I spotted two seemingly trivial comments in the UK Daily Telegraph which when put together indicate the difficulties organizational teams face these days. Staff resent dead wood colleagues reports the results of a YouGov poll of 2,500 employees that 8 out of 10 staff are unhappy about “dead wood” colleagues in their organisations who do not pull their weight but yet nothing is done about them. One CV in four is a work of fiction reports that according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development one in four jobseekers tell, not just one but, three lies on their CVs.

In an report, Using Far-Flung Virtual Teams for Managing Knowledge in Global Companies, based on research sponsored by the Society for Information Management, the author has examined 54 far-flung teams in 31 different companies, including Intel, Textronic and Royal Dutch Shell. By Arvind Malhotra

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports in a very short article on a “Meta Analysis of Virtual Teams” by Sheila Simsarian Webber which highlights both the opportunities and challenges facing virtual teams:

Open Source Software(OSS) and the Toyota Production System – unexpected similarities discovered!

"Corporate leaders seeking to boost growth, learning, and innovation may find the answer in a surprising place: the Linux open-source software community.

Robin Good comments on research by both Russell Research and Raindance Communications, Inc., showing that online meetings fail to engage anything like the full concentration of the participants who utilise their spare brainpower bandwidth to multi-task and do other things. We should have a prize for the person who has done the most unusual thing whilst "technically present" at an online meeting?

In a previous article, Outsourcing, virtual teams and knowledge work, I commented on the trend to outsource knowledge intensive work off-shore to developing countries. Fay Hansen, writing for Workforce Management, Where the Knowledge Workers Are, argues that we are facing a massive and unstoppable flow of R&D jobs to China, India and Russia....

Melanie Turek, writing in Collaboration Loop, pens an excellent article Collaboration and Compliance which takes a fast forward look at the implications of compliance legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA in various industries such as financial services, health care and the public sector.

Harvard Business Review proposes radical new approach: Treat employees like adults

Managing tomorrows worker(MTW): a research report by Henley Management College on remote and flexible working.

Insight: phobia, mania, and delusion... the shrinks have a word for it

Adrian Furnham writing in the UK Daily Telegraph Insight column, July 7 has shared some slightly tongue-in-cheek insights on the new crop of psychiatric conditions which are afflicting today's teams and organisations. My three favourites from Aidrian's(extensive) list are: