Beyond Virtual Teams
Toward the beginning of this decade, virtual teams were just starting to move into the mainstream of corporate life. Only about half of large U.S. companies had even used them, according to a Ceridian Employer Services survey. When most managers thought about teams, it’s likely they thought in terms of self-directed or cross-functional work groups.
But these days, virtual teams tend to be a daily part of doing business in global corporations. They aren’t as much a novelty as an inevitability. The emphasis is on developing the right tools, techniques, leaders and corporate culture to make these teams as effective as possible.
As organizations become more familiar with how to run virtual teams, a kind of conventional management wisdom has emerged that goes something like this: Arrange at least one face-to-face meeting for virtual team members at some point along the way – preferably around the time the team is first formed – in order to develop stronger personal relationships and trust.
Also, make sure the team has the proper technologies on hand (examples might include groupware, Web-based resource depositories, and videoconferencing capabilities) and that members – or at least the leaders – are trained in how to use such tools as well as in basic team-building and facilitation techniques.
As one PricewaterhouseCoopers trainer has succinctly put it: “Clarify team goals, roles, individual responsibilities and deadlines. Communicate frequently. Build trust among members. Agree upon ground rules for meetings and other interactions” (Gordon, 2005). Leaders must be able to coordinate team activity and communication as well as excel at rapport-building and conflict resolution (Matveev & Milter, 2004).
Yet, even as organizations get up to speed on managing virtual teams, they should recognize that new social realities and technologies are causing the virtual-team paradigm to shift and mutate at a fast rate. Among the most important potential portents of this trend are the so-called MMOGs, or massively multiplayer online games. Such games allow thousands of people to simultaneously participate in them.
These games are based on the idea that individuals from all over the world can come together in a virtual environment to collectively create new realities and work toward common goals. What started off as a new form of entertainment is attracting the serious attention of some companies. “That’s because,” reports BusinessWeek, “virtual worlds could transform the way they operate by providing a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design” (Hof, 2006).
Training may be the best-known potential application of MMOGs. After all, companies have long been using all kinds of games - from board games to role playing – to train, educate and engage workers. In more recent years, video games have gotten into the act, with the U.S. military adopting such technology as part of its training. Now, massively multiplayer games add a whole other dimension.
Among the MMOGs getting publicity these days is one called “Second Life,” which calls itself a “3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” Corporations are starting to take notice of such virtual environments and experimenting with how to use them to their advantage. Workforce Management reports, “‘LearnLand,’ an experiment in corporate learning held in ‘Second Life,’ attracted the active participation of 60 Fortune 500 companies, including Intel. Sponsored last year by the Masie Center think tank, the project included trial projects in new-employee orientation and peer-to-peer learning” (Frauenheim, 2006).
Leadership skills can also be honed in MMOGs. For example, it’s been reported that victories in the popular “World of Warcraft” (or WoW) game hinge on leaders’ abilities to coordinate the talents and timing of a diverse group of team members. “My feeling is that what we are doing in WoW represents in many ways the future of real-time collaborative teams and leadership,” writes high-tech venturist Joi Ito (Stewart, 2006).
As MMOG technology grows more sophisticated, it may well make sense for virtual teams to conduct much of their business in such worlds, simulating the face-to-face interactions that help teams bond. But the potential applications go beyond virtual teams. The players of MMOGs sometimes show great creativity and industriousness. In the game “Second Life,” players spend about a quarter of their time making the virtual objects that are the basis of the world. Linden Lab of San Francisco, which created the game, notes this adds up to the equivalent labor of 4,100 software workers ( Hof, 2006).
Online players do everything from design virtual products to establish virtual land development businesses. Can companies somehow draw on such talent and hard work? “We want to use the power of these games to transform information work,” states Stanford Prof. Byron B. Reeves, CEO of a startup that’s investigating whether some types of work can be shifted to online games created for this purpose ( Hof, 2006).
It makes for some strange future possibilities. Imagine, for example, a fantasy-based hybrid work-and-play space populated by elves and ogres, talking rabbits and flying pigs, and bosses who bear an uncanny resemblance to the Wizard of Oz. Imagine reward systems that include tokens of power and magic spells. Being a director of “virtual personnel” might become an interesting job, indeed.
For more on BusinessWeek’s “My Virtual Life” story, click here.
For an article on video games as teaching tools, click here.
For information on the proceedings of what was the Serious Games Summit, click here.
For more information on “Second Life,” click here.
Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include the following:
Frauenheim, Ed. “Can Video Games Win Points as Teaching Tools?” Workforce Management. EBSCO. April 10, 2006.
Gordon, Jack. “Do Your Virtual Teams Deliver?” Training, June 2005, pp. 20-25.
Hof, Robert D. “My Virtual Life.” BusinessWeek. ProQuest. May 1, 2006.
Kaplan-Leiserson, Eva. “Virtual Work.” T+D. ProQuest. August 2005.
Matveev, Alexei V. and Richard G. Milter. “The Value of Intercultural Competence for Performance of Multicultural Teams.” Team Performance Management, Vol. 10, No. 5/6, 2004, pp. 104-111.
