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We hope you enjoy this edition of Linked!--ThoughtLink's newsletter featuring articles about our work, interviews, and innovative research by members of the military,
commercial, and academic communities. This edition focuses on
virtual teams - how to improve their performance, technologies that support them and recent research and academic work in this area. Enjoy!
More information can be found on ThoughtLink's home page
by clicking
here. |
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By Julia Loughran, ThoughtLink, Vienna, VA
As many of you know, a key part of
ThoughtLink’s business is helping government and commercial
organizations use technology to increase team productivity – particularly those not physically
located together. ThoughtLink itself is a “virtual” company,
with its employees, sub-contractors and consultants all working
from distributed offices. We often say that being a virtual
team ourselves lets us eat our own dog food. |
Today's
Virtual Worker Faces Challenges and Opportunities |
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The focus of this newsletter is virtual teams –
and the technologies, processes and best practices to make these
teams most effective. Virtual teams are on the rise with more
companies adopting telework strategies, supporting home offices, and
companies increasingly entering teaming and outsourcing agreements
with other companies. Working virtually can help save money
and streamline a business’ operations. In his book “The World
is Flat,” Thomas Friedman describes the underlying reasons for the
growth in virtual teams and cautions that organizations who do not
know how to leverage from the flat world will fail.
The
Telework Coalition, a non-profit organization that promotes
telework and telecommuting, recently surveyed employers at 10 large
companies, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration and the Fairfax County
government. The survey was to seek out best practices. The
coalition determined that successful telework programs link the
programs to actual savings at the business unit level and obtain
employee support and involvement from the outset rather than
imposing a top-down initiative. The study found that organizations
that reduced their facilities and space saved $3,000 to $10,000 per
employee. Technology common to nearly all of the organizations
included laptop computers, virtual private networks for secure
remote access and help-desk support. Some large companies are also
using voice-over-IP technology to make calls via the Internet. The
study, sponsored by Intel for the coalition, can be received by
sending a request to
info@telcoa.org.
We hope you enjoy this edition of Linked!
with its best practices and tips for improving virtual teams. The
issue features an overview of collaboration technologies and an
interview with Ralph Sklarew who describes some interesting research
into the use of 3D worlds to improve working virtually and a
prototype of this environment that has been built in the growingly
popular Second Life.
In addition,
the newsletter offers links to upcoming conferences of interest and
movie, book and show reviews. If you have any comments or
suggestions, I’d appreciate hearing from you. You can reach me at
loughran@thoughtlink.com
ThoughtLink, Inc. President |
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Seeing
What Makes Teams Effective |
By Rebecca Agrait, ThoughtLink, San Francisco,
CA
Recently I heard myself say, "At ThoughtLink we are a virtual
team and we have it down to a science." When I said this, I wasn't just
referring to the obvious perks of having a home office, like ample freedom in
scheduling and no dress code. I was thinking more in terms of certain intangible
qualities that "make the team." As I attempt to list out those intangibles I am
discovering that the list is not that different than it would be for a
spectacular team that does most of its work in a co-located setting. Essentially
what I am
concluding is that there are things that are considered
principal ingredients in the recipe for a well-functioning team,
whether you are working virtually or not. The key lies in being
able to translate these factors into something that works virtually. This requires creative license and iteration. Some of these factors are:
- Redefining the words see me. (Bear with me, here are some of those intangibles I was referring to). While there are many gadgets to ensure you feel like a team, despite working in different time zones and rarely seeing each other, they don't all necessarily need to be used. For example, while video teleconferencing is readily available and while most of the members of our team have (at least) one web camera at their disposal we didn't use that mode of communication. What we did do was establish a rhythm that resulted in feeling as if we were seeing each other. This is not the same for every team. At ThoughtLink we created a virtual water cooler (a fun place to exchange data, images, stories, news articles, frustrations, etc) to keep connected. But, we also did more administrative tasks that kept us seeing each other.
- The second factor, related to the first, is See the WHOLE team. This, in my opinion is critical to remaining a "Team" even when the actual work didn't always require one to work with all team members. Once again seeing the whole team is accomplished differently for every team. I read everyone's progress reports and generally knew what everyone was working on yet didn't mean we were functioning as a team. Once again the intangibles are priceless and time to "shoot the breeze" (telephonically or via email) kept me seeing the whole team.
- The next factor is a critical one (for this team): eat together. Even when working from different time zones, you ask? Yes, I say. There's nothing like bonding over picking out food and letting the creative juices flow in casual and fun conversation to energize the "real work". Last year, while working on a high-stress, strict, homeland security project from three
States (California, Florida and Virginia) our president ordered pizza for us at our different locations so we could have a working dinner together.
- The last factor I'll share with you is to tell stories. Tell stories about your team to others; recap team stories with each other; tell your team stories about others; tell stories; tell stories; tell stories. The experience of vivid recall and shared
situational awareness1
can be enormously enhanced by this practice. Trust me, it's priceless.
