Word for Word of American Public Radio recently brought a conversation with Thomas Friedman and Dov Seidman from the National Press Club. The discussion includes Dov Seidman’s new book How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life).

The interview revolves around how the business landscape is changing as the world gets flat and what it means to individuals and businesses. Dov emphasizes that in order to be successful in this connected world, it is not about what you know but how you do it, and how your values of trust, integrity and transparency will drive your profitability and business results.

You can listen the interview How to do business in the “flat world” at the Word for Word archives. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Word for Word, Thomas Friedman, Dov Seidman, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life), How to do business in the “flat world”

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on “Working Together… When Apart: As employees scatter around the globe, virtual teamwork has become crucial. Here are 10 rules for making it work” by Lynda Gratton (June 16-17, 2007). You can access the article on WSJ.com or Business Insight section of MITSloan Management Review.

After managing a large team of globally distributed developers, I also came up with my rules for making virtual teams work. So, if you have to play the hand that is already dealt, here are my rules for building high-performance virtual teams.

1. Align organizational values to support virtual teams — Just do it! might be a great slogan for encouraging employees to act, but not as effective when the goal is to improve teamwork and communication between your dispersed teams, especially at the early stages of team forming and storming (reference: Tuckman Model of Team Development). Along the same lines, e-mail might be your preferred mode of communication, but it can also be a challange for teams where English is their second language. You’ll be suprised to see how a simple phone call can improve team productivity, communication and morale.
2. Think local, act global — Not everyone can work productively in isolation, i.e. limited face-to-face contact, work is done mainly through e-mail, IM and some phone conferences. So, where possible look for ways to establish a small team working together at a given location. It will improve trust, build a sense of commitment and support the feeling of being part of a larger team. Also, support diversity by encouraging each of your locations to have their own culture. However, make sure they all share your common organizational values.
3. Practice transparency and objectivity — This is a good rule to follow regardless, but even more important if you are managing a virtual team. Remember, someone’s perception becomes another’s reality. Transparency enables interested parties to understand what and why, while objectivity brings facts, diverse perspectives and sense of fairness into the discussion.
4. Agree and enforce team processes — The last thing you need is an unexpected check-in right before a major build and release cycle. Make sure your team understand and follows the agreed upon procedures and tools.
5. Promote leaders with good facilitation skills — When bringing diverse teams and experiences into a new project, it helps to have a good facilitator that has everyone’s trust and respect. See my previous post on characteristics of a good facilitator.
6. Risk manage your project — Vacations, sick days, and unexpected issues are inevitable. However, these emergencies are ever more heightened when dealing with differences in time zones and communication gaps. With that, risk manage your project by identifying and assigning backup individuals to risky areas, or dividing up the work among different sites.
7. Rotate meeting times and locations — Working across different time zones and locations is disruptive to personal life. So, share the load by rotating meeting times and face-to-face meeting locations.
8. Mandate a day of silence — Although it is great to have a team that can virtually work 24×6, and maybe even 24×7, the overhead associated with working in a virtual environment can be wearying. So, depending on the intensity of the interactions, declare a day, such as every virtual Friday, as a quiet day. This will give everyone a break, and allow people to recharge their batteries.

So, what works for you?

Technorati Tags: Working Together… When Apart, virtual teams, building high-performance virtual teams

My recent post on Effective Strategies For Surviving Culture Tax, specifically the concept of utilizing emotional detachment got some attention. At Huffington Post, you can read Bob Sutton’s The Virtues of Emotional Detachment and how “learning when not [to] care, what not [to] care about, and how to not care” can be an effective carrier tactic in times of need. At Slow Leadership, I enjoyed reading Carmine Coyote’s insights on emotional detachment in Should you learn not to care — or just not to care so much?.

Enjoy!

A friend of mine brought up the question of dealing with organizational cultures where the process of getting things done is draining and demotivating. He refers to this as culture tax. I have seen many cases where misalignment of priorities, inadequate resources, complex organizational structures, lack of clear accountabilities, misguided values of the leaders and overwhelmed groups help create this culture tax.

If your work environment reminds you of one of the regions of Hades, read on and remember what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Otherwise, consider yourself one of the lucky ones, but file this blog away for later reference as your time might come.

Before I share my survival techniques for effectively sailing through rough waters while keeping sanity, it is quite important for you to do a personal assessment. Be honest and ask if the culture of your organization is right for you. If you do decide to stay, be clear on your motivation, purpose and goals.

If your challenge is dealing with jerks in the workplace then check out Bob Sutton’s blog as he has extensive information on the subject. Though I haven’t read his latest book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, I have enjoyed listening to his interview on Standford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series. Once you recognize and accept the negative styles of the people you are working with, you are no longer the victim. With that, you can focus and direct your energy on how to effectively achieve your goal.

