THE JOURNEY OF LEARNING – HIGH PERFORMANCE COLLABORATION
Julie’s Individual Blog (SID 52548177)
<<天地合则万物生>>
天地合 （萨顶顶）
When the heaven meets the sky, it is the
harmony prospers the lives. So is the journey of high performance
collaboration.
I
am sharing with you ALL my
own perspective on the journey TEAM HARMONY made for the VIRTUAL PROJECT and the VIRTUAL
COLLABORATION.
Introduction
For
the group virtual project, Team TIE from morning class and Team HARMONY from evening
class formed a virtual organization to build up a virtual platform for a virtual
business.
Each of us has different background, which you
could read from our individual self-introduction in the blog. Such diversification
posed challenges as well as opportunities in our virtual collaboration. Now as
the journey to work as a virtual team almost concluded, I reflected in depth on
three areas:
1. Factors contributed to effective virtual Co-ordination
2. Virtual Technology is
a Double Edged
Sword
3. The positive side of conflict and personal learning
to solve Conflict
Co-ordination
To effectively communicate
among six people virtually, Team TIE and Team HARMONY focused on three elements: (1) leader
centric communication, (2) effective virtual meetings and (3) task oriented virtual organization.
The
Journey Started With Learning Best Practice
The positive attitude to learn the best practice of virtual team
communications encouraged both sides to seek the experts’ advice: the professor and the virtual
organization readings assigned at
class. Both teams leveraged heavily on their leaders to do most of the communication
except the brainstorming stage by which weekly virtual meeting was conducted prior to Easter Holiday. Virtual meetings were planned with agenda
and followed up with meeting minutes and actions required. Jobs between two teams
were assigned by tasks, per the reading of managing virtual organization
effectively.
The
Destination - Outcome
Such investment proved to bring high returns later on in the project in
regards to both time saved and effectiveness achieved. And most of the meetings ended
quicker than expected due to the high effectiveness. The leverage point of two
team leaders simplified the communication process and makes the co-ordination
easier and smooth. Preplanned
tasked focus virtual organization avoid confusions later on regarding each team’s
responsibilities and deliverables.
By the time of Easter holiday, the draft of the
projects was completed and there had been no confusion between the two teams on
role and responsibility. After that each individual team focus on own portion
with leaders touch base weekly through the phone on the progress and any latest
changes, if any. No virtual meeting was scheduled due to good pre work and well
planned roles and responsibilities
between morning and evening team.
Here are some of the examples of the best practices
we learned and applied:
(1)
Communication
through leaders. Team TIE and Team HARMONY leveraged heavily their team leaders for most of
the communication to simplify the communication channel and improve
effectiveness.
Example
- Email
From: julie ma [julie7_b@yahoo.com]
Sent: 25 March 2013 12:00
To: WANG Zhe; juliema7
Cc: christine; xwkong2@student.cityu.edu.hk; Sharon Chu; qiaojchen2@student.cityu.edu.hk
Subject: inputs on draft
Thanks, Josh and the
team. It captured what we discussed and I just modify a bit on the flow and add
in an overall picture on the information gathering source. Then followed by
twitter as an example... you can further fine tune it.
Also for the
dashboard, really like it and will use that for our portion. I would recommend
us to put overall resources (instead just the info from twitter, we support to
gather and consolidate all the information to convert to overall resources
needed)
As we are presenting
on 23rd April, I change our project to 4.23
Let me know if you
have any question... otherwise go
ahead and fine tune it for your presentation!
Christine and Sharon
will modify our portion this week as I would be out. We will catch up after the
Easter Holiday!
Best regards
Julie
From:
WANG Zhe <zwang25-c@my.cityu.edu.hk>
To: juliema7
<juliema7@163.com>; julie ma <julie7_b@yahoo.com>
Cc: christine
<vis268@gmail.com>; "xwkong2@student.cityu.edu.hk" <xwkong2@student.cityu.edu.hk>;
Sharon Chu <sharon1102@yahoo.com>;
"qiaojchen2@student.cityu.edu.hk"
<qiaojchen2@student.cityu.edu.hk>
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2013
1:55 PM
Subject: RE: virtual meeting 3
Dear
Julie
Please see the attachment of
our draft, kindly let us know what are we missing
(2)
Effective Virtual
Meetings
 |
| Virtual Meeting |
Meeting channels were
simplified from six into two that each team gathered at one venue and
connect with the other virtually. Even though
we may spend half an hour (first time) to fifteen minutes on setting up the
virtual communication tools, the simplicity
of communication channels, two instead of six, makes the meeting very efficient and we are always able to end earlier. As the rest of the teams are also in the same
meeting, discussion time was assigned to each individual team to get alignment
first prior to two leaders’ alignment.
