Lynda Gratton of the London Business School reported on recent research of hers recently in the Wall Street Journal. She outlines 10 helpful rules to create conditions for success when distributed teams work together. Among them: #1 get a good piece of software to help (like a wiki); think carefully about who composes the first group, they should both have #2 some common background, and also #3 have loose ties ("span boundaries") to other groups.
Based on my work with customers, her focus is absolutely in the right place. Picking the first set of participants on the team (and in the wiki) is to lay down the early genetics of the group. Further, all too often when companies set out to organize virtually, they buy software and focus on features. Social software is 90% social and 10% software. Being thoughtful up front about the relationships and the sequence of rollout is the cornerstone for success.
She also highlights another bit I make time to teach all of my customers: focus on the business, not the tool. The group must have some context and a goal in mind. I have yet to meet a group of people excited about learning a new tool. People have very full plates of work. They get excited about getting work done in a new, faster, richer way. Great work Lynda.
The video here speaks mostly to Nokia (incidentally a Socialtext customer). The WSJ article provides detail on the top 10 findings (registration required).
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