In this episode I speak with Sharon Koifman the founder and CEO of Distant Job, a specialist recruitment firm working to identify and help clients recruit remote workers and find great jobs for people wanting to work remotely.



Sharon has spent much of his career in the remote work environment. Running his business from his home in Montreal with a workforce spread across many different countries, Sharon has had the opportunity to think deeply about the benefits and challenges of remote work and how to manage organisations comprising remote workers to give every employee the best working environment and opportunity to contribute.



We discussed many different areas of remote work including the need to treat remote work as a real job, managing engagement and supporting remote workers in ways that engages them and provides a stimulating and healthy working experience, all while ensuring the business is effective and successful.



Sharon can be contacted via Distant Job

In this episode I consider the need to establish some boundaries in your work from home workplace and how and how frequently we communicate with colleagues. This would include finding a place at home to establish your workplace, how you dress for working from home, putting some sensible boundaries around your time spent working from home and managing the volume of video and phone meetings we are all seeing a surge in.

With so many in the workforce new to working from home and working remotely to colleagues it is highly likely that there will be a strong percentage who will either be loving or hating the experience. This extreme reaction is not unlike the experience of personnel when they are sent deployed as expats to other cities or countries, something I discussed specifically a while ago in a previous article.



In the expat environment these extremes are referred to as xenophelia (a love for the new) and xenophobia (a distrust or dislike of the new), so could we introduce some new terms into our vocabulary for this love and hate of working from home and working virtually? If so, I would propose virtuophelia (a love of working virtually) and virtuophobia (a dislike/hatred for working virtually)? After all, any new terms like these can’t be any more pervasive than some of the new expressions that are finding their way into our vocabulary, terms like social distancing and flattening the curve.



So , below are a few thoughts as to why someone would love or hate working from home.



Things to love about working from home



Working from home (or at least working outside of a corporate office) has many benefits and reasons to love it:



* Freedom to work more flexible hours – working from home allows the individual to have a lot more flexibility around their working hours and the location they undertake their work. This can be easily seen in those who work from coffee shops, public libraries, airports and hotels.* Working from home enables people to care for family members as part of a flexible working structure – whether caring for dependent children, partners, parents or extended family members, the closer proximity and ability to juggle work hours means it is much easier for those working from home to look after their relatives.* Reduced commute time frees up more personal time – regardless of the length of commute, we all give up a portion of our time to travel to and from our traditional office. Working from home means the commute is quite literally fro the kitchen table to the laptop. Those extra minutes can be used for rest, exercise or any other activity.* Working from home is more inclusive – in theory at least, working from home should make access to work more inclusive for those who otherwise may have been restricted by their ability to access a traditional office for standard working hours. This would include, for example, those caring for young children, elderly relatives or dependent family members, or those with an impediment that may have limited their movement.* Freedom to travel while still earning a living – in the pre COVID-19 world it was relatively common for people to adopt a digital nomad lifestyle, working their way around the world as digitally enabled consultants. During the COVID-19 pandemic this ease of travel is clearly not an easy option, but there are still more options available to people who have adopted this style of working.



Things to hate about working from home



Equally, there are a number of things to hate about working from home:



* It can be very isolating – Working remotely to your team and your colleagues can lead to an ever increasing sense of isolation. You may get to spend more time with your family but from a work sense, you are not able to have spontaneous and organic discussions with colleagues which can lead to a sense of loss of connection.* There are more distractions – Most of us have set up our home environment to include all of the social distractions we use to enjoy our time away from the office. This can include TV,

Working from home is a balancing act. Each and every one of us are balancing our home and work lives, our family and personal commitments, the education and well being of our family and our commitments to out companies, our obligations to deliver reports on time and our physical health, our relationships with our colleagues and our mental well being. It is not easy and it is not a skill that can be learned from a book, article, training course or classroom. There is no one size fits all. Every one of us must determine for ourselves how we need to balance our time, and we need to do it constantly over time as our situation evolves.



Finding balance over time



At different times in a period of working from home, to maintain balance in life will mean shifting priorities and focus between the various roles and responsibilities we each hold. This will mean changing how you prioritize your work, family, personal and social commitments so that you are able to remain healthy, sustain your family and meet your employers expectations.



Balance when starting to work from home



Working from home in conventional times



When people first start to work from home, if it is in more normal times when they may be working from home alone while colleagues and family continue with their normal lives, with family members leaving the home for work and school and colleagues still gathering in their workplace, the normal pace for working from home is that the home worker would typically work similar hours to their office based colleagues. This matched pace makes it easy for the home worker to maintain a contiguous relationship with work colleagues. Instances of this kind of working from home may be establishing a new office, recovering from a medical procedure, having home renovations undertaken or similar. It is typically for a finite and often relatively short period, and, as it is stand alone, is easiest managed through simply a location displacement.



