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CBT/EPSS - Formación asistida por computadora/Ayudas
electrónicas
VIRTUAL TEAMWORK
& NETWORKING ACCROSS THE CULTURES: TOOLS AND EXPERIENCES.
All the
experiences of this article have been part of the foundations and are also
reflections about a work in progress: the first Global Performance Improvement
Network, a bilingual, cross-cultural and virtual network for PI teamworking
(www.pignc-ispi.com) .
It is
developed through the inspiration both of and for ISPI.
Therefore,
many of the examples will be referenced to Net sites (good or bad) that will
also serve for those striving for the same goals.
To those
curious, open spirits exploring our new frontiers is dedicated this work.
Introduction
The 90’s
could be easily defined as the craddle of Drucker’s “knowdlege society” : the
booming growth of Internet and Intranets, the globalization of communications
and trade, the change in the traditional “assemby line” or “
pyramidal” models of organization to
flatter, speedier and virtual ones; the
new tools and channels for on line communications, and so on.
Human
performance will never be the same; neither the “workplaces” or the processes
of work.
The
transition to a team-based organization, well defined by Daniels and Mathers
(1) , Mohrman (2) and others is on its way, and many new companies are getting
into the market with the new concepts of teamworking and networking (the first
thing you receive as a new employee of Microsoft is a device to plug your PC to
the Intranet and the Internet where the companies expects their members to
collaborate) .Sun systems issued a policy of not using phones but e-mail to
force the transition to virtual work, and so on.
But the new
mindset requires still some time to be reached, and there is and will be
resistance to the changes, fears and pitfalls.
The
incremental use of Internet, teleconferencing and other virtual devices is not
a guarantee of having a “virtual organization” or virtual teamwork.
Virtual Teamwork
There are
many “ways” to form a virtual teamwork, but each option has its advantages and
disadvantages.
Risking to
oversimplify, we could mention two basic modes of virtual teamworking, based
upon interaction timing, one of the milestones of any teamwork:
A.
Same time virtual teamwork
On line Virtual Teamwork consists , basically , on using virtual media,
like video
or audioconferencing , to gather and allow to interact individuals or
teams installed in different workplaces.
Examples: Astra-Repsol has a virtual
on line team work connecting via videoconferences Denver, Venezuela and
Argentina based team works, that are also disperse working on various oil
Exploration sites. The video allows to “see’ the physical evidences of each
discovery and discuss over them.
The Favaloro Clinic for heart
surgery on Buenos Aires uses videoconferencing to allow Mayo’s Clinic surgeons
to participate on surgery praxis and preparation
The benefits of this kind of
on line teamworking are evident on the examples: response speed, expert availability , two-ways simultaneous
interaction and travel and expert time cost reductions, plus on the job
training possibilties.
The disadvantages are not so
evident, but important enough to be considered: the costs of the
videoconferencing equipment, the difficulties of gathering simultaneously all
the team members crossing time zones and the demands on their usually tight
schedules to be flexible enough, plus a complex process of previous
organization.
On this topic, I suggest to read on
Greg Kearsley's article The
virtual professor about how he progressively migrate from traditional
classroom strategies to audioconferencing and videoconferencing.
B.
Asynchronous virtual groups:
Off line or sequential virtual groups operates basically through the Internet or the Intranets or both combined, establishing “dialogues” sequences that could be followed for other members at their own pace, adding follow ups and comments, and bulding “strings” of teamworking written and documented processes.
The benefits are basically, flexibility of access, allowing
higher or multi-tasking levels of participants to team in, the building of
“knowledge reservoirs” (using a Gloria Gery’s coined phrase) , and gettind
distant contacts over time (one new member e-mailed me to dialogue about a
message that I had left on a
forum ...3 months ago ).The more demanded the experts are, the more
appropriate this scheme becomes.
The restraints are also visible: less speed on responses, limitations on the
access to video images (tapes instead of live ones, or you are again on the On
line conferencing option through your PC), higher language barriers.
From “multinational” to ”international”
If you deal
with multiple geographical locations
teamworking or networking, a new
approach to communications and a new mindset will be e pre-requisite.
The idea or
“multinational’ businesses of the 60’s and 70’s , based on using
“one language, one culture, one method”, becomes quickly obsolete on the
90’s highly globalized and competitive
scenario.
The Eurodisney examples fits here very well: when Michael Eisner visited Eurodisney to investigate the possible causes of its deceiving start up, the BusinessWeek published sotry describes how much he was surprised at looking the low occupancy rate of the EuroDisney Hotel’s and, at that moment he pointed at a german-plates Mercedes parked nearby, asked to his staff: “just tell me why a Mercedes owner can’t pay our rates” ...and the answer was: “well, sr, this is a 190 Mercedes, a middle-class car by Germany standards”...EuroDisney policies were changed and adjusted to the european culture preferences and profits went up again...