To recap and conclude this article here
are some challenges for virtual teams counted by some strategies to
overcome them:
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Dr. Andrew English studies virtual teams |
By Andrew English, ThoughtLink, Indialantic, FL
The purpose of this article is to briefly present a list of tips aimed at the virtual worker who is part of a virtual team. It was reported that 80% of employees belong to at least one team, and that 68% of Fortune 1000 companies report using self-managed teams. While evident that organizations are increasingly utilizing teams, it is important to recognize the parallel growth between virtual workers and teams. A virtual team can be described as a group of individuals who work interdependently towards a common goal (the team component), and work across time, space and organizational boundaries (the virtual component).
In 1997, there were 11.6 million Americans employed by a company
but working from home. In 2003, that number reached 23.5 million. According to
research, more than 28 million, or 1 in 5, U. S. employees participate in some
form of teleworking. From an organization's
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perspective, the fact that teleworker productivity has been shown to be 22%-45% higher than its face-to-face counterpart will continue to spur the growth of virtual work. From the individual employee's perspective, virtual work offers many new freedoms. Virtual work is attractive for the following reasons:Schedule flexibility and control. It's great to be able to run errands or go to the gym in the middle of the day. Your child is sick or has a class field trip you would like to attend, no problem!
- Lack of a commute. While the distance traveled from your bedroom to the coffee pot to your home office (hopefully not back to the bedroom) will not burn a significant amount of calories, it will reduce your level of stress and save huge amounts of time.
- Avoiding pantyhose (as well as any dress code, or any sort of work persona!).
Virtual teams are obviously made up of virtual workers. Consider that at one time or another, most of us will find ourselves a virtual worker in some context. When you find yourself in this position, several immediate obstacles will be evident. These are: cultural differences, lack of a shared goal, maintaining shared situational awareness, communication problems, and lack of trust. The tips presented here will focus on overcoming these obstacles, and were derived from a series of structured interviews and surveys ThoughtLink conducted in August 2005.
Tip #1 - Work on team synchronization
Coordination between you and your team members and between you and your manager is critical. Because of the physical distance implicit in virtual work, you will have to be proactive about seeking feedback from your coworkers, and keeping close track of project timelines. Take special note of where team interdependencies lie, because this is often where we make critical mistakes. How many times have you waited for someone to turn in their piece of a project to you, so you could finish your piece, only to eventually find out that they had no idea you were waiting on them? Some ways to increase team synchronization are to hold quarterly face-to-face meetings (especially during critical project decision points), and schedule regular weekly project telecons. These meetings should be used to review current and upcoming tasks, and assign responsibilities to team members. Designate a note-taker and track the tasks from the telecon using available project management tools.
Other methods for team synchronization
include using weekly activity reports and establishing regular
feedback meetings. These reports should be brief and should
require each worker to record their activities and
accomplishments for the week. It is also a good idea to have
everyone list their goals for the upcoming week here, as it now
will serve as an ongoing record of both individual and team
goals. Monthly feedback meetings are a good time to seek
feedback from both your managers and coworkers. These meetings
promote more open-ended, wide-ranging conversations, and help
remind us of both our own and the team’s development.
Tip #2 – Build trust with your virtual
coworkers
It makes sense that we communicate and
coordinate better with those we trust. Furthermore, studies show
that people build trust faster in face-to-face environments than
in distributed situations. This is in large part because team
members build trust by identifying with each other. Identifying
with each other is far more difficult for workers who seldom see
one another.
Trying to read someone over a
teleconferences and emails can be difficult with the absence of
non-verbal cues. You must make an effort to keep up with each
team member through phone calls and mid-day instant messages.
Take time to get to know your coworkers. You’ll usually find
that the more you share about yourself, the more others will
share with you.
From management’s perspective, you should
try to schedule team-building activities during the times when
the team meets face-to-face. These activities should focus on
identifying individual differences in works styles,
personalities and culture. While these meetings are a great
place time to synchronize, use them as an opportunity to get to
know one another.
Tip #3 – Maximize online technology
Virtual workers will often hear of a
“virtual collaborative environment”. This can be described as a
combination of technology and infrastructure that allows people
to work together independent of time or location. Virtual
collaborative environments are software packages which
facilitate team processes through various electronic tools. You
are already familiar with many of these tools which include:
text chat, document sharing, shared calendars, video and text
teleconferencing, and project management tools. According to one
study, companies that use technology to link a dispersed staff
show increases of 8%-15% in productivity(INC magazine, December 1996).
Remember two things here: (1) while
technology is enabling, it can also be hindering, and (2)
technology will fail us, so learning to adapt is critical. In
particular communication via technology faces two challenges:
ensuring the correct information is received and obtaining the
necessary feedback. The communication medium you select should
depend on the content of the message. Complex problems will
require a richer communication medium (e.g., video-conference,
teleconference, phone), and more routine information can be
shared via more static medium (e.g., email).
