In this final part of my series on communications in virtual teams, I will discuss the most important medium to evolve so far during the computer revolution: e-mail. Pretty much everyone has an e-mail address these days, and many of us have several. E-mail is the primary information channel in corporations across the globe. It allows us to send everything from short text messages to detailed project proposals with product specifications to anyone, anywhere on the planet, at any time. It is a non-real-time mode of communication as messages are queued up in one’s inbox for reading when convenient. Continue reading
Author Archives: Loyal
Communicating Effectively in Virtual Teams: Part 3 of 4
In this part of the series on optimizing virtual team communications, I’ll cover Instant Messaging, or IM as it is commonly called. IM has evolved a great deal from the early consumer versions in the mid 90’s. It is now recognized as an important additional channel of communications in the corporate world, filling a hole between the telephone and email. A phone call requires extra time for greetings and salutations and often includes casual, non-work chit-chat. For this reason, those of us under pressure to meet critical deadlines will use IM to get an answer to a quick question rather than make a phone call. The other option we have is email, but most people do not reply to email immediately, so urgent questions go unanswered. Continue reading
Communicating Effectively in Virtual Teams: Part 2 of 4
In part one of this series I talked about the problems with speakerphones in virtual teams. In this installment, I’ll discuss the problems with another type of phone, the Cell.
Most modern cell phones have a built-in speakerphone feature, and will therefore also have the problems mentioned in the previous article when used in this mode. I won’t repeat the problems and recommendations for speakerphones here, but cell phones do have several other nasty problems that I will discuss. They are: latency, dropouts, and signal fade. Continue reading
Communicating Effectively in Virtual Teams: Part 1 of 4
We all know that effective communication is critical to every well-executed project. Everyone involved in getting that next product to market must constantly exchange bits of information with many people. Everything from project proposals to release-to-manufacturing documents must be created, discussed, edited, reviewed, approved and distributed. All of these information exchanges require clear communication for the outcome to be a good one.
Speech Recognition and Instant Messaging
I have been using speech recognition (SR) software for many years, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that I discovered a fantastic use for it: Instant Messaging (IM). Until I stumbled onto this combination, I had used SR primarily for transcribing handwritten notes or composing long reports. When I first tried SR with instant messaging, I was surprised by how effective it was. I could chat with someone for long stretches without ever touching the keyboard. I could say things like, “have you reviewed the presentation for today’s meeting question mark enter key”, and my message would be sent. I found I could chat for many minutes like this without errors and without ever touching the keyboard. And, if I didn’t change window focus to work on another document, I could do this without even touching the mouse.
Topless telecommuting?
What would your reaction be if you started a video connection with a telecommuting colleague at his home only to discover he was not wearing a shirt? Well, this happened to me not too long ago. It was hot in one of my team member’s home office, so he opted to go shirtless that day. This made me think (since I was his manager at the time), should this be allowed? After all, had he been in the office that day, he certainly would not have done this, and indeed could not because, as with most companies of any size, we had a dress code.
Obsessed with time
After several years of full-time telecommuting, I have to admit to myself that I’ve become obsessed with time. I find that I’ve become critical of people who want me to drive into work for a short meeting, or, worse still, fly to a half-day meeting half-way across the country. Since I know that it is easy and perfectly productive to hold a half-day meeting virtually, I just can’t see spending time and money to travel. Continue reading
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