Current Practices in Virtual Team Management

Collaboration Is About People, Not Technology. Nothing magical but a usual refrain! Recently I came across two research studies on managing people and teams: Managing Virtual Teams: Taking A More Strategic Approach by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), and Annual Flexible Working Research Report: The Key to Competitive Advantage for the UK’s SMBs? by OneDrum. We shall highlight below the key findings from these reports. Noting that effective collaboration requires a holistic approach, we shall provide a broader context for these results and link to some of our earlier work and writings.

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Christmas Terror: Spectacular Failure and Success in Collaboration

Updated on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

No doubt, the Christmas terror attack on Northwest Flight 253 as it was about to land in Detroit was a spectacular failure in collaboration among various national and international government agencies. Headlines tell the story! In a thoughtful post in Harvard Business Review blog, Preventing the Terrorist Attack: Massive Failure in Collaboration, Morten Hansen provides the background, the reasons for failure and recommendations on what can be done..... Somewhere in this shuffle, we are really missing out on a great story of spectacular success in collaboration that prevented what could have been a horrific Christmas. This story has a simple yet extremely powerful message on collaboration: when collaboration matters, we make it happen!

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Short Stories From The Front

Updated on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

To capture a brief snap shot of how different groups collaborate, two LinkedIn groups (Interaction Design and User Experience) were asked to share their experiences collaborating within a virtual team. These group members are usually part of a product or web site design and development group and live day-to-day with the issues of virtual team collaboration. This was an attempt to gather top of mind thoughts about the overall collaboration experience. Note there was no opportunity to deeply probe various issues and comments. Although informal, there were some interesting patterns in the various stories that are related to the 4P collaboration framework.

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Learning from Real-Life Collaboration Stories

Updated on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

First off, I must confess that my contribution to this post is nil. As you know, we offer our commentary and points-of-view here, with the opportunity for others to provide feedback. For this post however, many have contributed – except yours truly - in offering their real-life experiences and advice on collaboration. I started discussions in LinkedIn Groups and Q&A on the following topic: Do you have real-life collaboration stories/case studies? What was the level of success? What are the lessons learned? What would be your most important advice?

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