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▶ developing your Virtual team � 237

Problem solving can be easier for Virtual Teams
Shauna Wilson is the president of Amazon Consulting,
Inc., and conducts quality management system audits for
companies all over the world, including Europe, China, and
across the United States. She was one of the first to do so
online. After working at Hewlett-Packard for 18 years, where
she developed her expertise in quality management, she
formed her company and is an expert in working with virtual
teams. One of her particular skills is helping virtual teams
solve problems, and she has developed a suite of simple
tools that teams can use. She even thinks—contrary to what
conventional wisdom suggests—that problem solving can
be much easier in a virtual setting than in a face-to-face en-
vironment, and she gives a great example.
“This is a group of people who have worked together for
20 years,” says Shauna. “They don’t like coming to their
face-to-face meetings. They’ve got two people who really
[have dominated their meetings]. They haven’t heard from
different people—ever—because they just get overrun by
these two people. I put [this group of people] into a virtual
meeting and got more information out of them than I’ve
ever gotten before.”
One of the tools she used with this group was something
she calls a “daisy diagram,” which is a structured brain-
storming tool used to generate ideas. (You can download
one from her Web site at www.interneteaming.com.) The
meeting turned from a content dump, where everyone sat
passively, into a collaborative process, where people were
now sharing information. “Now you hear from those silent
people. This team actually finished their project in half the
time and had twice the results they expected, because they
heard from those other people. It worked out great.” The
interesting point is that during this process this team was