Surinder and I are currently attending the Mardi Gras conference on virtual worlds in Baton Rouge along with our colleague Rui Huang. We are here to present our paper that I discussed in last week’s post and also to hear the exciting work that others are pursuing in and around virtual worlds. I am amazed by the breadth of interests… Read more →
Effective communication in electronic environments can be vexing to virtual teams. We know intuitively that we need proper communication to achieve high quality and efficient outcomes, but we are not always sure how to best achieve effective communication or even what effective communication is for the task at hand. We have mentioned issues around communication in past posts, such as… Read more →
A few weeks back, Surinder posted quick tips that virtual team leaders could use to deal with pressures to make their virtual teams more productive. I believe that sponsors and leaders of virtual team projects ought to also focus on another thing: training. While the times are challenging because of pressures to cut down costs, we strongly believe that the… Read more →
Cost cutting and doing more with less is in the air. Rarely does a day go by when you don’t face pressures yourself to do more with less or hear something similar from others. At the beginning of the week, WSJ had two articles on how businesses are trying to improve productivity or manage with less (Stores count seconds to… Read more →
A project leader recently asked me how to promote cooperation among members of his virtual team who are at different locations. This is a common issue that virtual team leaders struggle with. Virtual teams often consist of subgroups of team members located in separate locations. This division of team members can give rise to social categorization within the team (i.e., those who… Read more →
Every once in a while, you come across something that defies the conventional wisdom that you need face-to-face contact to build strong social relationships (see a recent article that relies on this wisdom). A New York Times article “After Blogger’s Plane Crash, Virtual Becomes Personal” that was published on September 6, 2008 is one such item. In this post, I… Read more →
In one of her recent posts, Betsy Carroll blogged about alternatives to email. Email tends to be misused because of its accessibility and convenience. People end up using it in situations where alternatives would be more suitable. While stressing that email is great for communication but not for collaboration, Betsy discussed alternatives to email and the situations where they would… Read more →
There are three members of the Leading Virtually team who are currently the most active core. Of the three of us, I know Surinder well (he was my teacher and research collaborator when I was in graduate school). But I met Angelo for the first time in person last week. We have been working together for about 8 months without… Read more →
For those who are interested in virtual team collaboration, the concept of teamwork is crucial. But rarely is “teamwork” actually defined. Just as the adage goes, we know it when we see it, but we may have trouble explicitly saying what makes for good teamwork. This week, Surinder sent me an academic journal article by Martin Hoegl and Hans Georg… Read more →