How to use social media successfully in projects, is described in the Harvard Business Review article by Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnack: “Can Absence Make A Team Grow Stronger”. The article is from 2004, and they are not mentioning “social media”, they discuss “virtual workspaces”. But the two concepts are strikingly similar.
Image by Annia316.
The article describes three rules to create successful virtual teams:
Rule 1: Exploit Diversity
Rule 2: Use Technology to Simulate Reality
Rule 3: Hold The Team Together
In this post I will describe rule number two.
Use Technology to Simulate Reality
What the authors found is successful virtual teams use technology to mimic real life group processes. The virtual workspaces can be regarded as a room. If two people in a room are whispering to each other, hiding their conversation and actions, this does not enhance trust with the rest of the team.
One-on-one exchanges of information can make people feel left out. Same thing happens when in a virtual team people are using email. No visibility.
Spam-O-Tronic: CC!
Some smart people would now jump up and scream “Use the cc-function”. But this isn’t a solution. This would be the same as having the one-on-one conversation in the back of a room and broadcast it continuously through a speaker system.
The virtual workspaces, and in our case social media, provide discussion groups, forums that allow people to have conversations on topic, make it transparent for the entire group, but don’t dominate the overall group information exchange. And because it’s all digital, archived and always available “… the workspace was where the group was reminded of its decisions, rationales and commitments,” explain the authors in the HBR article.
It’s like sitting in a room, have casual conversations, and if needed go to a meeting room to have a break out session.
Video Conferencing
Much has been said about the benefits of having visual contact with the people you are talking to. Video conferencing can be a good tool for virtual teams. But the authors of the HBR article have two additions: 1) it only brings benefits when the amount is members in the conference is small and 2) when it’s use is no hassle, when there are no technical glitches.
Rules Of Engagement
To make it all work, to let technology mimic reality, the members of the team have to agree upon certain protocols, agree explicitly on how they are going to communicate. How quick they are supposed to answer a question, how are meetings prepared and followed up, e.g. Of course, in co located teams the rules of engagement are important too, but for virtual teams this is essential for success.
For example, conference calls are not used for status updates. Status updates are only written down in the virtual space. The calls are used to discuss disagreements. It’s a simple rule, but it makes a conference call effective and engaging; it becomes a can’t miss-event.
Heavily agree that video conferencing is better than email but not when there are glitches. Chat works best for my team since we aren’t face to face.
Although telecommuting has many benefits its down-sides are just as much. However, this can easily be solved by using a special toolkit which is available at a nominal price.
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Hi Jose,
Thanks for your input. Can you explain a little more about “the toolkit”. I mean, 250 bucks for some templates can seem rather expensive. Not about the documents itself, but I would love some pointers on the tips.
Hi Bas,
Have you seen the video on Google Wave? What are your thoughts on how that might factor into making virtual meetings more effective?
Hi Joelle, great question. I think I will dedicate a post to it soon.. thanks for the idea.
It will bring the collaboration tools at a much higher level. The basic features that took big companies years to build are now for free to download. So we will see some great innovations.
So, yes it will have a big impact, but in ways we would not have dreamed about.
Hi Bas,
Interesting discussion. I completely agree that virtual workspaces are critical to a high level of team communication.
One small note – we found that for the subtle human factors like trust and bonding, it was better to use “lowest common denominator” communications. In other words, if a a couple of team members could actually get together, but the rest couldn’t, it was actually better for team chemistry to NOT have them get together. Strange, but true.
Hi dave, thank you for the addition. I recognize your suggestion. Great tip!
Dave’s comment reveals how sub-tribes can form within the group. I think it’s a shame to not let people get together.
The approach I hav taken in the past is to let bthe groups form, but continue to work on the ‘whole group’ experience for everyone.