Mastering some of the communication challenges in geographically dispersed teams

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Mastering some of the communication challenges in
geographically dispersed teams

• Sjur Larsen
• Project manager, the Norwegian Corporate
  University
• Researcher PhD candidate (sociology), the
  Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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PhD dissertation

• Developing the conditions enabling the
  effectiveness of internationally dispersed
  project teams

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The Norwegian Corporate University(BedriftsUniver
sitetet)

• An incorporated company, co-owned by the
  Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
  the Norwegian School of Management, the
  University of Oslo, and the Foundation for
  Technical and Industrial Research (SINTEF).

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The Norwegian Corporate University Purpose

• To offer tailored training programs or courses,
  with or without credits, to companies and public
  sector organizations with competence from the
  owner institutions.

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Cooperation and Cooperation Technologies

• Newly developed course at NTNU, a part of the
  Organization, Information, and Management
  Masters degree program at NTNU
• Tailored specifically to the needs of
  internationally dispersed project teams in Hydro
  Automotive Structures
• In charge at NTNU professor Per Morten Schiefloe
  (sociology) and professor Eric Monteiro
  (information science)

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Cooperation and Cooperation Technologies
learning goals

• Provide understanding of central conditions for
  cooperation, including cooperation and
  interaction in cooperative situations.
• Provide understanding of conditions for the
  development of effective teams.
• Provide an overview of different kinds of
  cooperative situations and tasks.

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Cooperation and Cooperation Technologies
learning goals

• Provide an overview of different kinds of
  cooperation technologies
• Provide an overview of what cooperation
  technologies are useful for what purposes
• Reflect on possibilities and constraints related
  to uses of existing cooperation technologies in
  ones own organization, and finding more
  effective and useful ways of using these
  technologies.

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Geographically dispersed teams

• Virtual teams
• Dispersed teams
• International teams
• Internationally dispersed teams
• Globally dispersed teams
• Global teams
• Global virtual teams

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Reasons for explosive growth in geographically
dispersed teamwork

• Advances in computing and telecommunications
• Increase in work from home.
• Utilizing personnel from different sites
• after MAs
• in strategic alliances between companies

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Reasons for explosive growth in geographically
dispersed teamwork

• Globalization
• The need for close customer contacts on a global
  scale and subsequently increased reliance of
  companies on resources outside their home country
• Maintaining a 24-hour work cycle

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Reasons for explosive growth in geographically
dispersed teamwork

• Fierce competition and exponential growth of
  information creates a need to integrate
  cross-functional, cross-cultural, and
  cross-organizational know-how and expertise.
• Companies can pull in outside resources for a
  project without adding people to the payroll.

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Why does communication become more difficult in
dispersed collaboration?

• Communication becomes less frequent when people
  are working apart.
• The 30 meter rule When the distance between
  workplaces increases to about 30 meters or more,
  the communication frequency among individuals
  drops considerably. If two people reside more
  than 30 meters apart, they may as well be across
  the continent. After 30 meters, they are mentally
  distant because they are in different work state
  out of sight, out of mind.

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We (the good and trustworthy ones) and the (not
so good and trustworthy) others
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The global-local dilemma
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The global-local dilemma and human nature
The hierarchy of priorities of the human
being 1. Oneself 2. Ones family 3. Ones
friends and local community 4. The others
(e.g., people at other organizational units)
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Why does communication become more difficult in
dispersed collaboration?

• Due to less frequent communication, it takes
  longer time to correct misunderstandings, and
  dysfunctional views of the others at other
  locations.
• There are some things that one takes for granted
  in collocated teams, that you dont think
  consciously about, for instance small talk where
  you solve many problems by talking quickly to one
  another. In distributed teams you often dont
  have the mechanisms for solving things that
  rapidly (manager).

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Finding common ground in dispersed collaboration

• Effective communication depends on establishing
  mutual knowledge.
• Mutual knowledge is knowledge that the parties to
  a communication share in common, sometimes
  referred to as common ground.
• Catherine Durham Cramton (2002). Finding Common
  Ground in Dispersed Collaboration.
  Organizational Dynamics, 30(4), pp. 356-367.

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Finding common ground in dispersed collaboration

• When assessments of common ground or mutual
  knowledge are accurate, communication is more
  likely to be understood as intended.

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Mutual knowledge

• Mutual knowledge is a building block of
  successful communication and coordinated
  activity.
• Without it, people speak and understand what is
  said on the basis of their own information and
  interpretation of the situation, often assuming
  incorrectly that the other speaks and understands
  on the basis of that same information and
  interpretation.

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Mutual knowledge

• In face-to-face communication, it usually is easy
  to sort out this kind of confusion.
• However, working from different locations
  increases the likelihood that people will have
  different information and not know it.

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Mutual knowledge

• Still worse, electronic means of communication
  make it difficult to discover and resolve such
  misunderstandings quickly.
• Even when misunderstandings are discovered,
  damage to working relationships tends to linger.

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Mutual knowledge

• Failure to establish mutual knowledge can damage
  trust and destroy collaboration.

