team that is together in physical space "sees" each other. The
physical artifacts of a team (names on in-boxes, names on offices,
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pictures of that time we were all at the off-site meeting in Florida) are
important to making it exist for its members.
Virtual teams can feel very vague and abstract which makes it hard for
both team members and others in the organization to experience the
team as "real" and important. In a co-located team, the physical space
and artifacts in it serve as reminders that the team exists - the names
of everyone on in-boxes, the space around a shared secretary where
you're likely to run into other team members, the corridor where
everyone has an office. Without these, a distributed team can
disappear off the radar screens of others in the organization and team
members can lose a sense of themselves as part of the team. Lacking
reminders, virtual team members can forget to tune into various team
communication channels unless there is something pressing.
Artifacts give a virtual team visibility in team members' physical space.
They serve as an anchor to bring the team down to earth. Catching a
glimpse of the team picture out of the corner of your eye is a subliminal
reminder of the team, makes it present for you.
What can you do to make a remote team more visible - to the
organization? To each other?
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Choosing Media Strategically for Group Communications
Most groups figure out how to talk about and negotiate their
preferences around the use of different communications media - email, telephone, voice mail, etc. These preferences are based on a
range of legitimate factors including habits, previous experience,
cognitive style, talent, and ease of access. Considering cross-cultural
issues requires thinking about time zones and language issues (ease
of speaking v. writing, reading v. listening in a second language).
But too many groups fail to consider key qualities of different media in
their choices about when and how to use the full range of
communications channels available to them. It’s not enough to find a
comfortable place where group preferences overlap.
Team leader
preferences
Team member
preferences
Media qualities
It’s important to remember that all communications technologies are
“media” with all the attendant implications for choosing one over
another for a particular purpose based on the effect you need and
want. Groups that can diversify their communications repertoire to use
different media consciously to achieve different effects at different
times are more powerful.
Consider media differences in terms of the degree to which a medium
is personal, warm/cold, urgent, novel, fast/slow. The group needs
requisite variety - change modes for refreshment and impact.
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Experiment and pay attention to how different media impacts group
dynamics.
Media
Effect on Group Dynamics
Electronic mail
What norms need to be established for things
like; response time, whether or not e-mail can be
forwarded to others? What norms are important
about who gets copied on e-mail messages and
whether or not these are blind copies? How
does the style of e-mail messages influence how
people feel about the group?
Decision Making
Support Systems
How does the ability to contribute anonymous
input affect the group? How can you continue to
test whether “consensus” as defined by
computer processing of input is valid?
Audio (telephone)
conferencing
How can you help participants have a sense of
who is “present?” How can you sense when
people have something to say so you can make
sure that everyone has a chance to be heard?
Video
Conferencing
How can you best manage the attention span of
participants? Where can video add something
you can’t get with audio-only?
Asynchronous
web-conferencing
How do you deal with conflict when everyone is
participating at different times? What’s the
virtual equivalent of eye contact? What
metaphors will help you help participants create
the mental map they need to build a culture that
will support the group process?
Document
sharing
How can you balance the need to access and
process large amounts of information with the
goal of developing relationships and affective
qualities like trust?
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Avoiding Unnecessary Communication Gaps
If a group is co-located, problems caused by miscommunication can be
solved easily in person. If I send you an e-mail and you don’t respond,
I’m usually aware if it’s because you are on travel. If you’re around, it
doesn’t feel like a big deal to ask you about it when we run into each
other in the hall or I can stop by your office and say, “Hey, you haven’t
responded, what’s happening?”
In a distributed group, when I don’t get a response from you to my email, it could be for any of the following reasons:








You’re away from your computer and haven’t received it.
Something went wrong technically and you didn’t actually
receive it.
You don’t understand what I was trying to say.
You think my message was really stupid and don’t know
how to tell me.
You’re angry at me for some reason I don’t know.
You wish I would stop bothering you with what you think
are trivial matters.
You’re totally overloaded at the moment and just haven’t
gotten to it yet.
You didn’t think the message required (or merited) a
response.
The tendency in people who are already feeling tenuous about their
relationship (something which is particularly true of a new, distributed
group) is to assume the worst-case explanation and to be reluctant to
pursue the issue for fear of appearing insecure or silly. Making a call or
sending more messages to follow up feels less casual and so
individuals are less likely to do it and misunderstandings are left out
there to undermine the feelings of trust and security necessary to good
group performance.
To avoid this kind of communication gap, make some agreements
among the group about norms for response in various media (e-mail,
phone messages, voice mail, fax) - both how the receipt of a message
will be acknowledged and what you can expect from each other in
terms of a response. If you can’t respond substantively right away, at
least let people know immediately that you’ve received the message
and when they can expect a response. “Thanks for your message” can
go a long way toward developing a friendly group culture. Develop a
system for alerting each other ahead of time if you will be disappearing
from the communications grid for more than a day or two so everyone
else will know what to expect.
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Avoiding Communication Burn-Out and Boredom
Before we had all these electronic media, most organizations were a
“memo” culture. Every day, memos arrived in the in-box covering the
full range of topics from critical information about competitive strategy
to mundane matters like holiday schedules. After a while, everybody
stopped reading them. “Why didn’t you get your budget figures in on
time? Didn’t you read the memo?” was not an uncommon refrain. Email has become today’s memo. And, if anything, the problem is worse
because it’s so easy to send, copy, and forward e-mail.
Communication is so critical for a distributed organization that it is
essential to take steps to avoid becoming bored with it.
Economy of scale is not always desirable. There are some
messages that convey more powerfully and effectively one-on-one.
Even though it’s possible to send a single e-mail or memo to everyone
in the group or organization, you can get a big payoff from calling
people individually from time to time so that you can interact with them
in real time about what they think about something. It takes more time
but it gives you a more “unprocessed” response and they may bring up
issues that would have been lost otherwise.
