In this final post I will discuss rule number three.

Hold The Team Together

Rule number three is concerned with the Project Manager or team leader. It is about your job. It is about your task.

Image by CarbonNYC.

Make it work!

It’s your job to communicate with the team to make it work.

You have to identify commonalities between the group members that strengthen the group. Use this to emphasize a group identity. Adopt common language that sets the team apart from other teams. Turn your project into a Pirate Ship so your diverse group of people has a sense of oneness.

It’s important to have the rules of engagement established at the beginning of the project. How do we interact? How are our meetings structured? As a group leader you are working your butt off to stimulate the use of these rules. Not by punishing people. But by looking after them. If someone is falling silent, reach out. Make sure people communicate.

And how do you do all this?

Communicate!

It’s event management!

This sounds like a job for a junior secretary.

Funny you mention this. I always thought working with Excel, MS Project and typing documents is better left doing by junior secretaries. They are cheaper and better at it.

(This is actually not in the HBR article)

Anyway, rule number 3 says that YOU, dear PM, have to make it work!

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Great Virtual Teams: Rule 3: Hold The Team Together is a post from: Project Shrink.

Do you?

We already know the answer for a couple of years. But not everyone is looking for it in the right direction.

Virtual teams.

In 2004 the Harvard Business Review published a great article by Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnack: “Can Absence Make A Team Grow Stronger”. (remember my video interview with Jesscia Lipnack?)

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

Although the authors don’t use the word “Social Media”, this technology fits like a glove to their research findings.

In the next couple of posts I will explain the 3 rules.

Rule 1: Exploit Diversity

Every single person is different. Put people from all over the world, different professions and different age categories in a team, and your team’s diversity will increase. With virtual teams, this diversity will probably be larger than with collocated teams.

Diversity creates different viewpoints, different ways of problem solving, other ways of looking at the world in general.

This clash of perspectives produces creative solutions.

To be able to exploit diversity in a constructive way, people have to get to know each other a little better. Build trust and respect by sharing their backgrounds, expertise and reputation.

The authors of the article see a role for conference calls in this area. These calls must be carefully planned and be real “can’t miss” events. By explaining their own Meyer-Briggs-indicator, people tell other team members about aspects of their personality.

Another cool way to share backgrounds and interests was mentioned to me by Andy Meyer: for each meeting, a person will prepare their own lifeline introduction or select an article that they believe is particularly interesting.

Make use of your teams diversity.

But you really have to work for it. It’s not going to happen all by itself.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Great Virtual Teams: Rule 1: Exploit Diversity is a post from: Project Shrink.

It takes 5 seconds to load and it will allow you to click dynamically through the top of the government of the United States. On top of the screen are a couple of small buttons: [Org] will give you the names of the organizations, and [Per] will let you see each living person! (and yes, Barack is in the middle).

The technology used is called OrgScope and it makes complex data (like a networked organization) more accessible.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Organizational Map of New US Government is a post from: Project Shrink.