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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. - Potion 17 – Death of the Phone Call is a post from: Project Shrink.

What if we could create conditions that would attract “the right people”? What if those “right people” would “trust” all other member in the group, just because they were attracted by the same social needs?

If you fill a sink with water and when it’s full you pull the plug, all the water will spiral towards one point. Automatically. Just because the proper conditions are created.

People Cluster

Humans form clusters. Work for example seems to be located around certain topological centers like a harbor, a place rich of natural resources or just cities. Work is not spread out evenly over the planet. There are concentrations of it. The same goes for the other current, that of talent moving around, as described by Richard Florida in “The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent”. The most incredible, creative talent is looking for great places to live. Places where tolerant stimulating locations provide company of like minded people. By creating the conditions of technology, tolerance and already available talent, other talent is automatically attracted. Both currents have as a net effect that people are clustering, one gets clusters because people have the need to satisfy their economic needs. opinions.

Social Clustering

Imagine the map of the earth doesn’t reflect countries, but it represent ideas. Or they would represent religions, world views, life styles and other concepts. Imagine a spatial representation of concepts. People will not be spread out evenly. What you will see is that people are cuddling up next to each other. As their social needs by definition can only be fulfilled in relationship to other people, the association needed with groups ensures the clustering will be a fact when using a conceptual map.

Reputation Space

The network that knows about you in a certain context is your Reputation Space. You can view this as your professional network, your community of practice or just your local office. Or the world, if you are incredible famous. If we go back to the metaphor of water in a sink, this would be the sink.

When I tell you that social media has a purpose for Project Managers, you basically have to trust me on this. I try to make a compelling case. I provide you argumentation that makes the case plausible. Or fail at it, for that matter. I provide you with my profile. I make video to make a deeper “connect”. I use some personal branding. I use my associations with professional organizations. I use the fact that I am a practitioner. I use the fact that I have a long history of writing on the web. I use the fact that I have spoken at conferences. I use the fact that I have written a book. I use the fact that I have a lot of people subscribed to my rss feed and newsletter.

Some people prefer statistical evidence. Some prefer anecdotal story telling. Some prefer case descriptions. To you this is all “second hand” information. Which at best is plausible.

The network that knows about you, knows about you due to information. The reputation space can also be regarded as a collection of information. The entire collection of “second hand” information makes up the reputation space, as it is primary judged on the basis of the reputation of its source.

Oasis Of Trust

Social conditions have an impact on trust. Peoples “trustworthiness” is determined by association and similarity. Association: is what I expect the other to be like. Similarity: is to be like me. So there exists a set of conditions that enhance the development of trust among a group of people. And because people prefer to work in an oasis of trust, these conditions have attraction. The creation of a quest, the pursuit of something worthwhile, is a social marker that serves as an attractor.

Language, running a pirate ship instead of a project, social markers and culture in general are conditions that for some people, “the right people” signal an oasis of trust. People from within your reputation space will move to this oasis.

In the upcoming months I will explore this idea of using our natural tendency for social clustering as a way to drive teams, further.

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. - Reputation Space: Trust In A Connected World is a post from: Project Shrink.

If you are in a room with your team it happens very often that a talk between people in the same room morphs from murmur in the background to a conversation you find yourself all of a sudden eavesdropping on. Remember “osmotic communication“?

The shift from ignoring the conversation to focusing on it is most of the times triggered by a word or topic you didn’t expect in this context or phase of the project.

“Why are they talking about this, now?”

Often it means nothing, sometimes it’s a sign of an emerging problem.

This works fine when you are in the same room. But with virtual communications this gets harder to do. Too many information streams.

Although. Twitter found a solution. On its homepage it displays the real time trending topics. The keywords most often used in the current information stream.

Sometimes it’s expected. Like in December people talk about Christmas.

But sometimes (actually most of the times) I find myself asking:

“Why are people talking about this, now?”

If Google Wave catches on as an online communication and conversation channel, I hope some one creates a “Trending Topics” feature. I would love that. I think we would need that.

We need filters like that. I always thought about this in the context of “information overload”.