Pre meeting phone calls and followed up phone calls or whatsapp
after meetings between leaders further helped the
coordination and keep the two
virtual teams aligned on direction and progress. It also offers flexibility for
any minor changes to be incorporated and allow the two teams to stay focused
for the key milestones.
Example -
Whatsapp
Whatsapp on 9th April
Julie: we clarified with professor today. He
said we can either focus on the virtual process or the value virtual org added
to the rescue. I opted for the later as we need do that in our blogs… synergy.
Let u know how we concluded on Thursday.
Josh: ok, thank you. Let us know so our
group can also do our part properly.
Moreover meeting agenda and meeting minutes helped to drive the focus and effectiveness of virtual teams and enabled team members to be aligned and organized.
Example -
email
All,
Thanks for making our
first meeting!
To better utilize our
precious time, I would recommend all of us come and prepared. Pls read through
the professor readings and come with your idea on our virtual project... Be
creative.
Morning class pls find a
room and evening class will also find a room. We will then connect through
virtual meeting, using the software Christine recommended.
Joshua, pls also share
with us your team hk phone number for us to stay in touch.
Everyone pls read
through and send me a confirmation email to ensure all of us on the same page
Agenda
First
half an hour
1. Self introduction and
get to know each other especially the virtual side, yes the morning class and
the evening class.
2. Pls share your
strength briefly. We will leverage each other' s strength to work on our project.
Two
thirty To three p.m
3. Topic discussion.
Brainstorming.
Three
to Five
4. Project flow, process
and assigning jobs to each individual.
We will conclude the
meeting by agreeing on future milestones.
As I read through the
readings that virtual team works well if it is task oriented. We will do so and
also build up our social emotional bondage in our first meeting.
Ground rules: do not be late. The last
one come will buy everyone drinks at the new deliverance coffee shop in the university.
Joshua, could you help
set up the wechat group again. And ensure the recommended software was
installed at least on one of your computers.
Rgds
Julie
(3)
Task
Focused Virtual Team Structure
Virtual teams were structured based upon task
that Team Tie became Team Now to be in charge of demand forecast and focused on
step 1 Resource Needed. Team HARMONY became Team SOS to own supply and focused on
Step 2-4 that covered supply matching, logistics and execution.
After
brainstorming session to align on the project concept and process, each team was
set on its own journey to complete the task assigned. Only minimal
exchange of progress and working powerpoint were needed. We did not meet any
difficulty of aligning the job allocation with morning team as some other teams
encountered. This proved that teams with a high level of
task-related processes outperforming teams with a low level as Siebdrat,
Hoegl and Ernst (2009) demonstrated.
Virtual Technology
Virtual Technology has been proved to be a double edged sword in our virtual projects. The use of technology did facilitate the virtual teams’ work,
especially the instant message through WeChat
and Whatsapp. Not only team members can communicate to each other any time and have instant feedback but also
group communication can be created to get everyone on the same page simultaneously.
We actually have created two groups, one for both virtual teams and one for our
Team HARMONY . The instant message works especially well on simple point touching
base such as organizing meetings,
timeline etc.
Example – WeChat:
WeChat – 22nd March
Josh (15:39 p.m) : For the concept of
shopping cart, would you mind to elaborate more to us? Do we need to physically
make a shopping cart application, or just a shopping cart concept which only
shows from Power Point?
Julie (15:45 p.m): The later. A Graph
Josh: Ok, then my group can move on, lol. Thank you
Challenge
of Virtual Technology
Instead of having the corporate dedicated IT
support on virtual meetings such as bridge, video conference room etc, two
teams used a free virtual meeting software called Visimeet that recommended by
Christine.
It took each member to install the software but the most stressful part
was that we
would never be able to have 6 people on the line stably. People kept on dropping on and off the line. More than half of
the time was spent to solve the technology problem when we first met virtually
at home. The
virtual meeting of 6 people at the same time proved to be very inefficient. We were forced to finish the meeting
earlier due to technical problem that we could not get all people back to virtual meeting. This hampered the
effectiveness of team work.
Moreover the disruption of team work led to a rather low morale and
frustrated team members that each of us concluded that holding virtual meeting
at the university is more effective and less frustrated, even taking
consideration of the transportation time. Later we
did hear other teams manage to
host 6 people virtually at the same time, through ipad and
not laptop. But we had already run
out of the patience to try.
Example –
Technology Challenge
Virtual Meeting on Saturday through both Visimeet
and Skype failed to host five people at the same time. Teams had to agree to
change back to meeting virtually at university to overcome the technology
problem. Please see highlighted bold parts.
