Teamwork, Reinvented for a virtual world.

It’s time for real-time everything…

VR is already here. We don’t have to wait for the headsets.

Everyone I know, is virtually next to me. I can message them in one of 5 messengers, and they will get my message NOW. Not when they have time - but right now… like they were standing right here, in my virtual room, and I was tapping them on the shoulder.

Let’s absorb this fascinating reality for a moment. You can tap anyone you know on the shoulder at any point in time, wherever they are, and they are extremely likely to feel that tap, as a quick buzz of their mobile, and respond.

So how is having everyone we know, always in the same virtual room with us, changing the way we work together?

I believe the biggest influence is on how we work together, teamwork. It is going to become more and more unofficial (even friendly), immediate, collaborative and transparent.

It’s a move away from the previous generation’s email, which is official (sometimes intimidating), delayed, passing the ball from one person to the other, and spreads information unevenly between team members.

The barriers of space and time are collapsing!

With real-time teamwork, location becomes less important, because it doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you’re virtually together and can collaborate.

But I believe it’s not just the space barrier that is falling, but also the time barrier. To explain what I mean, I will tell you a story.

Last year, I had a minor medical procedure that required me to be under anesthesia.

Here is what I remember: Me saying to the doctor, “I don’t think you gave me enough, i’m not feeling sleepy at all”,

and the doctor replying “OK, we’re done”.

In reality, between my statement, and his reply, an hour of procedure has passed, but for me, it was one fluent conversation.

Real-time work communication is like that… even if discussions are broken in time — they are still one ongoing conversation, with gaps… Sometimes the other side answers instantly, sometimes after 10 minutes— but it’s still an ongoing conversation.

In the virtually connected world, all teams are virtually together all the time, simultaneously.

I am now, working live with 7 teams. And if you think about it carefully, chances are, that so are you.

None of them is “active” at the moment, and we learned not to bother each other when there’s nothing to say, so when a message does show up it’s a continuation of our discussion, as if it never stopped.

It’s a new experience, with new etiquette and new rules, and it will be a while before we all get used to it, and fine tune the rules. But it’s NOTHING like the rules of the old email, it’s a brave new world.

It’s actually, a NETWORK of real-time teams.

Each of the people I’m on those 7 teams with right now, is also in multiple teams of their own, but not the same teams as me.

My marketing consultant for example is on my marketing team, but also on teams with his other clients.

And that is, BTW, what MOST team communication apps, such as Slack, still get so wrong. Teams are not siloes, they are networked.

For most people, their organic “team” is just one team they belong to, but in reality many people have much more “teamwork” activity with people outside their organic team, than in their own.

The Pros of real-time virtual teams.

When you regard every group of people you work with as a “Real-time Team”, (and you have the real-time platforms to support it) — you have a much better chance of reaching this state of mind I call “teamwork”, where the team is in the zone, or what psychologists call, the “group flow”:

• Efficient — working together like a well oiled machine, like the team in Mission Impossible. Every issue instantly raised and addressed by the right people. Everyone is sharp, and all information is shared.
• Effective — everyone aligned to achieving the same goal, everyone knows what the team is doing, and what they need to personally do, and all decisions are discussed.
• Rewarding — working in a teamwork state of mind, is seriously more fun, but especially important in hard times, when the team can pull together, and in successes, when the team can celebrate a well deserved win.

The Cons of real-time virtual teams

There are three major complaints about always-on, real-time teams.

The first, is “noise” — too much chatter. I feel this is more a problem of the tools used (I’m looking at you Slack Channels). If a team has a specific purpose, and only the relevant people on it — it tends to be very practical, but if they are just generic “channels” what do you expect...?

The second complaint is “focus”, while emails are usually broken down to one per subject, online teams can flow from subject to subject like a river, and things can fall between the cracks. A fair complaint, but with the right tool, real-time teams actually have the advantage. What you need, is a tool that captures the decisions made by the team in real-time, so the discussion can move forward freely, and nothing gets lost. This means one real-time team can replace 100s of emails!

And the third complaint, relates to client-supplier teams, where the provider side is not keen for clients to have direct access to them… This is a question of service philosophy really. I believe that today if a client wants to reach you, they can do it in 5 different ways. And if they can’t reach you, they can easily reach your competitor, who IS available. So take the initiative…

WorkGroup — the platform for virtual teamwork.

WorkGroup (www.workgroup.im) was designed from the ground up for teamwork in a virtually connected world.

• It’s a network. You don’t belong to one team, you create or join as many groups as you want, with whomever you need to work with. Some teams are ad-hoc, some are permanent, some, are just you and one other person.
• Each group has a purpose, which means groups are much less noisy, and much more focused (no noisy “generic” channels…)

But the most innovative part of the platform is the way it integrates “Action items” into the conversation. Because what’s the point of being in an ongoing virtual meeting, if no one is writing down the action items?

That’s why on WorkGroup, every group member can take any message, turn it into an action item. and assign it to a group member for execution.

This means every idea or decision, is instantly captured, as close as possible to its origination, so everyone can see it in context, and it can be followed up on after the conversation continues to flow to the next subject.

And what happens when the real VR headsets finally come?

I think the real-time teamwork structure of multiple, networked, simultaneous groups will remain the same.

The big leap of virtual connectivity, is not the immersive visual experience — the big leap is realizing, we’re all connected already anyway.