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.

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.