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Problems in the exchange of information in
dispersed work groups

• Failures to communicate and remember information
  about context
• Uneven distribution of information
• Differences in what information is salient to
  sender and receiver
• Differences in speed and timing
• Uncertainty about the meaning of silence
• Cramton (2002)

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Uneven distribution of information

• When you work in the same place you are
  continuously updated on things that happen, and
  then you dont need that much explanation of the
  things under discussion. You can only say, The
  profile we discussed on Monday, how are things
  going with that? When you are doing things with
  Germany you often have to sum up the discussions
  from the last time, what profile we are talking
  about, and so on. It is not impossible that this
  can be solved and improved by having a more
  continuous dialogue. I think that some of the
  reason why this happens, is that you have a
  limitation on how often you communicate, how
  often you get in touch with one another. And
  because it necessarily does not occur as often as
  you would do if people were in the same location,
  the number of events that have happened in the
  meantime increases. And this requires a more
  extensive update to a person you are to
  communicate with the next time in order to get
  the right answer. This makes the dialogue more
  difficult, and you may avoid getting in touch,
  and so you get into a circle (project manager).

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The meaning of silence

• One of the biggest challenges faced by dispersed
  team members in Cramtons (2002) study was
  interpreting the meaning of their partners
  silence.

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The meaning of silence

• I agree.
• I strongly disagree.
• I am indifferent.
• I am out of town.
• I am having technical problems.
• I dont know how to address this sensitive issue.
• I am busy with other things.
• I did not notice your question.
• I did not realize that you wanted a response.

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Silence halts the process of establishing mutual
knowledge

• The meaning of silence is ambiguous. Silence
  might signify meanings as wide-ranging as
  agreement, disagreement or indifference, or in
  dispersed collaborations it may mean only that a
  message was undelivered.

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Silence halts the process of establishing mutual
knowledge

• Silence halts the process of determining what
  information others do and do not know and what
  conclusions they have drawn. Partners can
  interpret silence differently and not know this
  is the case.

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Guidelines for practice

• Leaders of newly formed teams whose members will
  be working from dispersed locations are typically
  advised to bring the team members together for a
  face-to-face meeting at least once at the outset
  in order to build relationships and trust.
• A good idea, but does not adequately address the
  problems of mutual knowledge.

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Guidelines for practice

• It is better for people who will collaborate
  remotely to visit each others locations at least
  once.
• This gives them an opportunity to see how a
  partners situation differs from ones own and to
  absorb details that a partner may neglect to
  mention, as well as allowing partners to get to
  know each other better.

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Guidelines for practice

• In designing and launching dispersed teams,
  leaders should give careful attention to the
  communication system and norms. They should
  educate team members about the pitfalls of
  failing to share situational information and
  making assumptions about remote partners and
  locations.
• Team leaders should monitor the effectiveness of
  communication processes across locations as a
  regular part of their job.

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Guidelines for practice

• Members of dispersed teams and people
  communicating via computer mediation should
  resist making assumptions about the situation and
  constraints of remote others.
• Instead, they should actively seek out such
  information.
• One also should take care to explain ones own
  situation to remote partners, and try to see it
  through their eyes.

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Guidelines for practicekeeping all team members
informed

• Ideally, all members of a dispersed team should
  be sent the same information.
• Purpose to provide each member with an accurate
  picture of the pace of activity in the
  collaboration, including any differences in pace
  among subgroups.
• If there is a risk of information overload,
  adjustments to this principle should be made.

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Guidelines for practicekeeping all team members
informed

• I like to stay informed about what is happening
  in the projects I am working on. The very best
  project managers are those who keep me involved
  even about information on the status in projects
  that is not relevant for me. The messages should
  have headings that clearly tell what the message
  is about. Then it is easier to choose quickly
  what messages are important to read. Some
  project managers dont give any such information
  on a continuous basis. All of a sudden they might
  need something. Then I have to go to the customer
  to understand what they want, and I have to be
  updated about the status in the project. The most
  important in the job of a project manager is to
  ensure that the people who are to contribute get
  the information they need (team member).

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Guidelines for practicekeeping all team members
informed

• Sometimes, for 5-6 weeks I dont hear anything
  from the project. I would have appreciated to
  receive a report or update from the project
  manager, say, every other week, concerning the
  status in the project, what is the next step, and
  where we are in the project phase. I receive
  drawings with suggestions for changes from the
  project manager of product development. After
  receiving this, it is often completely quiet for
  several weeks. I need to know more about what is
  going on in order to be able to plan my time
  better. I have periods when I have very much to
  do, and other periods that are more quiet. I
  would have preferred to receive a message, say, a
  week in advance, that I will be receiving a
  drawing the following week (team member).

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Guidelines for practice

• Establish clear understandings about how often
  remote teammates will check for and respond to
  messages.
• When people suffer through unexpected silence on
  the part of a remote partner, they often draw
  inaccurate conclusions that linger even after
  communication resumes.

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Guidelines for practice

• Providing prompt feedback, even just a few words,
  can help people involved in dispersed
  collaboration feel each others presence, detect
  errors, and correct inaccurate interpretations
  and attributions.
• Investigate ambiguous or unusual messages and
  occurrences before drawing conclusions, because
  of the many sources of uncertainty inherent in
  communication across distance and via technology.

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In conclusion

• Effective collaboration requires common ground.
  Establishing common ground without the advantages
  of shared location and face-to-face communication
  is a central challenge of dispersed
  collaboration.
• Individuals and groups that wish to carry out
  stable, effective collaborations across space and
  time need to recognize and understand this
  challenge.

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Co-located work and its challenges