While maximizing available technology,
remember not to become too dependent on it. When it fails you
(and it will), you do not want to find yourself without a
contingency plan. I live on a barrier island in Florida and
during hurricane season once suddenly had to learn to pack up my
office at moments notice. For three days I worked from a
crowded hotel room across the state with my cell phone and
lap-top. Remember to plan for the worse case scenario, and then
keep your fingers crossed!
Tip #4 - Establish boundaries between
your work and personal lives
Remember that one of the benefits of
virtual work was schedule flexibility. How quickly this can
backfire and negatively affect our quality of life. When you
physically leave the office at close of business, it is easier
to disconnect from work. When your office is always just
footsteps away, it’s tempting continually check your messages
throughout the evening. Suddenly 5 minutes has turn into 30, and
you find yourself working again. Try to stick to a schedule and
close shop at a regular time each day.
Just as work will interfere with our
personal lives, the converse is true. The virtual worker must
learn to make their office an office. The flexibility of working
from home can be great, but suddenly you might find yourself
washing clothes, watering plants, and talking to your family or
friends on the telephone. It is important to structure each day
carefully with “to do” and checklists to ensure you stay on
track.
Many techniques can be utilized to create a
boundary between the work and personal lives including: limiting
times when we check email outside of normal working hours; not
answering the office phone during meals; making gym visits and
other physical activities a priority, even if work has to be
rescheduled slightly.
Remember to apply these tips as you venture
into virtual work territory, and you will find the work
experience rewarding. |
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By Julia Loughran, ThoughtLink, Vienna, VA
To start this article on Collaboration Technologies, I thought it
might be good to describe the term “collaboration” – so, I turned to
the Internet and my favorite Google Search Engine. One of the top
links for my search query “collaboration definition” was a link to
Wikipedia. I thought it somewhat ironic that I would find a
definition of the term “collaboration” that came from a source that
was written “collaboratively.” (In case you didn’t know, Wikipedia
is an encyclopedia collaboratively written by many of its readers.)
The Wikipedia definition states that collaboration is the processes
wherein people work together. Therefore, collaboration tools
provide technology to help in that process. This is extremely
important for virtual teams separated by location and or time zones.
Studies show that
the most effective way to collaborate is often face-to-face, but for
virtual teams, they must rely on tools and technologies to support
communication and coordination of tasks. Collaboration technologies
come in two flavors – asynchronous and synchronous. Asynchronous
tools enable people to collaborate when they are not together at the
same time. Some popular forms of asynchronous collaboration tools
include e-mail, threaded discussion forums, document/file/content
management, portals, and project management tools. Synchronous
collaboration, also called “real-time communications”, allows people
to collaborate at the same time. Examples of synchronous
collaboration include text messaging, video and audio conferencing
and virtual environments.
The table below lists tools and methods to
support virtual teams, their pros and cons, and the circumstances to
which the tool is best suited.
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Collaboration Method |
Pros
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Cons
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When To
Use |
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Face-to-face |
Builds
trust; develops common sense of purpose |
Expensive; sometimes impossible; assumes team members are
known |
Onset of
a project; to help build trust amongst the team members
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VTC
(video-teleconferencing)
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Provides
visual and auditory cues |
Tools not
always available; compatibility; bandwidth |
For
facial expressions; confirmation of participants; higher
mgmt/authority levels |
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Fax/Overnight Delivery |
Doesn't
require common software formats |
Delivery
cost and time delay; hard to modify originals |
If other
technology is not available |
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E-mail
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Easy,
ubiquitous, rapid |
Obscures
relationships; loses emotional tone; potential format issues
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For
1-to-1 and 1-to-many text communication; sharing attachments
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Bulletin/Discussion Boards |
Shares
info with all members; generates accessible archive
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Needs
leader to sustain conversation |
Good for
large distributed groups with shared interests |
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Shared
Whiteboard |
Real-time
shared views; ability to add annotations |
Software
compatibility |
For
developing a common picture; sharing graphics |
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Voice
over Internet
Protocol (VoIP)2 |
Low cost;
support real-time interaction |
Software
comp ability; voice quality < phone |
For
1-to-1 and 1-to-many voice communication |
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Web-based
document sharing |
Internet
accessible; provides persistent workspace |
Software
compatibility; configuration management |
Collaborative development of documents or other products
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Web
portals |
Links
content, community, and collaboration tools |
Cost;
ability to attract community |
To
connect highly distributed teams with common interests
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2 VoIP
is is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or
through any other Internet Protocol-based network.
It’s important to
remember, that in the end, it’s not about the technologies your team
decides to use, but how readily they are adopted and assimilated
into your organization’s processes. Despite the benefits that many
of these tools offer, people are slow to change. For technology
adoption to be successful, the team has to have a shared
understanding of the benefits and have support and shown adoption
from the team’s leadership.
