The Role Of Collaboration Skills In Virtual Organizations

Why do organizations often recognize the need for building collaboration skills for in-person teams but minimize the need for such endeavors in virtual groups? Let's look at a scenario for an in-person team and compare that with circumstances in various types of virtual organizations.

Scenario Of An In-Person Team

Picture a team that is meeting in person and working on a common task. The team needs to share knowledge and collaborate in order to be innovative or solve the problems that the team is facing. Here are some assumptions about this team that are common for many teams especially those that span boundaries.

• Each person has a different personal and political agenda.

• Each person comes from a different home organization in which they have goals for profit, success, mission fulfillment, power and political standing which influence their agenda on this team.

• Each person comes from a different discipline which has higher esteem in their own eyes than the discipline of others.

• Each person has a different definition, philosophy and valence with regard to collaboration based on their own unique history.

• Each person has a different attitude and behaviors with regard to sharing knowledge ranging from a view of sharing knowledge as a strategic means of maintaining advantage over others to a view that sharing knowledge is a virtue in its own right.

• There are regional and nationality differences and differences in industry background and experience.

• There are differences in work habits and personality styles.

• The team starts out without norms or a common language for speaking about "team issues" that arise and each member has a different perspective and level of comfort with regard to the value of such discussions.

Given these differences, we can imagine that the team is likely to experience difficulties as it goes about its work, especially with regard to knowledge sharing and collaboration. My guess is that many would agree that the team will require some kind of assistance in building collaboration skills as time goes on to help it stay on a productive course.

Some Probing Questions

Why should the situation be any different with a semi-virtual team, a totally virtual team or a large group of individuals participating on a common task? Does working in a more virtual environment make differing and conflicting agendas or differences in personality styles less real? Does it make the different inclinations arising from different disciplines or cultures less real? Is there something about large-scale and widespread collaboration using Enterprise 2.0 technologies that obviates the need for a focus on collaboration skills and behaviors?

Assumptions And Reflections About The Usefulness Of Collaboration

It seems to me that there may be an assumption in use which holds that behavioral and collaborative skill training and guidance while useful with an in-person team becomes less useful as the virtuality of the team increases and the team relies more on software applications to mediate its collaboration and knowledge sharing. An accompanying assumption is that where individuals working on a task are highly dispersed and numerous, the task effort can safely become totally dependent on collaborative technology and structural elements and because of feasibility not at all dependent on collaborative skill training.

It seems clear to me that in-person teams benefit from collaborative skill training and that semi-virtual teams benefit from such training because they also rely on strong working relationships among people. The questions arise with regard to fully virtual teams and with dispersed, large-scale task efforts.

Factors That Facilitate Virtual And Large-Scale Collaboration

The key question here is under what conditions does specific collaboration skill development become less necessary. There seem to be several factors that influence this.

1. The nature and richness of the collaborative technology. For example, does the technology offer an integrated platform of a wiki, blog, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and social networking? Is the technology aligned with the purpose of the team and/or its task? Do specific elements of the platform like profiles, pictures, and constant updates help to build connection and trust? Does the technology offer a variety of forums for conversation to support ad hoc, voluntary, yet purposeful action? The richer the technology solution, the less need there may be for specific collaboration skill training.

2. Are the relationships and ties among the people involved strong or weak? Stronger ties require efforts to continually maintain the work relationships through collaboration skill training and on-going assistance?

3. Are sufficient facilitative structural elements in place? Do structural elements set out a common task or mission; specifically appeal to professional, financial and altruistic needs; help to build shared context; set out rules and establish norms for collaborative action? A strong role for structural elements may reduce the need for specific collaboration skill training.

I will be continuing to think through these issues. I welcome your comments and on-going dialogue about them.