Being
international, requires to be more flexible, mix cultures and adopt the best of
both worlds by understanding how culture impacts on comprehension, values and
principles that drives performance.
The new
virtual society doesn’t come from late Marshall McLuhan’s “global village”
prophecies: it is more like a “global
melting pot”, where communication gates have been opened very recently and are
unveiling a lot of “cultural gaps” to be closed for the sake of all the players
in the global game.
And being
the Internet and communications the “international” highways for the new global
players, they are also the main streams we need to learn how to navigate in all
directions, slowly removing the now evident barriers to progress.
Overcoming
barriers:
1.
Language
On
the multinational era, like on the Roman Empire days , a common language was
the solution: now, with automated electronic
Web translators available, this is no longer an obstacle or a menace to
the speed on communications required by virtual team and networking.
As language is a part of each culture, the
misunderstanding or confusion about the meaning of tones and expressions makes
the performance of translating to the receptor’s first language more efficient
and less expensive than translators or language courses (not to say that
language skills differs widely from individual to individual and mastering them
requires a time not frequently available for executives)
Most
of european Universities websites have english options, and our
North-Central-South America virtual site has also a constant english to spanish
and back translation...and soon, to portuguese.
If
your target virtual audience is international, the bilingual or trilingual
option is not sophistication: it will pay back you effort almost instantly.
2.
Culture
Speaking
or writing on a different language and understanding meanings and context are
quite different things: the virtual cross cultural groups dialogues provides a
unique opportunity to gain understanding and by that, enhance performance and
behavior to the eyes of our target audiences.
Sharing common frameworks across cultures also helps, but it
has not to be taken for granted: it requires a previous team agreement and
consensus and , probably, some kind of “fine tuning’ to make it flexible enough
to operate on each member’s specific world.
We linked many pioneer efforts on the Virtual Chapter Network
, The Net
/ La Red consisting
of the Web pages containing all the links to countries, organizations ,academic
institutions, but also newspapers and other communication sites.
We also established a Books and Articles sections, where the
visitors could post their recommended books from their original cultures, now
reachable through the electronic mega-libraries. I recommend “Kiss, Bow and
Shake Hands: How to do business in sixty countries” , by Terri Morrison and
Wayne A. Conaway (available on Amazon, Borders or Barnes and Noble Web sites),
but there are many more of them.
Professional Associations in the past many times failed to
become truly international because of the lack of the virtual means, but also
of the shared vision that we have now
only one world to live in and that the G (for Global) generation is a
reallity: our Job Bank is receiving constant request and offers from US to SA
or Europe and back or internationally oriented talented persons...
3.
Participation
The
virtual teamworking and networking requires a more intensive (in spite of being
less time consuming) degree of participation.
Giving each member instant and virtual access to higher
degrees of knowledge, comprehension and information allows to have richer and
quite more compromising bounds between the virtual members, as we have
experienced with our US, SA and Europe members.
It also reduces drammatically the time spent on “reinventing
the wheel” due to lack of effective
virtual communications with peers across the world.
Many magazines has to have a “waiting list” of good
materials to be published due to the costs and consequently, the lack of pages
space on each edition. This lefts a lot of interesting and perhaps crucial
contributions at least temporarily “out
of the road” ; and this can be sometimes critical.
Albert Einstein wrote the paper of the General Theory of Relativity ten years before the more
notorious Rutherford brought attention to it by publishing on a scientific magazine under his influence.
And regarding benchmarking of real experiences, the
paper-based processes gets even more complex and slow...
Although the new “virtual” channels exists, but they are
still widely underutilized.
4.
Dialogue
The
WWW is a vast ocean that requires hours to find a correspondent.
Most of current Web Pages are more “advertising screens”
rather than dialogue channels with clients, suppliers or visitors...And that
deprives many corporations from unique opportunities to receive suggestions and
creative feed-back.
This is a key piece to foster virtual team working on two
different modes: person-to-person e-mail like contacts or open group dialogues
through Intranet or Internet pages designed for this purpose.
Many Web sites (look for a show of “bad” examples to avoid at
( www. sitesthatsucks. com) are “unfriendly” for practical uses (graphics
overload, slow response time, compex passwords before accessing to dialogue
windows .etc). This problem comes mostly, in my opinion of using other media
paradigms instead of exploring new
ones.
5.
Boundaries
The
fact that each virtual member lives in a specific country that has strong
contextual influence over his/her way and style of thinking and communicating
creates a barrier for achieving effective performance on virtual and cross-cultural team working.