ThoughtLink and
our partners have extensive experience in virtual teams and
successful collaboration technology adoption. We tailor our
consultative services to include business process analysis and
adoption planning to ensure teams are confidant and enthusiastic
about employing the use of the collaboration tools. Our
collaboration experts work in conjunction with technology
professionals to help clients identify how to bring their people,
processes and technologies together to improve organizational and
team effectiveness.
Below are brief
summaries of some collaboration technologies (broken into different
categories) that ThoughtLink is excited about.
Instant
Messaging
Bantu
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http://www.bantu.com/ - Bantu offers highly secure and scalable
Instant Messaging services. The IM can be one-to-one, group or
conferencing and it provides presence awareness (see other people
who are online). It can support large numbers of enterprise users –
it currently supports 1.4 million registered users on the U.S. Army
Knowledge Online portal.
Web-Conferencing
Elluminate
Live 7.0 -
http://www.elluminate.com/version7/ - Elluminate is an online
web-conferencing tool that supports distributed meetings, sales
presentations, or education and training environments. The tool
supports Voice Over IP. Some of their customers include: Apple
Computer, Sun Microsystems, T-Mobile, Interstate Hotels and Resorts,
Penn State University, Johns Hopkins University and many more.
Audio Conferencing
Free
Conference -
http://www.freeconference.com/ - ThoughtLink has been using Free
Conference for many years as a way of doing free teleconferences.
They currently offer 3-levels of service for up to 100 people. You
can have a standard web-scheduled or unscheduled conference where
participants must dial a long-distance phone number, or you can pay
for a 1-800 phone number for a cost of 10 cents a minute per
caller. If you don’t have a long-distance phone plan, consider what
we have done – used Skype (see below) to call into Free
Conference.Skype –
www.skype.com – Skype lets you use your computer to call other
computers with Skype – or for a small fee, anywhere in the world.
ThoughtLink also uses Skype and have found the quality to be very
good if you have a high-speed connection. All Skype-to-Skype calls
are free and you can call phones using the Skype Out feature. Right
now they are offering a deal of unlimited calls to anywhere in the
U.S. or Canada for $29.95/year.
Virtual Environments and Games
Second Life
–
www.secondlife.com – According to Second Life’s web site, Second
Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its
residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown
explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 3,660,992 people
from around the globe. ThoughtLink and its partners on the bThere
project have been using Second Life to test some of our concepts for
working virtually. Second Life does not currently offer voice, so
we combine this technology with Skype and Free Conference.
Document
Sharing/Project Management
Groove
–
www.groove.net – Recently acquired by Microsoft, Groove’s
Virtual Office allows teams to set up workspaces, invite team
members, share documents, calendars, messaging, and other team
resources. ThoughtLink uses Groove to coordinate across all of
their many projects. One of the benefits is how quickly new members
can be added to the Groove network. Groove is available with other
Microsoft Office products if purchased with the Microsoft Office
Enterprise license, or, you can purchase individual Groove licenses
for approximately $210.
Enhancing Person-to-Person Connections
Tacit’s
Illumio -
http://www.tacit.com/ - Illumio is an exciting new technology
that lets you search for expertise about any problem or question you
might have. When you send a request, only the people that match
that request will receive the query. This technology cannot only
help you give or receive answers to given problems, but it also has
the capability to build your social network by making new
connections. |
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LuAnne Bell |
By
LuAnne Bell, Blue Atlas Interactive, Gaithersburg, MD
Microsoft
has been very successful in making an impact within the
collaboration space with their SharePoint product.
SharePoint is Microsoft’s fastest growing product…..ever.
When Microsoft announced its acquisition of Groove Networks
in March, 2006, many were wondering ‘why?’ Microsoft
already has SharePoint…..what are they going to do with
Groove Virtual Office?
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First, let’s
take a step back and understand what SharePoint and Groove really are. At the
core of both applications is the ability to have shared workspaces. SharePoint
is a server-based application that is made available to team members via their
web browser. It provides a central storage and
collaboration space for documents, information, and other team
communications. SharePoint
and workspace data resides on a server that is typically
either managed by the internal IT department or subscribed to
via a hosting arrangement.
SharePoint is a rich application that requires the user be
online to access the SharePoint workspace. SharePoint is
typically used within an existing intranet environment.
Conversely,
Groove is a desktop application much like other applications in
the Microsoft Office suite. It enables information workers to
work together in a shared workspace right from their desktop.
Groove can be set-up by end users and workspaces can be spun-up
without the support of the IT department. Team members can
access the workspace whether online or offline…..Groove
automatically synchronizes the workspace
data on each team member’s
desktop when online. Groove is an agile application that is
ideal for smaller teams organized around a finite project. In
addition, Groove readily supports extending the workspace to
invited partners, vendors, and clients whom aren’t a part of an
organization’s internal network.