Next, take your time and revisit your organization’s decision making process, key influencers and decisions makers. I previously touched on the decision making process and decision quality chain. Reflect on your objectives and how your circle of influence (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey) helps/hinders the accomplishment of those objectives. As a side note, if you are a people manager, please find ways to isolate your team from all the politics and demotivational activities of your organization. You will be surprised how this will not only improve your team’s motivation, but also increase your productivity and effectiveness.

This exercise of understanding organizationally where you stand in regards to your objectives, recognizing how decisions are made and who the decision makers are will enable you to raise issues well. Here the goal is to translate your concerns and issues to purpose and objectives that others will not only relate to but also care about. Basically, look for ways to extend your circle of influence.

In addition, I recommend practicing the Zen discipline of emotional detachment. Unfortunately, this is often misinterpreted as not caring and being disengaged. However, emotional detachment merely directs you not to be attached to an outcome or to an expectation. This practice will help you objectively evaluate the situation and recognize new opportunities as they arrive. After all, when one door closes another will open, but only if you are listening.

Here are a few other tips that worked well for me in the past:

• Be a good observer, and focus on learning people’s styles: what motivates them, how they are influenced, how they listen and communicate, … And, adjust your style as needed.
• Be open to getting help, coaching and mentoring from others.
• Recognize and celebrate little accomplishments. This can be especially hard for high achievers, but especially important in situations where progress is slow to achieve.
• I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a healthy lifestyle, exercise and meditation for maintaining a positive attitude and outlook in life.

Keep on smiling. Remember, your smile is one thing that is under your control. And, please do share your experiences and survival techniques with us.

Technorati Tags: organizational cultures, culture tax

This is the continuation of my previous blogs on roadmapping:

• Roadmaps and Roadmapping: What and Why
• Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping
• How To Manage The Initiation Phase For Successful Product-Technology Roadmapping
• Get Down To Business: Developing Your Product-Technology Roadmap

Once the roadmap is developed, the next step in the process is its communication and implementation. If you thought the hard work is behind you, think again. This phase can be one of the most challenging activities for an organization, especially if the recommendations require complex cultural and leadership changes.

Conversant has defined a conversational model which they referred to as the cycle of value. The cycle of value promotes establishing a shared purpose, ownership, accountability and building a foundation for learning and improving. This model also fits well with the steps required for a successful dissemination of our roadmap.

The cycle of value has 3 distinct phases:

• Align — conversations are focused on building a shared purpose and understanding;
• Act — conversations are centered for successful launch of initiatives and clarification of accountabilities;
• Adjust — conversations are all about reviewing results, learning and improving;

Lets examine these phases from the perspective of disseminating our roadmap. You can read more about the cycle of value and other conversational tools in the Communication Catalyst: the Fast (But Not Stupid) Track to Value for Customers, Investors, and Employees by Mickey Connolly and Richard Rianoshek.

Align

The goal of this phase is to create a shared purpose and vision for our roadmap: know-why, know-what, know-how and know-when. With that, it not only requires communication of the roadmap, but also the validation and critiquing by all stakeholders. The communication methodology should enrich the roadmap by enabling collection and processing of the insights gathered during discussions. In addition, this phase should also include:

• Evaluation of risk vs. return;
• Deciding among the alternative strategies;
• Agreement on the prioritization of activities and projects;
• Plan for change;

Act

Once the alignment is achieved, next step is to put in motion the needed projects and activities as agreed by the roadmap. This includes:

• Initiation of relevant projects and partnerships;
• Commitment of resources and budget;
• Agreement on the performance measures, targets and key milestones;
• Announcement of clear owners and accountabilities;

Adjust

The value of your roadmap is directly correlated to whether its information is kept current and up to date. However, keeping the roadmapping process alive is one of the challenges that an organization faces. As such, investigate ways to incorporate your roadmap review/update process to your business strategic planning or budgeting cycles. Also, identify clear owners, frequencies and method of review/update cycle that will be used for keeping your roadmap current.

Adjust phase should include concise summary of accomplishments, challenges/disappointments, new insights, changes in the competitive landscape as well as the review/status of the critical success factors for successful roadmap implementation that were previously identified. Based on the review, any needed updates to the roadmap should be initiated and followed with dissemination of the roadmap as discussed. Below is the visual summary of the roadmapping process steps I have laid out: initiation, development and dissemination.

Technorati Tags: roadmapping, product-technology-roadmapping, roadmap, cycle of value

Hello Kitty has introduced a new laptop targeted for working Japanese women. The laptop design certainly highlights the differences in cultures, as this would certainly not appeal to professional women in the States. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the color pink, but this is little too much…. Don’t you think?

On a different note, if you ever wondered which superhero you might be, check out the Superhero Quiz site. I’m the Supergirl.

Your results:You are Supergirl
Lean, muscular and feminine.
Honest and a defender of the innocent.



Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

I finally had the chance to update my site themes: kitetail.com and blog.kitetail.com. It has been a fun experience, at times also frustrating. IE6… Enough said! Along the same lines, trying to test web sites using virtual PC on Mac is not the most efficient process

Thoughts, problems? Please let me know. Thanks!