Essential skills to work and collaborate in 21st century... part 2 (Technology skills)

Someone once told me: “Technology doesn’t allow you to have better meetings. It allows you to have worse meetings more easily”.

And it’s absolutely correct; if you don’t engage your team with a purpose, they will lose interest, and start working on something else (I do too...). This is not new (unfortunately) - even in physical meetings, this old adage still holds true. But in a virtual setting, it is much easier for people to work on something else.

I will not blame them - actually, I will blame the project manager for not doing his or her homework. Why them again?? - you can’t be serious? Oh yes: the project manager’s finest job is to manage team members in the most time efficient way - and this includes managing the environment where the meeting takes place.

Essential skills to work and collaborate in 21st century... part 1 (Facilitation skills)

Well, we have all become victims of globalization, in the sense that none of us have been properly trained in how to work efficiently across borders. So we all need to add some new skill dimensions, in order to survive in the 21st century. I'd prefer to upgrade our skills “the Matrix-way”, but unfortunately, we probably have to wait a couple of decades for that to be possible.

In my opinion, project managers are the ones who especially need to succeed in this, because they are the change agents in an organization. So lets talk about project managers.

What prevents us to work and collaborate?

A study performed by Siemens Enterprise Communications Global Research in sep/oct 2012) showed that:

• 43% of users feel frustrated and overwhelmed by team collaboration and communication technologies that they work with 
• 75% find their team members more likely to get distracted during ‘virtual’ meetings
• 34% find remote team members often ‘loafing’ – not doing their share
• 44% find it as productive as face-to-face teamwork
• 72% would find teamwork easier if collaboration included video

If you look closer to Siemens’ survey it’s only understate that companies need to apply one Unified Communication technology which off course Siemens can provide. In my opinion it’s not the essential - it’s just another technology.

Why do we collaborate with peers?

The question is rather simple and should be straightforward. But in many cases it isn’t. And why is that? Lack of objective? common language? lack of will? afraid of losing power? How to leverage the most value from your partnership by collaborating more effectively is a question I see unanswered and unsolved.

• “Technology doesn’t allow you to have better meetings.  It allows you to have worse meetings more easily.” (IT executive)

In the past, a stable of team members were co-located in one site and could meet face-to-face daily. And when people are around each other social interaction happens and actions, issues, disagreements, decisions gets solved in the hallway, at lunch or at the coffee machine. Then, increasing globalization and networked communications enabled a more distributed organization model over the past two decades.