By
ascertaining the business process requirements of an
organization, it becomes apparent whether SharePoint, Groove or
a SharePoint/Groove combination is the best solution for the
environment.
The One-Two Punch: A Groove SharePoint Combination
Let’s move to
a scenario in which a combination of SharePoint and Groove is
applicable. A small team is tasked with developing a marketing
plan that will eventually be shared throughout an entire
company. Using Groove as the development workspace, team
members are able to get their workspace up and running quickly.
Ongoing threaded discussions ensue and multiple iterations of
documents are created and placed within the workspace for joint
review and edit. Once the marketing plan is reviewed and
approved by the team, the final plan document is pushed to the
SharePoint server for access by a wider audience. With the
marketing plan team’s work completed, the Groove workspace is
dissolved.
So, in some
cases, the right collaborative tool can be SharePoint and in
other cases it may be Groove. However, in many cases, the
combination of SharePoint AND Groove is the best solution.
Note: Blue
Atlas and ThoughtLink have teamed to provide a variety of
professional services to support Microsoft’s collaboration
solutions like SharePoint and Groove. For more information on
what we can do for your organization, send an e-mail to
info@thoughtlink.com | |
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Ralph Sklarew |
By
Julia Loughran, ThoughtLink, Vienna, VA
Recently, ThoughtLink teamed with Dr. Ralph Sklarew, and a handful of others, to develop a virtual reality work environment. The group is calling the project bThere - for "better than being there." In this interview, Ralph discusses the concept, its benefits over current collaboration technologies, and he provides a vision for what working virtually will be like in the future.
A picture of the bThere prototype environment appear at the end
of the interview. The Second Life offices were developed by team member
Sanjoy Mullesserril. |
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ThoughtLink: |
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Ralph, tell us a little about your background. |
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| Ralph: |
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I have a PhD in physics. I started in the nuclear field for the Defense Department as a contractor and then moved into environmental science and emergency response. All the time, I was modeling with a computer - using a computer to simulate what is happening in physical processes. More recently, I have focused on human-computer interactions. I developed pen computing as used in tablet PCs today; I worked on a project to represent the Web as virtual buildings collocated on "islands" with other similar sites; I made a widget for people to legally share music over e-mail and I developed a system to use instruments remotely. Most recently, I have been looking at using virtual reality for making places for people to work. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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How did you get interested in researching technologies for virtual offices and meeting rooms? |
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| Ralph: |
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I was over talking to people in emergency response, homeland-security - they had built a demo center that took a lot of people's equipment and put them together so you could see how they worked together and try them out. I had a concern that everyone had to go there (physically) to see all these different systems - but, if they took the interfaces and put them on the Internet, people could try them out from their offices. So, I started looking into virtual reality to do this and the more I looked the more excited I got because not only do you want to use it for testing and experimentation but training was really big in virtual reality- but, operations should be the thing people are really excited about - actually doing your job using virtual reality. The more I explored the more it became obvious that virtual worlds should be deployed for real operations, real work not only for emergency response but for general business...starting with meetings and offices. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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Describe some virtual teams you have worked on in the past - what technologies and processes have you found help teams not geographically working together? |
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| Ralph: |
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Many years in the past, I ran a company in California but I moved to Virginia - so it had to be virtual. We only had phone, fax, e-mail and frequent trips. More recently, we've started a virtual group to develop the bThere concept. We are a team that meets almost exclusively in cyberspace. Many of us have never met except online. We have to trust each other based on what we do. When we meet, we use Second Life to give us presence, we use FreeConference.com to give us voice, and we use Google Docs that allow us to have shared notes so we can have a typing whiteboard. We're also exploring technologies that go beyond these, like ThinkLets from MindSights; ThinkTank from Group Systems and Elluminate. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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Describe the bThere concept. |
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| Ralph: |
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What we're trying to do is provide an office where people working remotely can really work together. The features are that they have to be able to interact, see and hear each other, move around each other, move in and out of each other's presence and, of course, be able to work, so they have to have office equipment, ways to communicate with their co-workers. They have to have equivalent of whiteboards to sketch, draw and diagram. They also have to have a computer - they have to have a computer in a computer. I think we have to have a way to take what they would normally do on their desktop computer and have it represented in their virtual computer so they can work the same way as they would on their desktop.
One of the benefits of this virtual environment over other types of collaboration technologies available today is that you experience the sights and sounds of other people working around you. bThere is a simulated office that brings context to collaboration. The workplace settings include: full offices; a bullpen of individual cubicles; meeting rooms; and informal spaces like a hallway, snack room or water cooler.