Another example of this situation may be for the home worker to be caring for a family member such as a child, partner or parent. In this instance, there would be an expectation that the home worker will adjust their working pattern to allow flexibility to provide the care they need while still delivering against agreed work commitments. This situation can be require more adjustment than a more simple working from home undertaking as described in the previous paragraph, but again, generally the rest of the community are still going about their normal lives.



Balance when working from home during the Corona virus pandemic



We are however living in highly unconventional times. Rather than having small numbers of the workforce working from home we now have large portions of many businesses in this situation. It seems that in many organisations, if a task can be performed from home (or from off site), then that is happening, huge portions of many parts of the workforce are now working from home, balancing their lives with those of their partners, children, relatives and colleagues.



The simple times of working from home, which for many meant having a peaceful day in the home office completing a piece of work without interruption are now gone. The working day for many of us is now completely blended with the personal day, family and work rolled into one, a hugely complex, interconnected challenge. Parents are learning how to home school children while holding down a job. Couples are fighting for space and the quiet needed to participate in video calls. Adults are worried about the well being of parents as well as finding the goods and provisions they need to continue their lives. All not knowing when the next change will come,

As we all adapt to our new situation of working from home rather than working in offices it can be hard to work out how much to share. Finding a balance between under sharing and over sharing is a challenge in more conventional work times, now that we are all separating from our co-workers, knowing the boundaries becomes even harder.



Incidental sharing



As we all start to hold video meetings, regardless of the technology, there is an inevitable degree of additional sharing of our personal lives and environments happening. People are joining video calls from their kitchens, lounge rooms, home offices and bedrooms with all kinds of personal content suddenly on show to colleagues. To a degree this is unavoidable and may even help build a sense of community between colleagues, but it is still a good idea to give some thought to the background before showing everything to the world.



This degree of caution is particularly appropriate given the number of times I am seeing pictures of group calls on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, often taken without the consent of all participants and definitely without thought to what is behind the faces on the call. I for one would not be happy to see pictures of the inside of my home being shared on social media without my express permission.



To try to mitigate this, some platforms allow the use of virtual backgrounds which conceal most of the background behind a picture of a beach, city, landmark or sunset, others have functions that blur the background when on a call. Clearly its a personal choice as to your approach, but I would definitely recommend at least considering just what and who else may be in frame on any video call.



Intentional sharing



Alongside the incidental sharing through video calls, the big challenge for many can be to know how much sharing is enough and how much is too much.



From my research into virtual teams, the establishment of relationships and through them trust were very strong themes behind building and maintaining a strong team culture. In a more conventional virtual team environment this would include sharing small parts of your personal story to help build a sense of rapport with colleagues. However, with so many moving to a work from home situation this concept can be quite new, with relative strangers who may have worked in close proximity for a long time now working from distance there is real value in adopting a similar approach, sharing some parts of your life with your fellow work from home co-workers will help everyone better collaborate.



Knowing where to draw the line can be a difficult question though. Each team and each individual will have their own views on this, and one point of difficulty can occur where one person shares more than a colleague may want to know, this could be more personal information than may be conventional, it could be information on family, friends or co-workers.



Finding the right time to either push back and request a toning down of the sharing or just accepting it as a coping mechanism by the sharer is not an easy decision, but is something that should be carefully considered. Some people who are trying to find their personal balance may appreciate the feedback and adjust their behaviour to reflect it, but for others, sharing and over sharing may be a way to deal with the stress in their lives at the moment, and being asked to keep some of this to themselves may add to their burden and cause them personal difficulties.



Establishing a sharing environment



One possible mechanism to help team members deal with the personal and professional challenges of sudden work from ...

As personnel move increasingly from co-located office working to working from home there will be a gradual adaption to the new way of work. This adaptation will be different for everyone and every business, some will quickly settle into the new way of working while others will struggle with any number of different facets. Much of the pace and direction of this adaptation will be dependent on a combination of the organisation and individual circumstances and demands.



Organizational adaptation



Organisations are working to understand how best to maintain their businesses and workflows now that their personnel are scattered across towns and cities. They are making multiple business critical decisions on a daily basis, in some cases simply to keep their business alive, working in a more fluid and complex environment than many will have ever seen or even conceived.



Moving staff to work from home



One of the many early decisions businesses made will have been to move staff offsite to work from home. This will have involved migrating technology and ensuring staff can access corporate networks but may not have considered changes to workflows or embracing flexible working processes for staff. Once staff are reporting in that they are happily set up with computers and phones at home, and have completed an ergonomic and environment checklist for their home workspace, many businesses will move on to other pressing matters, leaving their staff at home but stressed and confused as they navigate their new workflows.



However, the technology is only the enabler in a virtual team environment. Without adequate technology everything else is very difficult, but technology needs to be supplemented by changes to practices and processes, particularly when organisations are inn this for the relatively long haul. Having a staff member work from home for a day or a week alongside a traditional co-located office staff, as has been the case, previously, typically means that the work from home staff align their hours and workflows with the home office, nice and easy, little to no change required. In this current situation, where many if not most staff of many businesses are working from home, and doing so for an extended period of weeks and possibly months, there is a real need for companies to review their expectations and processes.