Until I read this quote from Clay Shirky:

“So there is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure, right? Which is to say the normal case of modern life is information overload for all educated members of society.”

So we need to focus on filters.

I want my “Trending Topics”. Now.

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. - Trending Topics In Your Project is a post from: Project Shrink.

In this presentation, recorded at the PMI Global Congress in Orlando, she discusses the following topics:

• New Media Never Sleeps
• Without Business Value, New Media is Just More Noise
• Suddenly, Everyone’s an Expert
• We Hate Being Vulnerable
• Not Everyone Wants to Participate

You can click here if the episode isn’t displayed below.

This recording is part of a session “Why Should You Care About Social Media?” at PMI Global Congress 2009 by the PMI New Media Council. Other parts of this session can be found here:

Collaboration With Skype, Vyew and Google Docs
Using Yammer For Frictionless Communication

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. - Be Careful With Social Media: Words Of Caution is a post from: Project Shrink.

One set of rules for everyone. Everyone should know the same set of rules…

Humans … have “rules” about how we do things “around here”. It is not hardwired however. For us it’s software, an operating system called “Culture” that can be upgraded or switched entirely. It is the culture of a group that determines what we think is important and how we interact with others.

A clear choice between an agile or a plan-driven project approach is a choice in culture. It sets the ground rules for “how we do things around here”.

Image by jlwelsh.

If the entire team uses the same rules on how to conduct meetings, which artifacts to create, which rituals to perform, coordination without central control will become possible.

The means, the rules of engagement, must be these 3 things…

Simple.

And short. And sweet. If everyone should hold the same view of the rules, the threshold for learning should be low. Scrum is short and easy to explain. The entire PMBoK itself is too large, a subset is needed, always.

Accessible.

Team members must be able to reference the rule set quickly in case they need to look something up. If it’s available on the web or intranet, people will use it. “Accessible” means an easy search function, not an glossary with a gazillion entries and links.

Label Must Fit.

If you use a “standard” rule set by it’s name, like Scrum, XP, Prince2, you really have to use the entire set that is covered by the label. PINO, as in Prince In Name Only, or SINO, Scrum In Name Only, is worst case. People will assume they are working according to a certain set of rules, when in reality they are not. Total misalignment.

Johanna Rothman recently wrote a great post that is related to this topic:

“One of the questions people have is: Can we do this partway? No, not Scrum or any other agile lifecycle. You either do it all or you’re not doing agile.”

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. - The Rules For The Rules Of Engagement is a post from: Project Shrink.

Skype and other video conferencing solutions are great for the little time per day when the team members are available. But with teams for instance in India and the US, this overlapping time period is often limited at best to a couple hours per day. Email and written forms of communication are fine for handling the offline communication, but it is lacking the human touch of audio/video communication, not conveying emotions.

TimZon aims to solve this problem.

You can watch the episode below or follow this link.

Subscribe with iTunes to “The Project Shrink Podcast”
Full Video Version of Project Shrink videocast

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. - TimZon: Effective Team Discussions In A Global And Virtual World is a post from: Project Shrink.

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.

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.

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 2: Use Technology to Simulate Reality 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.

Image by jlwelsh.

Humans also have “rules” about how we do things “around here”. It is not hardwired however. For us it’s software, an operating system called “Culture” that can be upgraded or switched entirely. It is the culture of a group that determines what we think is important and how we interact with others.

A clear choice between an agile or a plan-driven project approach is a choice in culture. It sets the ground rules for “how we do things around here”.

PINO, as in Prince In Name Only, or SINO, Scrum In Name Only, is worst case. It signals a split culture. The mouth says something different than the mind thinks. The rules of engagement don’t have to be lengthy or detailed to the lowest level. But they have to be shared!

That is why Jessica suggests successful virtual teams first agree on how they will interact and when.

That is why Jurgen implemented Scrum also for its name. It describes “how we do things around here”. And everyone can read the description on the web.

The first steps to solving the project communication problem is recognizing you can decide your rules of engagement (it’s not hardwired, there may be many choices) and everybody should be using the same set of rules.

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. - You Decide How You Communicate: Rules Of Engagement is a post from: Project Shrink.