I'm suggesting one of the most productive environments is a bull pen - where when you look up you can see the heads of other people on your team and when you have your head down, you can hear sounds of people working. You feel as if you are in a work environment. You can visit people in their virtual cubicles and your own cubicle is portable and can be integrated with all the teams you work on. Many people have many projects and each project has different teams. With a virtual office, you can take your own environment with you and you won't have to learn new software and new processes. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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What type of people are working with you on the bThere prototype (what are their different backgrounds/interests)? |
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| Ralph: |
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Their backgrounds range from academics to entrepreneurs, from software to graphic arts to team building. Their interests are varied and include: application development; human factors and usability; virtual team development and support; leadership development; meeting facilitation; and branding and marketing. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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What other companies are looking into this concept? |
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| Ralph: |
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IBM has recently made a big commitment and thousands of employees have been in Second Life where they have several islands and hold business and marketing meetings. Many other companies have opened islands there as well, including Reuters, Dell, Cisco, Sears, and Text100. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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Describe the prototype the bThere team is building. |
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| Ralph: |
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We've been developing meeting rooms and outfitting them with equipment such as a white board, presentation projector and news feeds (SLURL: Hyojong 204,93,49). To demonstrate what a bThere meeting can be like, we'll be making demonstration videos. We'll offer the rooms for others to try out and actually use with supporting software (such as meeting facilitation or brainstorming.) All we'll ask is that after each use, lessons learned are compiled. And, as we all have more and more experience, we plan to evaluate alternative ways to operate and develop guidelines for best practices. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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What are your goals for next steps? What is the estimated timeline? |
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| Ralph: |
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First is our own use and evolutionary build out of the meeting room capabilities--which we are doing now. Second is the demonstration videos so we can document what we've done and have a simple way to tell others. Third, we'll start sharing our offices with others. We've actually made some progress on all three. It's an iterative process but our first videos should be available shortly. Our efforts will proceed from small meetings to other office functions such as individual and informal interactive work in a shared team space.
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What are some of the current technology shortfalls in Second Life? |
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| Ralph: |
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The Second Life environment is less than adequate as an immersive workplace principally due to lack of speech and web browser (through which many of the office applications could be accessed). Other barriers to use include: difficulties designing and controlling your avatar; reduced communications without facial expressions and gestures that can be controlled "naturally"; and frequent software re-installations. |
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What benefits do you think this new environment will have over current collaboration tools? |
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| Ralph: |
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Foremost, bThere is an overarching environment that should provide new ways to integrate current collaboration tools. We'll have recognizable ways to finally extend beyond the 2D, paper or document metaphor that has constrained our thinking and work for more than twenty years. And, even when working from home, shared space or on the road, we'll have our own office and colleagues and integrated supporting applications with us.
As a conferencing system, compared to voice, video and web bThere provides shared space where participants can really work together. Each person controls where he moves and looks, and he has integrated supporting software to enhance his performance. All these lead to fuller engagement and higher bandwidth into his brain. Finally, it's always on with visual and auditory cues of other's presence. |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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How might meetings and work be different in this new virtual environment? |
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| Ralph: |
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The physics in bThere are mutable...you can fly, teleport and even explore inside working, simulated systems such as car engines. In general, with bThere we're only limited by our imagination. Anyone can have a Star Trek-like replicator and holo deck. I don't pretend to know what it'll be like in a few years as we experiment, learn and evolve but it'll be much better than being there! |
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| ThoughtLink: |
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Thank you for the Interview Ralph! |
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Picture of the bThere meeting
room prototype in Second Life |
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By Tina Malm, M.S., Florida Tech
The Problem:
Organizations
increasingly discover that virtual teamwork structures provide
increased flexibility in an economic environment of continuous
change, and the use of the virtual office has dramatically
increased. Even though research is attempting to keep up with these
new developments in work design structures, it has not made much
progress in trying to define and measure the virtual
teamwork job performance domain. Yes, we all know that virtual work
requires different knowledge, skills, and abilities than work in
traditional face-to-face environments. For example, organizations
must select high performing, independent, self-motivated people with
strong interpersonal skills to account for a lack of supervision and
obstacles to interpersonal communication. But do we have to data to
support our assumptions?
Of course, as a
manager of a virtual team, you can take an educated guess on what
your distributed team members are doing on a daily basis, and then
develop a performance appraisal that measures how well they
are doing that. But what if your educated guess is not really
accurate? Do you want to make decisions on pay increases based on
performance appraisal data that just represent “an educated guess”?
Don’t we want to have performance appraisal data on the critical
behaviors? How do you provide constructive developmental feedback to
your team members?
As a manager of a
virtual team, do you really know your team’s performance
deficiencies? Or are you likely to miss some of these? Would you be
interested in having access to hard fact data to find out where
things might go wrong?
If you are a purely
virtual organization, it is also of paramount importance to have a
job analysis of virtual teamwork on file. Let’s assume 5 individuals
apply for a job you recently posted, and 1 out of the 4 rejected
applicants decides to sue you because they feel that your decision
was unfair. To defend your decision in court, you need a job
analysis on file. The court needs to know what the critical
behaviors your virtual teamworkers engage in are, and that your
selection system fairly measures them.