Stewart, Colin. “Businesses Find Real Uses in Virtual World.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. ProQuest. April 25, 2006.
But these days, virtual teams tend to be a daily part of doing business in global corporations. They aren’t as much a novelty as an inevitability. The emphasis is on developing the right tools, techniques, leaders and corporate culture to make these teams as effective as possible.
As organizations become more familiar with how to run virtual teams, a kind of conventional management wisdom has emerged that goes something like this: Arrange at least one face-to-face meeting for virtual team members at some point along the way – preferably around the time the team is first formed – in order to develop stronger personal relationships and trust.
Also, make sure the team has the proper technologies on hand (examples might include groupware, Web-based resource depositories, and videoconferencing capabilities) and that members – or at least the leaders – are trained in how to use such tools as well as in basic team-building and facilitation techniques.
As one PricewaterhouseCoopers trainer has succinctly put it: “Clarify team goals, roles, individual responsibilities and deadlines. Communicate frequently. Build trust among members. Agree upon ground rules for meetings and other interactions” (Gordon, 2005). Leaders must be able to coordinate team activity and communication as well as excel at rapport-building and conflict resolution (Matveev & Milter, 2004).
Yet, even as organizations get up to speed on managing virtual teams, they should recognize that new social realities and technologies are causing the virtual-team paradigm to shift and mutate at a fast rate. Among the most important potential portents of this trend are the so-called MMOGs, or massively multiplayer online games. Such games allow thousands of people to simultaneously participate in them.
These games are based on the idea that individuals from all over the world can come together in a virtual environment to collectively create new realities and work toward common goals. What started off as a new form of entertainment is attracting the serious attention of some companies. “That’s because,” reports BusinessWeek, “virtual worlds could transform the way they operate by providing a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design” (Hof, 2006).
Training may be the best-known potential application of MMOGs. After all, companies have long been using all kinds of games - from board games to role playing – to train, educate and engage workers. In more recent years, video games have gotten into the act, with the U.S. military adopting such technology as part of its training. Now, massively multiplayer games add a whole other dimension.
Among the MMOGs getting publicity these days is one called “Second Life,” which calls itself a “3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” Corporations are starting to take notice of such virtual environments and experimenting with how to use them to their advantage. Workforce Management reports, “‘LearnLand,’ an experiment in corporate learning held in ‘Second Life,’ attracted the active participation of 60 Fortune 500 companies, including Intel. Sponsored last year by the Masie Center think tank, the project included trial projects in new-employee orientation and peer-to-peer learning” (Frauenheim, 2006).
Leadership skills can also be honed in MMOGs. For example, it’s been reported that victories in the popular “World of Warcraft” (or WoW) game hinge on leaders’ abilities to coordinate the talents and timing of a diverse group of team members. “My feeling is that what we are doing in WoW represents in many ways the future of real-time collaborative teams and leadership,” writes high-tech venturist Joi Ito (Stewart, 2006).
As MMOG technology grows more sophisticated, it may well make sense for virtual teams to conduct much of their business in such worlds, simulating the face-to-face interactions that help teams bond. But the potential applications go beyond virtual teams. The players of MMOGs sometimes show great creativity and industriousness. In the game “Second Life,” players spend about a quarter of their time making the virtual objects that are the basis of the world. Linden Lab of San Francisco, which created the game, notes this adds up to the equivalent labor of 4,100 software workers ( Hof, 2006).
Online players do everything from design virtual products to establish virtual land development businesses. Can companies somehow draw on such talent and hard work? “We want to use the power of these games to transform information work,” states Stanford Prof. Byron B. Reeves, CEO of a startup that’s investigating whether some types of work can be shifted to online games created for this purpose ( Hof, 2006).
It makes for some strange future possibilities. Imagine, for example, a fantasy-based hybrid work-and-play space populated by elves and ogres, talking rabbits and flying pigs, and bosses who bear an uncanny resemblance to the Wizard of Oz. Imagine reward systems that include tokens of power and magic spells. Being a director of “virtual personnel” might become an interesting job, indeed.
For more on BusinessWeek’s “My Virtual Life” story, click here.
For an article on video games as teaching tools, click here.
For information on the proceedings of what was the Serious Games Summit, click here.
For more information on “Second Life,” click here.
Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include the following:
Frauenheim, Ed. “Can Video Games Win Points as Teaching Tools?” Workforce Management. EBSCO. April 10, 2006.
Gordon, Jack. “Do Your Virtual Teams Deliver?” Training, June 2005, pp. 20-25.
Hof, Robert D. “My Virtual Life.” BusinessWeek. ProQuest. May 1, 2006.
Kaplan-Leiserson, Eva. “Virtual Work.” T+D. ProQuest. August 2005.
Matveev, Alexei V. and Richard G. Milter. “The Value of Intercultural Competence for Performance of Multicultural Teams.” Team Performance Management, Vol. 10, No. 5/6, 2004, pp. 104-111.
Stewart, Colin. “Businesses Find Real Uses in Virtual World.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. ProQuest. April 25, 2006.