Glossary
Collaboration Framework – For a manager, understanding your long range plan, revenue drivers, cost-cutting areas, market conditions, and business objectives is necessary in order to successfully manage collaboration for virtual teams. A collaboration framework ensures you understand the knowledge and tools your staff is using by illustrating relationships among people, processes, and knowledge within one key business process. The framework is based on identifying four elements:
• A single business process, and understanding how it works
• Every event, identifying where people need to act in that process
• Roles that consume information in the process
• Information that is needed to take action
A collaboration framework puts these elements in relation to each other, creating needed context to understand who needs what information, and when they need it. That context helps make a big difference when it comes to delivering information through software and the Internet, or fostering collaborative efforts.
Virtual Distance – “Virtual distance” refers to various kinds of distance, any one of which may impact a team by diminishing trust, communication, and shared vision. Beyond simple physical distance, consider the impact of time differences and organizational boundaries that create distance on a project team. Operational distance is the distance that arises from daily busywork, like email. Time spent with the team is reduced and psychological gaps grow between team members. Affinity distance is a result of cultural disconnects, emotional disconnects, social issues and differing values where team members lack a shared work history. In their book “Uniting the Virtual Workforce,” Lojeski & Reilly, (John Wiley & Sons, 2008) argue that as virtual distance increases there are negative effects:
• 50% decline in project success
• 90% drop in innovation effectiveness
• 80% plummet in work satisfaction
• 83% fall off in trust
• 65% decrease in role and goal clarity
• 50% decline in leader effectiveness
LEAN Office Principles – LEAN office principles are a method for eliminating waste and improving quality adapted from manufacturing and production. LEAN originated with Toyota and is used extensively by Boeing and other firms; many organizations now apply these manufacturing principles to the office environment seeking improved quality, speed and a reduction in wasted effort.
Global Managers – The Internet and globalized business demand Global Managers who work well with distributed teams and are sensitive to value differences, incentive systems, and work styles inherent to staff of different cultural backgrounds. Global Managers encourage customers to interact with product solutions by sharing requirements, case studies, communications and feedback with customers. Global Managers work to turn company business processes inside-out using the Internet, involving customers in the product lifecycle. They understand how to utilize and integrate technologies to enable customers to interact with the solution infrastructure; this is how Global Managers work to improve credibility and foster market demand.
- Alden