Switch media for greater impact. If you have monthly telephone
conference calls for your group to report on project status, have them
write up reports for a beautifully printed group newsletter for a change.
If e-mail is the primary mode of interaction, leave a voice mail that will
convey the emotional tone and character of a message. Whatever
preferences are for your basic communications infrastructure, be sure
that you spice it up by using alternate media creatively.
Encourage communication within the network of group members.
The bulk of communications in a distributed organization is usually
either with the whole group or between one member and a group or
group leader. Centralized organizations benefit from having many
opportunities for pairs or small groups of group members to interact
with each other. Developing these relationships is satisfying and fun. It
builds up social capital among individuals that enhances organizational
performance because members feel more comfortable with each other
and are more aware of each other's strengths. In a distributed
organization, you need to be conscious about creating reasons for
people to communicate with each other in every possible combination.
For example, you could pair up members of a group from different
locations to work on a problem together and report back to the group just as you would have “break-out” groups at a face-to-face meeting.
Web-Enabled Project Management: Empowering E-teams with Virtual Project Collaboration
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Virtual Teams for Global Project Collaboration: Project Team Communication Strategies
Page 15
Culture, Conversation, and Continuity
There are three major dimensions that the leader of a virtual project
team needs to manage to create a high performing team.
Culture. The culture of a group is influenced by the personalities of the
members and the group leader, the environment in which they work,
the nature of the communications media they use, the stories they
have to tell about the group, their rituals and celebrations, and their
shared language.
Too often, virtual teams are missing many of the elements that are
critical to developing culture because we haven’t developed a
repertoire of new strategies using the new media. How can we create
celebrations virtually? How can we make sure we don’t limit our
communications to task-specific exchanges that leave out the allimportant storytelling?
Whichever combinations of media you are using to support a virtual
group, you need to think through how these media will affect the
culture of the group’s environment. What metaphors are you using for
interactions? How will these metaphors cue group members to think
about where they are and what they’re doing? An electronic space
called “Project Database” will invite a different style of communication
than one called “What’s Happening Where You Are?” Keep in mind
that you are creating an environment to support relationships, not just
to exchange information. What norms, styles and behaviors would help
or hinder the ambience and create the group culture you want?
What adjectives do we want to associate with the culture of our team?
(deep, supportive, fun, fast-moving, reflective, cutting-edge,
information-intensive, risky, intense, focused, creative, ???) What do
we need to do to create that culture? What strategies can we develop
so that we can celebrate group success even when we’re not together
face-to-face? Where we will tell our stories?
Conversation. One way to think about a team is as a network of
conversations that cover a broad range of topics and questions:
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How is the team doing on its critical strategic goals?
How are the team's processes working?
How are individuals on the team doing?
What’s going on in the company?
What’s going on in the world?
What are people on the team reading and thinking?
What problems need attention?
What should we be doing next?
Web-Enabled Project Management: Empowering E-teams with Virtual Project Collaboration
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Virtual Teams for Global Project Collaboration: Project Team Communication Strategies
Page 16
A team will function best if it feels like everyone is part of a continuous,
daily conversation with the whole group. Of course, in a virtual team,
this is not achieved easily.
A big danger for virtual teams is that their communications get stale
and boring. When we’re together face-to-face we create a lot of
variation in our exchanges by meeting in different settings, using multimedia to spark discussion, and changing the style of meeting from
presentation to dialogue. It’s critical to keep the group communications
fresh and growing - both qualitatively and quantitatively.
At the same time, you need to watch for overload. Too many new
messages overwhelm people. Assess the total volume of group
communications daily and you'll see considerable variation from day to
day. At the end of each week, ask yourself about the pace and the
range of communications exchanged. Are the conversations still
interesting, or have they become stale?
What kinds of conversations are important for us to have regularly?
How can we make sure that everyone on the team is fully involved in
our important conversations?
Continuity. One of the key things in making a river flow is its banks...
its container. Virtual teams can lose that feeling of flowing in a direction
because their container is too weak and the energy of the group seems
to leak out into the atmosphere rather than building towards
something.
Virtual teams also have a hard time maintaining the awareness of the
whole that helps them feel like everyone is moving together. They can
feel like group in a rowing shell with no idea when or how hard to pull
on the oars so the shell jerks around in the water but doesn’t get
anywhere. It’s important to facilitate a group process that heightens
awareness of what is happening in all parts of the group so that the
group begins to be able to sense and anticipate what’s going on
around the whole network of group members and can get the benefit of
moving together.
It’s advantageous to increase and intensify group interactions early in
the life of the group. One of the reasons that so many group-building
processes involve games or outdoor activities is that these demand a
high volume of interactions among team members in a short period
that accelerates the process of being able to anticipate what each
other can and will do.
Using new communications media - particularly those that are not real
time - can cause a team to communicate less rather than increase the
Web-Enabled Project Management: Empowering E-teams with Virtual Project Collaboration
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Virtual Teams for Global Project Collaboration: Project Team Communication Strategies
Page 17
interactions as needed. Teams need to develop a facilitative process
that will support a higher level of engagement. Facilitation is paying
attention to what is happening in your group, as distinct from what you
wanted or expected would happen. It is not unlike facilitating any
group. If participants aren't participating as much as you'd hoped, don't
admonish them. Instead, notice what kinds of issues they are engaged
in and find ways to weave those issues into your group’s activity.
How can we stay “in synch” with each other as a team? How will we
know when the team is in the flow?
Web-Enabled Project Management: Empowering E-teams with Virtual Project Collaboration
San Francisco, CA January 26, 2001 Group Jazz http://www.groupjazz.com +1 202-686-4848