Pls note that red fonts is action required.
Due date is prior to next Tuesday 19th March meeting. Pls make effort to attend
as that might be our last virtual brainstorming meeting :-)
16th march – 2nd virtual meeting
Meeting
attendees: Josh, Michelle, Sharon, Christine and Julie.
Meeting
Mins:
1. Due to the technology difficulty to have five people in the
meeting, Virtual Meeting is now scheduled from 6 p.m to 7 p.m Tuesday at
library group study room.
2. virtual Revise team focus to be virtual
rescue. Org (instead of virtual charity.
Org)
3. Positioning is: Time is precious in
rescue and Virtual Platform can facilitate time saving. More catchy sentence
needed to be used for our presentation.(Action Required
/ AR to Christine, by next Tuesday Meeting)
4. Logistics need to be covered from very
beginning when the earthquake happened. Logistics expert needs to be included
to come up with resource required and transportation means. Theme is now
through logistics from beginning to the end as overall framework. (AR: Christine, our logistics expert, send out logistics
flow chart/process map for the virtual rescue project by Sunday. Everyone
should adjust or modify own portion per the new flow)
5. Morning Team made good practice of using
twitter as example of gathering information. Christine provided linkage on
other social media means and Morning team need to comprehend that for Tuesday meeting.
6. We will meet from now on every Tuesday or
Thursday each week, 6 p.m to 7 p.m. with Josh and Julie Synch up by phone in
between.
Timeline:
19th March Framework aligned and each part
allocate within team
In between I would recommend each team has
its own ppt review prior to two
team's meeting
25th March Review each part’s PPT (Julie
will be away on 26th Tuesday, and Christine might be out for trip, we need to
agree on the timeline on Tuesday meeting
Easter Holiday – One meeting to final synch
up on the consolidated ppt.
Practice after that before final
presentation and pls send each other the group blog.
Pls note all meeting arrangements and 1st
meeting agenda and minutes are below. - For your individual write ups
Pls let me know if you have any question and
do make for the Tuesday meeting. Christine would likely be late due to her work
schedule but we will cover for her as much as possible.
Best regards
Julie
What is more dangerous is that the use of virtual technology, instead of
meeting face to face, did increase the risk of misunderstanding
in communication, especially when it is complicated issues.
While email is creating conflicts, whatsapp is even worse. One of the reasons is because few people like to type long contents on whatsapp, which is usually installed on smartphone with tiny keyboard. the shorten of sentence can easily lead to misunderstanding.
Example:
Whatsapp Message was sent:
“if
any of you can not submit today your portion. Please assume the role of
consolidator”
As it was through smartphone and the sender was on the move, an
underlining message was missed – “Because I would be tied up next week and need
help from you to do the consolidation”
That left to room of speculation and was
perceived by one team member as an issue of collaboration.
“Ironically our subject
is called high collaboration so we should try to make it work…”
Clearly it was originated due to time constraint of one member while
turns into various different meanings to the audience. This actually led to the first conflict of Team HARMONY.
Conflicts
The first conflict arose when team members
missed agreed submission deadline. Followed up whatspp
communication led to misunderstanding as described above. This appeared to be a
PROCESS CONFLICT and we were trying
to solve it through negotiating on timeline and decision making process.
The conversation was deviated when one team member complained that her
effort and time she put into the project was ignored. The first reaction I had
in mind was that I need to apologize if that was what she perceived since that
topic is not what I REALLY WANT and it would create relationship conflict that
would be dysfunctional. Later on when I went through the book “Crucial Conversations Tools”, I recalled this approach is important to make it safe for a dialogue. That may
mean apologizing for certain wrong perceptions of the other parties since the
goal is to get both parties back to the dialogue and not districted from the
priority – what
you REALLY want.
However the conflict was not solved until we met in class after Easter
Holiday when the team members elaborated the conflict in more depth at the
class exercise that it turned out to be a TASK CONFLICT.
Therefore in order to solve the conflict, it is critical to understand
the root cause.
The
True Conflict
During the week 11 class exercise, the professor asked us to share with
the class the reflection of our team work through weather model.
The immediate group preference was giving a
sunshine case since we are Team HARMONY. However this was a golden opportunity to
bring up crucial conversation on the conflict we have had. As most of the time
we avoided that discussion either through silence or changing of conversation
topics, typical signs of conflicts in Asian Culture. To be able to solve conflicts and initiate
crucial conversations, we need learn to
spot crucial conversation. So instead of discussing the sunshine
model, we moved to the discussion of our then challenge and used the Fog model.