So, the educated
reader knows that if we want to select, train, or evaluate
distributed teamworkers, we need to first know WHAT to select for,
train, or evaluate! What are the critical behaviors we want to
predict with our selection measures for virtual workers? What are
the critical behaviors your team needs training in to function more
efficiently? What are the critical behaviors you should include into
an efficient and valid performance appraisal system without making
it too long and cumbersome?
Professionals
interested in finding out more about the virtual teamwork job
performance domain are likely to be disappointed when turning to the
research literature. A variety of books and articles on virtual
teamwork are available, yes, but these either fail to present
empirical data from applied settings or fail to take a complete
picture of the performance phenomenon into account. For example,
studies have measured distributed teamwork performance in terms of
“individual error”, “satisfaction”, or “overall performance”, but is
this the only information you are looking for? Are you selecting
individuals based on information about whether or not they will be
satisfied? Probably not! If your distributed team is satisfied, does
it mean that it does not require training? No, because this
indicator does not reveal how efficient your team works with each
other. Do you want to provide feedback to your distributed
teamworkers on their overall performance (“Overall, I think you
are doing a good job”), or don’t you think that employees might
be interested in and benefit more from knowing their strengths and
weaknesses regarding different facets of job performance.
Therefore, from a
research as well as applied perspective, we should turn towards
investigating the job performance construct more thoroughly. The
very first step in doing so is to conduct a job analysis of virtual
teamwork. What do distributed teamworkers really do on a daily
basis? Can these behaviors be generalized to different types of
virtual teams?
If we select,
train, predict, and reward for individual performance, we need to
gain a full understanding and conceptually distinguish between
different types of performance indicators.
Current Research:
Researchers at
the Florida Institute of Technology are currently exploring these
questions. They are conducting a job analysis of virtual teamwork,
clearly defining the virtual worker’s tasks and responsibilities.
After reviewing and extracting relevant information from hundreds of
articles on virtual teamwork, and conducting in-depth interviews
with virtual teamworkers, they have identified seven performance
dimensions that appear to be relevant across the main types of
virtual teams (See Table 1 for the seven dimensions).
Table I: Proposed
Performance Dimension
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Dimension |
Example
Items |
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1.
Communication and Coordination |
a) Being
proficient will all communication tools
b)
Informing others about task progress |
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2.
Self-Regulation |
a)
Setting your own goals and performance standards
b)
Working autonomously |
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3.
Adaptability |
a) Being
able to troubleshoot and handle your own technological
problems
b) Coping
with uncertain, unstructured, and ambiguous tasks and goals |
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4.
Discretionary Performance Behaviors |
a)
Demonstrating a sense of humor
b)
Communicating enthusiasm and optimism |
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5.
Decision
Making, Problem Solving, and Conflict Resolution
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a)
Approaching problems creatively
b)
Attempting to immediately work through conflicts and
differences with other team members |
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6.
Knowledge
Management |
a)
Interacting with experts who have different skills and
experiences
b)
Circulating relevant documents to other team members |
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7.
Counterproductive Work Behavior |
a)
Failing to keep commitments
b)
Gossiping about other team members |
This research is
currently collecting empirical data from virtual teamworkers to
validate their task inventory. The ultimate goal of the project is
to develop performance taxonomy of virtual teamwork that will guide
future efforts to develop effective selection, training, evaluation,
and distance management systems for virtual team employees.
A second goal of
this project is to develop a comprehensive yet easy to use
assessment tool that covers the critical range of work behaviors
that virtual workers engage in. Participating organizations will
receive organization-specific results (e.g., company ratings
compared to other participating organizations; behaviors ranked
according to their criticality). Based on these results, an
individualized report will also be provided to them. This report
consists of recommendations on:
a) Critical
behaviors to include in their performance appraisal system
b) Behaviors to
select and hire for
c) Behaviors that
require training to increase the optimal function of virtual
teamwork
To produce this
tailored report for an organization, a minimum of 40 virtual
teamworkers would need to complete a 15-minute online task inventory
to ensure the results have statistical validity.
Participating
organizations will also be provided future access to the task
inventory tool to measure future needs in the areas of selection,
training, and performance appraisals. Please visit
www.virtualteamresearch.com/2.html for more information on
benefits for participation organizations.
If you are
interested in participating as a virtual team or organization,
please contact the author. This project is still seeking both
individual and organization-wide participants from now until
February 28, 2007. Participant names will be entered into a drawing
and, if you are lucky, you could be the winner of one of two $150.00
cash prizes!