The
local biases and stereotypes could frustrate the attempts to obtain good
performance from multi-cultural teams, virtual or not, but in the first case ,
the speed of interaction could aggravate the difficulties, by making virtual
team members experience the frustration
of misunderstandings and delays due to re-works that could be avoidable if they
were previously “culturally tuned”.
Time
zones and geographical characteristics (like extreme climates forcing people to
be “off line” on certain periods) should also be considered (we have 100
entries on our Web Site ...overnight – by Buenos Aires time...that is 5 hours
more than the West coast time)
Here
the advantage of off-line virtual networking shows their importance once more.
6.
Frameworks
The different
models, methodologies and backgrounds
of effective virtual teams members are also critical factors for its overall
effectiveness.
Virtual
teamwork could start by establishing basic common frameworks that could be
“fine tuned” through dialog and interactive processes.
Key
factors to develop effective networking and virtual teams accross the culture:
Our experience
on the creation of the Performance Improvement
Global Network , with the basic purpose of creating a the first ISPI virtual
and international chapter, required to address almost all the barriers.
The results
obtained showed us some key factor for achieving effective team and networking
across the cultures and countries.
On the
first 80 days, 220 new members of 8 nations (US SA and Europe) joined the network, 70 % management and
CEO’s , and the rate of visitors raised from the initial 25 a day to 100
currently, to achieve 6500 –to give a reference ,La Sorbonne university site
had 120.000 visitors over the last 12 months-
More than
300 forums discussions
started , 25 jobs posted, 30 articles published and 6 virtual groups and
2 management cross-cultural research started.
As this is
a work in progress, many of the answers we found to them are still tentative
and far to be totally effective, but we think that the basic principles
emerging from it are appliable to similar efforts.
Therefore,
to facilitate practical consults, most of the references will be to the Performance
Improvement Global Network
site.
1.
Friendly and bilingual interfaces
We
use a simple Home Page format, to
allow any type of browser to work effectively on it. Some more sophisticated
designs require more sophisticated Net software and , therefore, impede some
users to fully participate.
We gave also readability and perfomance (screen
deployment speed) priority over colours and attractive but heavy graphics.
The images
and pictures were located in separate pages to allow the access to those
with more time available without reducing the response time for those interested
on dialogue and speed of response.
The automated translators, combined with a 15 % of human QA
allowed the Page to translate the messages in two ways (english-spanish or
spanish-english) almost daily.
2.
Forums:
The Forums
were the basic bricks of the Virtual Workplace: they allowed people to interact
in different ways, organized by issues (for the more achademical) or industries (for the more business- oriented).
Each person or group could put their own messages and
received posted follow ups from others, translated daily into its first
language.
The Forum
format allows group participation on the development of a discussion or
an idea in a faster and more “transparent” way than person-to-person e-mails.
We also decided to maintain the messages and follow ups for
at least two or three months, to allow other people to “follow up” the evaluation
of the discussion and joining it or taking its most valuable parts. After
certain time limit, the “discussion string” could be placed as a “knowledge
object” in a library (see Ruth
Clark’s article )
3.
Articles:
Other kind of more elaborated participation are the Articles
or Papers: the virtual site allows to publish at a lower cost, faster
pace and with less space limitations than paper.
The automatic translation makes also possible a wider access
to knowledge.
The organization of the topics and sections is still a work in progress, but we started from a list
of practical consulting problems and issues rather than from a more achademical
categorization that assumes the existence of a “common theoretical framework”
(which could also bee seen as a barrier for cross-cultural virtual groups)
4.
Mentoring
Electronic
mentoring is another powerful possibility of virtual networking: we created an Expert
Advice section with a list of volunteer experts on different Performance
Fields.
This attracts a lot of participation , establishes
credibility for the Virtual network and also rewards expert time with
visibility to different audiences.
Many practical experiences were “guided” by expert advise through
the page (see on the Change
Management section of the Expert
Advice, the dialog about space reorganization on an argentine public institution
guided by a californian specialist, or the consults on the “Mentoring” line
of the same section.
We added to each Expert name on the list , a “clickable” link
reference to instant picture + vita,
to allow those requiring advice to explore the scope of the Expert Advice
and also to “direct” their inquiries to specific specialists or groups.
The expert
panel was formed through a mix of expertise criteria (ISPI or University
seniority set the first references) and proposals from users (there is a place
to post Expert suggestions)
5.
Friendly guidance to networking
Each Expert on the virtual Network and also the Network
members interacted providing references and more connections (virtual or not)
to the other members, therefor expanding the scope of the Network resources.
The Network coordinators (named as Editorial
Board) give very often directions to consult and link to other experts
and/ or resources (as Universities and books)
We included accesses to Universities and most admired companies
HR sites as a way to facilitate the contacts across the cultures (see The
Net)
6.
