How to Create Successful Virtual Teams
2021/02/24
Enabling a virtual workforce doesn’t mean it’s business as usual
- You can’t substitute physical presence by online collaboration when there is a need for problem-solving and creativity tasks
- You can’t build organization culture and organization experience through digital communication. People need to feel the culture in order to adopt it
- You can’t notice body language, when digitally interacting, which is key to better understanding people. This requires physical presence
- Managers must pay attention to keeping people together even when they are in different locations
- People must learn the facilitation skills when working remotely
Remote facilitation is key requirement of the remote working model
Remote facilitation requires using digital tools that would allow a group of employees or people achieve their shared goals. There are 3 types of remote facilitation
When face to face meetings are not possible, a meeting becomes more of a workshop: It requires:
- A formal agenda; and
- Digital tools for a productive meeting
How to conduct remote meetings
Video conferencing
Zoom
Teams
Google Hangouts
Note-taking
Evernote
Wunderlist
OneNote
Google docs
Microsoft Word
Notability
Survey tools
Google forms
Type form
SurveyMonkey
Audience engagement
Mentimeter
Sli.do
Stormz
Whiteboarding/post its
Miro
Mural
Stormboard
Whiteboard
File Storage and sharing
Google Drive
OneDrive
Dropbox
What do you need for a successful remote meeting
Note-taking and documentation with focus on sharing and displaying.
File storage and document sharing (videos, images, documents).
Surveying, polls, pulse, and checkpoint questions.
Chat with facilitator-specific features (anonymize, voting, hide comments, etc.).
Note-taking and documentation with focus on sharing and displaying.
Clearly handing out assignments and responsibilities.
Booking system and timer.
Post-engagement through ongoing discussions and activities.
There are 3 ways for successful meetings
01
4D Approach
The 4D approach is mainly used for problem-solving and generation new ideations. It is a structured approach to address issues in 4 steps: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.
02
OPEN SPACE
Open Space Facilitation format is designed for self-organization, inclusivity, and emergent agendas.
03
SOCIOCRACY 3.0
Sociocracy 3.0 (S3) is a transformational technology that helps organizations improve performance, alignment, fulfillment, and wellbeing.
Overview of the 4D approach
Facilation
4D
4D Approach
Overview
It is a structured approach that tackles challenges in 4 key phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.
Benefits
Problem Solving and Ideation
Details
•The 4D method approaches problems and solutions utilizing 2 different types of thinking stages: Divergent and Convergent.
•In the Divergent stage, we try to open up as much as possible without limiting ourselves.
•In the Convergent stage, we focus on condensing and narrowing findings or ideas.
•The 1st cycle identifies the problem by opening-up to as many ideas as possible.
•The problem is then narrowed down and defined.
•The 2nd cycle searches for solutions to the problem, again by opening up to as many ideas as possible and then narrowing it down to the best possible one and delivering it.
Using the 4D approach requires synchronous and concurrent work
4D
Remote working platforms accomplish this by:
•Gathering ideas on the platform before a face-to-face or synchronous meeting and allowing participants to add additional ideas that may come up after a common meeting.
•Ideas can be prioritized and filtered by polls, likes, or giving points.
•All project phases can then be documented on the go, in a single Digital Facilitation workspace. The same workspace can be used to continue the delivery phase.
Strong organization & facilitation skills are required during remote meetings
Open space is suitable for open collaboration and when free-flowing ideas are required
Facilitation Method
Open Space
Overview
Open Space Facilitation method is designed for self-organization, inclusivity, and emergent agendas. The key question to ask is “What are the important things we should talk about to improve?”.
Benefits
Self-organization, inclusivity, and emergent agendas.
Details
Open Space consists of 4 principles and 1 law (The Law of Two Feet):
•Whoever comes are the right people.
•Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
•When it starts is the right time.
•When it is over it is over.If at any time you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, go somewhere else where you can.
Using the 4D approach requires synchronous and concurrent work
During an Open Space approach, a session starts without an agenda, but the process is designed to ensure that the issues that are most important to the people involved will surface and become part of the agenda. Ideas can be recorded offline, using a digital facilitation hub where people record ideas whenever ideas pop up.
Digital Facilitation Platforms enable this by:
•Inviting participants to propose topics as chat comments.
•Participants ‘like’ a comment to show their interest or agreement or prioritize by using voting or polling features of the Digital Facilitation Platform.
•The facilitator can then organize the topics by likes or votes and decide how many topics will be covered in a given session.
•The facilitator creates a loose agenda and assign the host of each topic as the person who created the original comment. Booking feature of the Digital Facilitation Platforms can also be utilized for choosing which topic participants will start with.
•A separate page within a Digital Facilitation Platform workspace can be dedicated to each topic, where we can document everything, even attach instructions, images, videos, or any other file type. Video conferencing tool of the Platform can be used side-by-side.
•Creating anonymous chats side-by-side to add ideas in different categories substitute the role of sticky notes
Open space is suitable for open collaboration and when free-flowing ideas are required
Facilitation Method
S3.0
Sociocracy 3.0
Overview
A large part of S3 is a consent decision making process that is used to propose agreements that are transparent and that everyone can stand behind.
Benefits
Improvement of performance, alignment, fulfillment, and wellbeing.
Details
The process includes an “implicit contract of consent” which says:
•In the absence of objections to an agreement, I intend to follow through on the agreement to the best of my ability.
•I agree to share objections as I become aware of them.
•A final decision cannot be 51% agreement and 49% disagreement (like we can end up with by democratic decision making). Consent means “I’m willing to give this a try” and everyone needs to be on board for a decision to be reached.
•Objections and concerns will continue to be discussed until everyone gives their consent, which creates decisions with 100% buy-in.
Sociocracy requires full consent from all participants
The decision-making process following the Sociocracy 3.0 method on a Digital Facilitation Platform can be used to set strategic goals.
S3.0
Here is the process for Sociocracy 3.0:
•A chat is opened up during a remote workshop, where all participants are given an opportunity to suggest ideas over the course of a few days or weeks. A facilitator can provide pre-set categories such as brand, company culture, and internationalization, which can also be done in separate chats to keep topics organized.
•Digital Facilitation Platform’s chat AI clustering features can create a summary, theme cluster, or a word cloud of a chat, which can serve as a starting point for a discussion during a virtual or face-to-face meeting.
•Every topic can be discussed in smaller virtual groups that discuss the summary, build on the content, and create suggestions that the group is happy with. To make a remote meeting seamless, booking features, in case different sessions need to be scheduled.
•Once all the suggested goals have been discussed, groups can post the final suggestions in the Digital Facilitation Platform and create a vote. This helps to prioritize, voice any objections, and make immediate decisions.
•Objections should only be given, with an improved suggestion. All objections and concerns can continue to be discussed on a chat.
•Finally, participants can quickly vote again until everyone gives their consent, and only then will a decision be made.
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Mohammed HajjarHead of Advisory Services -
Mohammed AlnajjarBusiness Development Manager