The online survey
can be completed at:
www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=862082874814
Contact Info:
Tina Malm:
tmalm@fit.edu or phone: (717) 283-8394
Dr. Andrew
English:
aenglish2@cfl.rr.com
For more
information, please see:
www.virtualteamresearch.com |
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Author's Biography |
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Tina is
currently working on her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational
Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Richard Griffith at Florida
Tech. She has developed and provided training in the areas of
leadership, interpersonal communication, and team-building skills,
as well as in diversity and adaptability management. Tina has worked
for the personnel development department at Becks, and the human
resources department at Toys R' Us. Her research interests focus on
virtual teams and personality testing for personnel selection. |
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STOMP Review 1/17/07
By Andrew English, ThoughtLink, Indialantic, FL
I recently attended a U.S. Tour performance from a percussive musical group called STOMP. What makes STOMP unique is that they use pots and pans, broomsticks, garbage cans, and kitchen sinks to produce their music. In addition to these non-standard instruments, as their name implies, they often incorporated foot-stomping to maintain the 4/4 time driving most compositions. Overall, I thought the performance was unbelievable, and would recommend this show to everyone, as it seemed appropriate for all audiences. Though injects of humor were rather subtle, they were frequent enough to often hear uncontrollable laughter coming from the younger audience members. The performers often performed rhythm solos, consisting of nothing but hand-claps, finger-snaps and foot-stomps. These solos were especially entertaining and often required audience participation.
The length of the show seemed just about perfect; about an hour in duration, with no intermission. I have one piece of advice for those of you with sensitive hearing. An hour is just long enough for you to…Bring a pair of earplugs!
STOMP ON!
For more information on STOMP, see
http://www.stomponline.com/
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By Julia Loughran, ThoughtLink, Vienna, VA
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
by Thomas L. Friedman
ThoughtLink's Virtual Book Club recently read Friedman's latest
book and I was encouraged by Friedman's optimism that if you are a
driven entrepreneur with unique services,
you can survive and even thrive in what Friedman calls a "Flat World." A flat
world is a connected world. This connectedness combined with
technology advances and lowering trade barriers is rapidly changing
the way we do business, the way we interact and the way we live day
to day. Overall, Friedman is optimistic about these changes,
but he does warn of a bleak future for the U.S. should we not
embrace these changes and adapt to keep up with the rest of the
world.
I was already aware of much of the outsourcing to India that Friedman
describes - but, I was fascinated about all of the innovative
partnerships companies are forming to do business faster,
better and cheaper. For instance, Dell computers is teamed
with UPS so that when you have a computer problem and UPS stops by
to pick it up, instead of shipping it to Dell's offices to be fixed,
UPS provides that service in a town in or near your town. You
get your computer back faster and Dell can focus on selling more
computers. It's all about being creative and finding new ways to do
business better.
The Flat World has given us new ways to connect - and these
connections will mean many more opportunities for Virtual Teams. The
book is well written and makes you think about the future, how the
future will affect us, and what we need to do to survive in this new
world. I highly recommend! |
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Notes on a Scandal
By Julia Loughran, ThoughtLink
Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett offer terrific performances in the
recent film, Notes on a Scandal. Judi
Dench plays a lonely, cat-owning, spinster school teacher who
becomes obsessed with the new art teacher, played by Cate Blanchett.
The friendship starts innocently enough, but Dench's character
quickly becomes obsessed with the younger Blanchett. The story
is told with numerous voiceovers as Dench writes in her diary about
her obsession and her plan to "save" Blanchett from her marriage and
children.
It isn't until Dench spies Blanchett in compromising
positions with a 15-year old student that she knows she can control Blanchett.
She must comply or risk Dench
releasing her secret. The suspense builds when we learn that
Dench has stalked another female teacher. That teacher filed a
restraining order against Dench and has moved away - but, what will
be Blanchett's fate? The movie is slow-paced but a true
psychological thriller with great acting performances. |
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Leadership and Storytelling: Conversations in Organizations,
May 4, 2007, Washington, DC. This daylong seminar,
featuring author Steve Denning, is sponsored by the Smithsonian
Resident Associates Program conveys the power of storytelling
in organizations and how conversations play an important
role in leadership. ThoughtLink has attended similar previous events
and highly recommends.
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SimTecT,
June 4-7, 2007, Brisbane, Australia. The theme of this
year's event is "Simulation - Improving Capability and
Competitiveness" and will focus on how simulation can help us
understand and improve the way we operate in the future.
ThoughtLink's Julia Loughran presented a key note at this
conference last year -
and she is on the Conference Review Committee this year.
It promises to be an excellent conference - with more papers submitted
this year than ever before.
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Enterprise 2.0, June 18-21, 2007, Boston, MA. This
conference is for IT and business professionals that want to be
more agile and productive through the adoption of collaboration
tools and technologies. The conference features not only
the technology, but how the technology works with people.
- The
Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education
Conference, I/ITSEC, November 26-29, 2007, Orlando, FL.
Last year over 16,000 people attended I/ITSEC and this year
promises to be bigger and better. The conference theme is
"Maintaining the Edge ... Transforming the Force." Julia
Loughran is a member of the Emerging Concepts and Innovative
Technologies (ECIT) sub-committee. Abstracts are welcome
until February 23rd. To submit an abstract, go to
http://www.iitsec.org/stage1.cfm
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