The Virtual Team Opportunity Iceberg is a very simple spreadsheet for letting you and your fellow team members instantly spot the potential for improvement in your teams. It's not intended to be precise - a show of hands will do - but it can be a great team ice-breaker!

Pheromone-based messaging is the oldest and most evolved form of biological signalling using chemicals to communicate through smell and taste. Today’s virtual teams and mobile groups can use it to improve the way they use email, messaging and presence-aware technologies.

Gerold Keefer, in a paper Project Success Prediction Based on Communication Reliability Analysis suggests that the effectiveness of a teams communication can be assessed in 2 dimensions: Reliability and Distance.

There are four myths about teams which are particularly deadly because each of them is nearly true. Myth1: Talent is the most important thing in any team. Myth2: The team’s goals won't suddenly change without anyone realising it. Myth3: 'Collaboration' means basically the same thing to all team members. Myth4: You should always play 'win-win'

Charles Handy is one of the true pioneers of virtual working: promoting the concept of the virtual organisation long before todays enabling technologies appeared.

Charles Handy is one of the true pioneers of virtual working: promoting the concept of the virtual organisation long before todays enabling technologies appeared.

According to The blathering boss (November 2005) one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to improve your meetings is using techniques like 'Bullshit Bingo' to reduce the use of meaningless phrases like Paradigm shift, Mission critical, Let's take it offline, Drill down, Drop the ball, Empowerment, Think outside the box, On the same page, Don't reinvent the wheel, Proactive, Create synergies, Ramp up, Raising the bar, Touch base and Win-win. On the other hand perhaps no one would be able to speak at all!

Wired report (Feb 06) in ‘Geeks in Toyland’ that Lego fully understands the power of customer co-invention by inviting leading Mindstorms enthusiasts to join the Lego R&D Team. See also “Customer collaboration: exploiting the Hawthorne Effect”.

The cultures of organisations and teams can be colour coded according to Jerry Connor and Lee Sears authors of “Why Work is Weird”. Red is achievement oriented, Yellow is people focused and Blue values Professional Expertise.

Hernando de Soto, Peruvian author of The Mystery of Capıtal, speaking at the 14th National Quality Congress ın Istanbul, (November 16, 2005), Turkey shared some very interesting research findıngs from the University of Michigan on the 'culture of trust' in different countries.