Working With the Cartoon People
Raising kids with their own laptops has been a new kind of challenge. I have had to deal with the problem of them staying on the computer far too long and even getting up in the middle of the night to visit YouTube or IM their friends. This is not a unique problem these days. With Facebook, the various new social media meet-up solutions turning up every day and so many online temptations, it is easy to see kids disappear into cyberspace and not come out for hours or days.
So one technique that I used that employed humor had to do with the "friends" the boy had developed entirely online. These were individuals he chatted with from around the world but whom he had never seen other than in pictures. So I called them his "cartoon people" to put an emphasis on the fact that those relationships are not as good as relationships with real people in 3D and away from the computer screen.
The internet has taken over communications in more ways than just how teenagers socialize with each other. It has become an integral part of how the business world works as well. The time when you did all of your business with local customers working with friends and neighbors who all lived in your community is long gone. Because of internet commerce, businesses view their markets differently and city, state or even country borders have disappeared.
Similarly, who your coworkers are is no longer a local question. It is common to be called upon to organize or work on what is often called a "virtual team". That means that you may have to organize a project with specialists who are located all over the map. You may conduct a great deal of your communications digitally and in many cases, never see or hear the voices of important members of your team. Just as teenagers are very comfortable with socializing with "cartoon people", the time is ripe to learn how to work with cartoon people as well. And those cartoon people are your virtual team.
New World - New Tools
A virtual team is just that - virtual. Like my teenager's cartoon people, you may only have a small part of your team in your office space physically. The great thing about a virtual team is that it opens up the world of cyberspace project development to such a huge pool of talent. You can include people with extensive subject matter expertise on your team who may be physically located a hundred or thousands of miles away.
The expenses of using a virtual team of talented team members are kept to the costs of their talents only because there is often no need for travel or other overhead. In fact, you don’t even have to pay for their coffee or include them in department lunches because they handle those expenses themselves.
To become skilled at managing or working within a virtual team, you must learn to be very comfortable with the tools of a virtual communications business environment. Email is one such tool that has become a very common style of communication even for team members sitting in adjoining cubicles. When you are interacting with members of your virtual team, emails take on a greater priority when they come in from those team members.
There are plenty of new tools that you can take advantage of to make the communications channels between you and other members of the virtual team. Those tools include instant messaging, the use of blogs and file sharing so threads can be maintained about issues that need to be resolved. Those online blog threads can become the dialog that pools the knowledge and wisdom of the team to strive toward the common goal of project success.
In addition to email and IM, webcams and social networks can be used to create a greater familiarity and ease of access between team members. Facebook is often thought of as a toy for teenagers. But the ability to post photos and other details on Facebook can help a virtual team develop stronger ties to each other which improves communication with each other. But there are other social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn that are perfect for making virtual teams work better despite physical distances between each other.
Replacing Water Cooler Talk
Conference calling and frequent contact via voice communications is also central to your success with your virtual team. Team meetings will have to be facilitated with a well designed conference calling technology. It will take some skill to organize such meetings particularly if your virtual team is spread across vast time zones. Even just organizing meetings between team members on the east and west coasts can take some patience and careful planning. If some members of your virtual team are international, that goal becomes even more challenging.
Voice communications between team members one on one is just as important as what is accomplished in a formal meeting setting. It will be the job of management to make the tools available that such communications are easy to do and that employees know they can use that tool as much as they wish. The arrival of VOID and Skype means that opening this form of communication up to virtual team members is no longer a cost issue.
Trust - Honesty - Dependability
The cornerstones of teamwork do not change just because you have a virtual team. Those cornerstones are trust, honesty and dependability. For virtual team members to build and sustain a relationship with you, they have to know they can depend on you. So when you make a commitment to one member of the team or to the team goals, keep that commitment. Be the one who always answers emails quickly and be always available through IM anytime you are working online so that your team members know how to connect with you at any time.
That accessibility replaces being able to drop in on your cubicle. You may even exchange some humor in your virtual communications to replace that casual talk at the water cooler that builds community and office friendships. The basics of how communications between human beings remain the same and once you build a solid business relationship using online tools, that virtual partnership can be just as strong as any you have benefitted form in the world out side of cyberspace. That means that people on your team can depend on you and that you can depend on them. Even if they are cartoon people.
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Filed Under: Education in Technology • The Internetz