Surveys and exploration
The
virtual network started different kinds of research, based on electronic
surveys (first , open , later, closed ones) that could allow other members to
participate on comparative and cross-cultural studies.
This
could increase the sinergy and expand the comprehension fro both side of the
complex cultural issues.
We are currently in the first stage of that feature, but there
are a lot of examples on the connected sites (as Learning
Theories , EPSS or ISPI HQS main page) to follow.
7.
Building a toolbox platform for Performance Improvement
Probably, one of the
core features was creating a Net designed to fill the needs of those working
virtually on Performance Improvement both from achademical or management
positions.
The Net
is conceived as a “one stop working platform”
that allows a participant to consult all
Universities sites in US, Europe (UK, France, Spain) and Latin America,
as far as countries sites, electronic publications (Fortune, Wall Street Journal,
Harvard
Business Review) or on line information (like CEO
Express) .
Additionally,
the Net links Performance Improvement web pages (like EPSS, Games, Learning
Theories, Management Mentors) , institutional (ISPI, IFTDO, UNESCO) and the
World Most Admired Companies HR websites.
That allows
to each participant interested on Performance Improvement or Human Resources issues
to count with all the information for building a comparative basis and solid
background for his work.
The PI
practitioner has also access to Books and articles recommendations, electronic
bookstores and even to transportation and hotel reservations for “phisical”
travels.
Sketching future landscapes
We are walking on
new grounds, making roads and asking us a lot of questions.
The global
problems require global solutions, but once implemented, these create new
challenges and expands almost exponentially the horizons and opportunities for
virtual team working and networking.
The
prophecies of Peter Drucker and other visionaries have come true, and new rules
will be needed to play the global game.
Some to
think about are:
1.
The difussion of knowledge becomes an advantage and their “possession” a
mistake
2.
New “global competencies” will soon be on demand
3.
The “cultural” barriers that have been an unsolved cause of many
international business pitfalls have now new ways to be overcame.
4.
The consulting profession becomes more a cooperative rather than a
competitive business
5.
Sharing information among specialists and managers will be a key success
factor for new cross-cultural projects.
6.
New “virtual” jobs will be created (see the PIGN
Job Bank)
7.
The speed and scope will
increase the usage of full performance-focused interventions instead of using
partial approaches due to lack of expertise available on time on related areas
(like CBT or Compensations, or ISO standards, or Evaluation )
But as far as we try
to look over the horizon, the speed of the “virtual” process gets ahead of us,
showing us new ways and proving others wrong very quickly.
May be this
continuous learning process installed “by default” could be considered on
itself as the most interesting consequence of virtual experiences.
We are entering
in an age that has a lot of similarities with the Illustration Voltaire days,
when he, impressed after visiting England and discovering the treasures hidden
behind the boundaries and languages, those that he defined as “civilization”
, in these still provocative terms: “Civilization is an achievement for mankind, not only for europeans”
...
May be the
same could be say in our virtual and global world as a part of an Ideal Vision
(3), ever distant, but ever inspiring.
Bibliographical
References:
(1) William R. Daniels & John G.
Mathers – Change-ABLE Organization: Key management practices for speed and
flexibility (ACT Publishing , 1996– Look at The Net)
(2) Susan Albers Mohrman, Susan G. Cohen
and Allan M Mohrman, Jr. – Designing Team Based Organizations : New forms for
knowledge work (Jossey Bass,1995, Look at The Net)
(3) Roger Kaufman – Strategic Thinking:
a guide to identify and solving problems – Revised Edition – 1998, ASTD-ISPI –
Look at the Net)
Complementary
bibliography (all “virtually”available):
Greg
Kearsley & Michael Moore – Distance Education: a systems view ( Wadsworth
Publishing Co, 1996)
Greg Kearsley
– The virtual professor
/ El profesor virtual
John Tiffin
& Lalita Rajasingham – In search of virtual class. Education in an
information society (1997 Routledge,London –english - , Paidos , Buenos Aires
–spanish)
Weiss,
Elaine – Making computers people – literate (1993, ISPI – Jossey Bass)
Gloria gery
– Making CBT happen (Weingarten, 1991)
(*)
Author References:
Mariano
Bernardez is an active international consultant, member of ISPI (and President
of its first Virtual Chapter- The Performance Improvement Global Network)
, ASTD, AMA and IFTDO.
He
has been a presenter in many US Conferences, both for ISPI (from 1994 to 1998)
and ASTD .
Mariano
has been an Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting member, a UN international
consultant, and is dedicated to management consulting on performance improvement
in the US, Latin America and Spain