Wanted: Leaders for the WoW World
October 08, 2008
The world is smaller thanks to virtual collaboration technologies and online social networking, but that doesn't mean your workforce management challenges have shrunk. Your company's leaders need to master an increasingly interconnected, and complex, business environment.
By Terence Brake
In many businesses, the work "place" has shrunk significantly—or even disappeared—and the virtual work 'Web' has expanded globally. In recognition of this, I will refer here to the technology-enabled environments where so much of today's work gets done as virtual WorkWebs (or WoWs). A WoW can be very expansive or narrow depending on the geographic spread of people and technologies connected, and relatively focused or unfocused depending on how sharply the purpose of those inside the WoW has been defined. A global virtual team is usually an expansive and focused WoW, while social networking groups—which are increasingly finding their way into business—can be expansive or narrow/ focused or unfocused.
Working virtually in WoWs isn't new, but with increasing cost competition from emerging markets, record high oil prices, an economic slowdown, terrorism, and a growing concern for the environment, it has become a hot item on the corporate agenda. New user-driven Web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs, mash-ups, and social networking are converging with audio, video, and web conferencing to create global Wows that offer enormous potential for worldwide collaboration.
Beyond the reasons listed above, why is WoW collaboration so important? First, the source of so much value and innovation today is in the spaces where ideas, experiences, cultures, and knowledge areas intersect. The challenge is not only to find and recruit global talent, but to create virtual collaborative spaces in which that diverse talent can generate new value. Secondly, the business environment is extremely complex and dynamic. While the mental model of the individual heroic leader is still deeply embedded in our psyches, no one leader can have all the knowledge, skills, and experience to understand and operate effectively in our multi-dimensional global economy. Competitiveness and collaboration are to business what yin and yang are to the world in general— complementary opposites.
"We have the technology," is a common phrase, but successful virtual collaboration is so much more than the technology. Over the past ten years or so, I have spent a considerable amount of time working on—and with—global virtual teams, and the major challenges they face are threefold: team member isolation, team fragmentation, and confusion.
Turning these challenges on their heads, our countermeasures must aim for increased levels of engagement, cohesion, and clarity. These desired outcomes are dependent on what I call The Six Performance Zones of Global Collaboration:
• Cooperation: Ability of the team to develop and maintain trusting relationships across geographies, time zones, and cultures
• Convergence: Ability of the team to maintain shared purpose, direction, priorities, and performance measures across distances.
• Coordination: Ability of the team to align distributed work through clearly defined roles and responsibilities, tools, and processes.
• Capability: Ability of the team to leverage the knowledge, skills, and experiences of team members across all locations.
• Communication: Ability of the team to establish shared verbal and written understandings across distances via technology.
• Cultural Intelligence: Ability of the team to create a virtual workspace inclusive of value and style differences.
These performance zones are not unique to distributed teams, but their criticality is magnified in virtual space where distance easily makes fools—or foes—of us all. When people are working in close proximity, they have access to many clues that things are not as they should be—displays of frustration and impatience, confused looks, visible discomfort, as well as nods of approval and smiles. The meaning of all these non-verbal signals can be lost in virtual space, and many false attributions can be made about someone’s level of agreement or commitment to a project. Quick adjustments can be made in face-to-face settings, but misunderstandings and confusion can go on indefinitely in a WoW.
I have stated that collaboration is increasingly important to business success. But what of leadership, does that diminish in importance as we collaborate in our virtual WoWs? The simple answer is no, but let’s reframe leadership in light of our new realities. If the old mental model was that of the warrior, the new one needs to be closer to that of a designer, an environmental designer. When a team connects via technology (or a mix of technologies) they enter into the shared process of creating a virtual environment in which they interact and work together. The process of environmental creation continues as long as the group interacts via the technology. The technology is not neutral in this process, of course, because some technologies provide for greater environmental or contextual richness than others. The technology shapes the virtual environment, so do the members, and so most importantly does the leader, the lead designer.
For each of the six performance zones described above, I have identified an important role for the virtual leader as designer of a collaborative environment.
Cooperation—Leader role: Modeler
It is well known that trust is a key factor in the success of virtual teams. It is important to develop trust early on, and it is the leader who will need to take the initiative in creating the environmental conditions for developing trust. How? By modeling the attitudes and behaviors that promote cooperation and partnering from the very beginning—these include openness, support, honesty, predictability, caring, reliability, and inclusion. When a cooperative climate is created at the outset, distance loses much of its potentially negative power. Key question: Am I helping to create a WoW in which team members feel a desire to share and fully contribute?
Convergence—Leader role: Navigator
Virtual space is empty and limitless and only has the navigational markers and coordinates we establish. Working with the team, the leader must help generate a well-defined purpose and strategic direction, clear goals and objectives, shared principles for working together virtually, agreed upon priorities, and common performance measures. Without these markers and coordinates, and without continuous communication and reinforcement, virtual team members can easily drift away—and distance makes it very hard to pull them together again. Key question: Am I providing enough markers in this WoW to focus and guide team energies and overcome potential fragmentation?
Coordination—Leader role: Architect
Instead of a physical structure, the virtual leader is designing an organic, living structure built on guiding rules and principles, expectations, roles and responsibilities, shared processes, methods, tools, and systems. Just like any architect, the virtual leader must consider the cost and suitability of materials (e.g., technologies), robustness and flexibility, form and function, accessibility, flow patterns, and so on. Key question: Will this WoW fulfill and sustain us as we work together to achieve our shared purpose efficiently and effectively?
Capability—Leader role: Developer
Distance tends to hide the potential on a team. Team members are brought into a virtual space to play a role, and the "wholeness" of individuals—their character, background, and range of knowledge, skills, and experiences—are often underutilized sources of value. A key role for the leader is to uncover the talents on a team, and unblock or create channels and processes in which personalities, cultures, knowledge and skills can flow and combine together to create new possibilities. Key question: Does this WoW facilitate the expression and flow of distributed capabilities and build overall team strength?
Communication—Leader role: Sensor
Misunderstandings cause chaos on virtual teams. Silence often hides confusion and panic rather than agreement. What does "as soon as possible" or "keep it simple" mean in different parts of the world? Interpretations can differ radically across cultures. As well as modeling clear and precise communication, the leader must always be on the alert for the potential misperceptions and misinterpretations; too often they are not corrected fast enough in the virtual environment and a small issue becomes a major issue in no time at all. Key question: Does this WoW provide sufficient and appropriate opportunities for the discovery and resolving of communication difficulties inherent in a global virtual world?
Cultural Intelligence—Leader role: Weaver
Members of global virtual teams contribute diverse values, perspectives, approaches, and styles. These differences are so necessary for creativity and robust problem solving on the team. While that is certainly true, the leader must support the development of a team culture that provides some common working ground. The leader needs to initiate dialogue in the team around such questions as how will we make decisions, share information, communicate, give feedback, and handle conflict. Through open dialogue, the leader can help weave a shared operating culture that supports working together across distances. Key question: Will this WoW environment enable team members to negotiate a common way of working—in critical areas—that allows everyone on the team to feel comfortable and able to contribute fully?
Leadership is never just one thing; different contexts pose different challenges and demand different responses. One of the most challenging contexts today is the virtual WorkWeb. Are your leaders at all levels adapting to the work revolution?
Terence Brake is president, TMA World—Americas. For more information, visit www.tmaworld.com.
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