We went in depth to dig the root cause and it turned out that we were not sharing the same
understanding on what virtual organization means in our virtual project. One team member was pursuing virtual project
by laying out the detailed process as to her understanding the objective of the
project is to show how virtual organization works. While another team member
was after the benefits of the virtual organization that it would provide timely
information sharing to save more lives. Another team member was assuming the
difference was minor and a bit fine tune would fix it. We realized that the
conflict is not
the easy process conflict, it went beyond that and was more
complicated as a TASK CONFLICT.
This crucial conversation became
be the beginning to solve the task conflicts of the teams. After checking understanding
with professor and alignment among team members, the Harmony team back to “Harmony” again
with shared mutual understanding of the objective of the projects. Things moved
on from there.
With that alignment on project objective, Team HARMONY assumed the effectiveness that presentation
was prepared with less than half an hour and group blog was discussed with less
than twenty minutes. Both cases demonstrated the importance to get
aligned on the purpose of the project or any purpose of crucial conversation.
Prequel
Actually before the outburst of this conflict, I did have concern on the cancellation of the
Saturday morning meeting prior to the Easter Holiday. Without that face to face meeting, we
missed out the opportunity to align on the project objectives. If we did have
that meeting, we might be able to solve the conflict way earlier instead of dragging for two to three weeks.
The reason why I did not
voice out was because that I considered it was minor and I asked for commitment
that each team member to submit her portion of power point to me instead by
that Saturday. I was in hope that with receiving their works, I could follow up
with them by phone in case any disconnect. This proved to lead to a slip in our
project as it was by Sunday midnight that I received the portion from group
members and I realized that we were not on the same page regarding the goal of
our virtual rescue project.
Learning from this is that on one side we benefit
from letting go small conflicts and on the other side small
conflict can trigger serious conflict if not dealing properly.
That would require the wisdom that we may not possess. Maybe only experience and time can tell.
Conclusion
To conclude, the interaction between morning team
and evening has been very good as we seldom encounter conflicts with all the
deliverables were met according to the timeline agreed. The evening team has
provided guidance to the morning team while the morning team has followed the
guidance and developed the ground works, especially the information gathering
system and the incident commanding team, for the whole projects. With clear
direction, clear roles and responsibilities and effective operating procedures,
two virtual teams achieved high level collaboration.
While within Team HARMONY, we have encountered a task conflict, partially deliberated set up to
promote the deep learning of the subject. Based upon Jassawalla’s view on team building,
attention must be paid on “At-Stakeness, Transparency, Mindfulness and Synergy”
to achieve high levels of collaboration. The challenge Team HARMONY was facing is on the
Transparency that a share understanding of the objective of our project –
virtual organization was missing.
The
unspoken difference led to bottleneck of the project and with the trigger of
disagreement on submission timeline, Team HARMONY went through a painful
learning process of how to solve the conflict, from fog to sunshine per the
weather report model. Just as what we brought up at the first blog of “Salary
Negotiation”, enabling dialogue is important to crucial conversation. And having crucial conversation is an effective
tool to solve conflicts.
Clearly the teams that worked virtually, Team TIE
and Team HARMONY, actually had achieved
higher level of collaboration. This supported the research that face to face meeting is not important on
the effectiveness of virtual organization. The only fallback is that
it was only until the end of semester that I realized I and Michelle, team
member from Team TIE, had been at the same class every Thursday evening this
whole semester. J
Reference:
Bjørn,
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L. M. L., & Manz, C. C. (2008). Getting Virtual Teams Right the First Time.
In Nemiro, J., Beyerlein, M., Bradley, L., & Beyerlein, S. (2008). The
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Avan
Jassawalla and Avinash Malshe. (2010). “Effects of Transparency and
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Lynne Markus. Brook Manville & Carole E. Agres. (Fall 2000). What Makes a
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Objective
is what drives the team where it goes. If the
team is short of looking at the objective, it is easy to side track and derail.
I think it was good that we all had a few objectives in view, 1) the objective
to complete the course 2) to outdo other teams in performance 3) to get a good
grade. These objectives are the driving forces for the team to stay together
and to push for the finishing line. The objectives also kept each one focused
and do their part diligently. Each one has somehow an inbuilt mechanism to obey
the laws of success, which is to have imagination, enthusiasm, self-control,
self confidence, concentration, cooperation and tolerance. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_of_ Suc
cess,
May 6, 5:17pm). And to some saying ‘endurance (tolerance) is the price tag of
achievement’. The ultimate goal to get our 3 goals achieved, and whatever we
do, we need to obey the laws of success in order that we can succeed. In retrospect,
I think we did succeed. We gained a good appraisal for our project from Frank.
That is really the aim of learning, to receive the recognition and reward at
the end of the day when you have persevered to the end. 
