Digital Collaboration

As technology evolves, time and distance barriers are dissolving, allowing cooperation worldwide, connecting and integrating geographically distributed employees and global talents, enabling time flexibility (follow-the-sun principle) and greater speed, and lowering the costs associated with global collaboration.

Working virtually, over distance and in global networks requires new skills and approaches, including new paths of communication, feedback, motivation and performance enhancement. Virtual teams, although offering many benefits, also pose a number of challenges and design necessities, for management and employees alike:

• How does team communication work when team members work remotely and are spread across several continents? How do you deal with the fact that, for example, people may only gain a rough idea of body language, emotions, and nuances when engaged in a video conference?
• How do you provide interpersonal feedback after a conference call, when just going over to your employees and patting them on the back is not literally possible? How do you engage in side conversations without disrupting the meeting? How do you build trust and how do you develop mutual understanding? How can you replicate the discussions of topics that happen in a relaxed atmosphere such as over coffee or lunch?
• How should innovation be fostered and and how can an innovation network be successfully designed and managed when these processes are run at a distance?