Page 246 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

developing your Virtual team � 225

opportunity to put their ideas out and get a reaction to them, a process
that matures as a team develops over time.
As the team evolves, creative problem solving can become easier.
Zev tells about a particular process that wasn’t functioning very well.
The team started tossing solutions around via e-mail, but they found
that approach wasn’t working. Then they went to their sharepoint
location and used it like a message board. Messages could be posted
and everyone’s replies could be seen. The team started a brainstorm-
ing thread, looking at solutions, and in three days that brainstorming
process solidified an effective strategy to develop a new process from
a very loose set of ideas and goals.
Zev thinks of these kinds of communication processes, supported
by shared workspaces, as a process for developing a kind of shared
thinking space. Organizational development consultants try to develop
creative solutions to problems by “getting everyone into the same
room.” Managers such as Zev can now do that virtually by using video
conferencing, shared desktops, and electronic communication tools
such as whiteboarding.
And, about face-to-face meetings, Zev thinks it’s important to
have them even if they’re only held once or twice at the beginning of
the relationship. “It really changes the interpersonal contact that you
have with people once you have a little bit of shared physical space,”
says Zev.

` BrIAn hoFFmAnn

We visited Brian Hoffmann, Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) R&D project
manager, at the HP facility in Boise, Idaho. As we were leaving the
5
meeting room, he took us across the aisle to the HP Printer Museum.
We walked around the room, looking at the earliest printers the com-
pany had developed at the Boise site, and it was easy to remember how
difficult it was to print just a few years ago what seems so simple to
print today. Somehow it seems easier to let go of outdated appliances