Besides the knowledge gained from conceptualizing an improved business model for HealthTap, this virtual team project also provided us with some valuable lessons about working in a globally dispersed team. Overall, our collaboration was successful. However, we acknowledge that there were still issues that provide room for improvement. In this next section, we will reflect upon these issues and provide possible explanations alongside feasible solutions to prevent or overcome them in the future.
Communication and practicalities
First and foremost, as one of the most important aspects of any collaboration and especially between globally dispersed members, communication between team members is seen as essential for a project to succeed. In this virtual team project, all members concluded beforehand that communication would be the most important factor to focus on to ensure an optimal outcome for this project. We decided to focus on establishing clear communication norms as Malhotra et al. (2007) stated that in the absence of communication norms and clear means of communications team members may turn to use the practices, which they are used to using in their local setting. As a result, there could be a lack of cohesion and it may be difficult to integrate the work of different team members (Malhotra et al. 2007). Therefore, clear communication would facilitate the general coordination of the project while also allowing all members to increase work efficiency. In order to ensure such communication, it was decided to choose technologies and media channels that the team would use to communicate effectively. Therefore, we decided to create a WhatsApp group chat that would be used for everyday communication and small decisions. For larger and major decisions, we agreed to use Skype video calls to meet each other face-to-face. These meetings were proven to be most effective and efficient as WhatsApp was not always useful for communication. That is, we only partially managed to successfully create a “responsive” culture in which group members respond to others’ messages early and often (Long, 2019). Although we had agreed to pose questions or any dilemmas in this group chat for other members to provide help, not all members responded or took a while to respond. However, we may attribute these late responses to the time difference and differences in schedules.
Considering the fact that we believe that communication is the focal point in any team collaboration, its influence on the other challenges faced during this project will be further highlighted in the following paragraphs.
Uncertainty about the meaning of silence
As opposed to communication, silence may also be essential to acknowledge and interpret in order for a team to collaborate efficiently. Moreover, silence and especially its meaning could be seen as a form of communication that must be acknowledged and managed. We also dealt with silence across members over WhatsApp as well as in our face-to-face meetings. This had to be acknowledged as such silences could have signified several things, such as I agree, I strongly disagree, I am indifferent etc. One common problem that we might have encountered was interpreting silence as consent when it actually originated from disagreement or inattention (Cramton, 2002). However, as a means to mitigate this risk, we tried to repeat decisions or proposals and asked fellow members that appeared to be silent about their opinions.
Communicating and remembering contextual information
Aside from optimally using all established means of communication and aiming to interpret silence amongst members, it was found that properly transmitting contextual information was also proven to be vital. For instance, as the project progressed, the differences in members’ schedules became salient when members would respond at different times or had less time to work on the project. Especially the members that also work full time or have other responsibilities did not always succeed to communicate this to the other members. Moreover, it was discovered that the courses in which all members participated, were not equally intense. As members generally assumed that all other members were also enrolled in equally extensive courses with similar content, the differences were overlooked. A reason for this could be that dispersed team members may fail to anticipate which features of their local situation differ significantly from others’ and effectively communicate this to the fellow members, which leads to misunderstandings (Cramton, 2002).
Mutual knowledge and a common understanding
As much as communication was used effectively to transmit important information, there still appeared to be instances in which the interpretation of this information and knowledge transferred amongst members did not lead to mutual knowledge or common ground. That is, in certain situations where the knowledge that parties to a communication share in common appeared to lack. This may be inefficient as, without it, people tend to interpret what is said on the basis of their own information and the situation. They often assume incorrectly that the other members speak upon and interpret the same information (Cramton, 2002). In our case, in several instances, it appeared as though members did not fully understand what was being discussed, what their tasks entailed, and what the final product was supposed to be comprised of. This could be attributed to the lack of mutual knowledge on the topics and the local standards of members, as we all generally had a different interpretation of certain decisions and tasks.
Availability and salience of information
Attributing to the lack of mutual knowledge and interpretation mishaps, was the availability of information and the pieces of that information that members perceived to be salient. In our first and second meeting, we ensured that the guidelines to our project were the same for all members and that we all understood what subparts the project was comprised of. In order to ensure that all information needed for the project was accessible to all members, we created a shared Google drive folder. We chose to use this information technology platform to enable access to and control of information, and gain benefits from the effective accessibility of information provided by mobile devices and social media, which Stolovitsky (2012), Malhotra, Majchrzak and Rosen (2007) claim to improve efficiency. Our Google drive folder did provide us with these mentioned benefits.
However, in order for the team to fully benefit from the Google drive platform, it is important to share all available knowledge on the platform and communicate about this information to all members. Although all members clearly anticipated on communicating as much as possible to ensure that all information about the project was universally shared, it appeared as though some important topics were overlooked. Particularly, towards the end of the project, it was found that several members were not familiar with the article of Johnson et al. (2008) as this article was not part of the mandatory readings for all members. Fortunately, this was discovered in time, allowing the members who had not read this paper to study its theory and findings.
Apart from all the information being shared it was assumed that similar pieces of that information were salient to all members. However, this appeared to not be the case as certain outcomes of the project did not fully match with the anticipated outcome s as discussed in our meetings. Therefore, it was necessary to set clearer guidelines or even provide possible structures pieces of text that needed to contain certain information. This required extensive coordination and frequent validation of information.
Differences in speed and timing
Apart from any challenges posed by communication, interpretation, exchange of knowledge, standards, and differences in information, the time difference between members’ location and the speed of working also accounted for some difficulties. Prior to the start of the project, we had decided to schedule our meetings according to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which served as our reference time. However, scheduling all other work for the project posed a challenge as the time difference demanded some patience and extensive coordination amongst members. Moreover, the speed in relative speed of communication among parts of a group and the speed at which work was being performed also had some challenging implications. Cramton (2002) researched this topic and stated that these difference in speed can interfere with collaboration as one part of the group must have to wait to hear from the rest of the group to deliver their work. These differences may have been our biggest challenge to overcome as the intended deadlines were not always met and we had to wait to receive information from members when all else was already finished. Fortunately, all the required information was acquired in time for the deadlines, allowing us to still compose a high-quality end product.
Valuable lessons
After evaluating on these challenges and how our team has dealt with them, we conceptualized some valuable lessons that we learned from this project and how we will approach these projects in the future. First of all, setting clear communication norms is an essential activity to start future collaboration with and to ensure that all communication throughout the project will be clear and efficient. Moreover, sharing an substantial amount of information would ensure that all members are well aware of differences in context, approaches, perspectives and other factors that influence the tea work. In order to do so, engaging all members actively in discussions, asking them for their opinion when they are silent, and ensuring that all information that is discussed is understood by all members is of utmost importance. As for the content of the project, setting clearer or more extensive guidelines to content, posing more deadlines to reflect upon what has been produced, and defining what is important to focus on, will substantially improve our performance in virtual teams in the future.
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