Managing Virtual Teams: Five Triggers
Stumble It!Dominic M. Thomas at Emory University suggests five key triggers which can be used to intervene with a virtual team which is heading for a problem before it is too late to do anything to fix it.
"The bullfrogs seem to have an early-warning radar that makes them hide when people are near.”
Picture Source: Regional Municipality of Niagra
The five triggers cover:
- External Interference
- Internal interference
- ICT Inadequacy
- Relationship Inaqequacy
- ICT Knowledge/Skills Inadequacy
I like this thinking because it mirrors my own ideas on the need for teams to have effective early warning systems which use the collective intelligence of the whole team to detect important changes in ‘leading indicators’ which can be intervened on rather than tracking ‘lagging indicators’ after the damage is already done.
For example see: Team Transformation Rule 2: Cultivate Team Intelligence.
More details on the 5 triggers can be found at “Five Triggers to Watch For When Managing Virtual Teams” on the Emory website.
Many Thanks to Richard Cross for spotting this for me!
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
Comments
Glad you liked the link. - It seemed to me it further underpinned the rationale for swarm teams and the different and challenging requirements of how to operate in the hybrid virtual and physical world.
Richard
Posted by: richard cross | December 4, 2007 11:30 AM
Bioteams Books Reviews
Seven team decision-making methods
The way a team decides to decide is one of the most important decisions it makes. In the excellent book, “Why Teams Don’t Work” the authors, Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley, identify seven key decision-making methods for teams.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Related Collaboration Research & Science Articles
Bumblebee waggle dance doubters disarmed
Bees really do point to new foodsources by dancing
The waggle dance is a famous example of the power of one-many broadcast communications in one of natures most successful teams – honeybees!
Biologically inspired design conference
The Center for Biologically-Inspired Design at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have announced a conference in Biologically Inspired Design in Science and Engineering on May 10-12.
Virtual teams less productive: HR Research Findings
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports in a “Meta Analysis of Virtual Teams” that virtual teams are less productive and demonstrate worse judgement that ‘face to face’ teams but there are ways to improve things.