Organizational factors for adapting to work from home



As I discussed in the last article in this series, there are a number of factors to consider here.



* Many companies have a formally structured “9 to 5” working day, 5 day a week simply to provide structure to their operations. In many instances employees only perform their duties within this framework because that is the cultural norm and aside from tradition, there are often few reasons that structure needs to apply when personnel are working from home.* Many managers and business leaders are comfortable with these traditional structures as this is what they have always known. Performance measurement and client billing is also often structured around this attendance model, building a self fulfilling and for some virtuous circle.* Employees have built their life styles around this 9 to 5 model. This applies as much on the non working hours as well as the working hours, it applies to family time and how parents will divide caring for children.* Organizational reward structures, overtime and different pay rates for hours worked associated with numbers of hours and hours worked at traditionally non social times are also designed around these conventional business hours.



But, none of that applies now.

With increasing numbers of people working from home, the work from home landscape is changing from the situation prior to COVID-19. Prior to the virus precautions it was not uncommon to have one family member working alone from home in a day job that either gave them flexibility over location or where their job was home based. As more businesses have moved from centralised office locations to having large numbers of staff working off site and typically from home, this situation has changed dramatically.



It is possibly now, during the COVID-19 measures, more common to have multiple family members all working from home together, looking after children and supporting extended family either within the one home or remotely, than it has ever been. Having children and relatives in need of support will place different pressures on family members, pressures that may result in the need to decide between family and work commitments. These extraordinary circumstances should therefore call for some significant adjustments in organisational and individual expectations of one another.



Do we need a 9 to 5 life when working from home



The traditional 9 to 5 style of working arrangement has been in place since the early era of industrialization. Factories relied on regular working hours to ensure machines were serviced and those servicing the machines, so the concept goes, needed constant supervision. All of this led to the development of a regimented working day and working week. Over the same period organisations began monitoring the attendance of personnel, particularly those undertaking manual work, to use attendance to calculate reward. This same attendance metric has also been long applied to knowledge work, where many companies calculate and sell work by the hour, essentially forming a self fulfilling ‘virtuous’ circle of expectations.



However, for many, particularly knowledge workers currently breaking the bonds of organisational oversight and working from home, the question really needs to be asked about how flexible or otherwise should peoples working from home lives be. For instance, personnel caring for school age children who are also now at home are likely to need a high degree of flexibility in their work expectations to ensure the children are accessing their education needs, eating and have a sensible amount of exercise, most of which would generally occur at school under the guidance of teachers. These parents should not have to decide between attending a meeting at 8am or providing their children with breakfast.



Similarly, two or more family members working from the home may need to share a home computer (if one or more of them is not provided a company computer) or may have limited internet capacity, constraining their ability to have concurrent video meetings, or even have limited physical space to work. Our home lives and environments were generally not designed to accommodate an entire family unit all working from home for more than perhaps a day or two.



Options for flexibility



In the initial flurry of moving from a working in an office to a work from home situation it is entirely understandable that companies will have retained their meeting pattern and simply gone virtual. However, as time passes it is likely to become increasingly important to review some of the timing to provide flexibility for working from home staff such that they can balance their family and work.



Examples could be to constrain large team meetings to between, say, 9:30 or 10 am and 12 then from 1:30 or 2pm to 4pm, this would allow employees the flexibility to take care of children without feeling pressured to join meetings. Smaller meetings, when needed, could then fit in some of these gaps at the start and end of ...

Working from home can, for some, be an incredibly empowering and liberating experience, they are able to work the hours that suit them and align with the other pressures in their lives while also being productive. For others, the work from home experience can be a socially isolating and stressful experience as they battle the sense of separation from their colleagues and struggle to maintain focus in an unfamiliar situation.



Which ever side of the work from home experience individuals find themselves, the challenge of avoiding marginalisation can be real and show up in many different ways.



What is marginalisation



Marginalisation, both in the broad virtual teams and the specific work from home context of these articles, refers to the intended or unintended disconnection of one or more team members from their normal decision making involvement and participation in the collective group. It can occur through unintended activities such as when team members are physically or virtually distant from their colleagues and are omitted from discussions, it can occur when a team member, though personal choice or workload to disconnect from their colleagues for a period of time, it can occur when a group, by mistake, excludes a team member from discussions and decisions and, in the worst of situations, it can occur where a group intentionally chooses to exclude a team member from discussions.



Whatever the cause, marginalisation can become a stressful and socially isolating experience for the individual or individuals involved and can quickly lead to losses of team effectiveness. Yet, it can happen slowly and really without notice, a team member misses a meeting because they are busy, at the meeting decisions are made and subsequent meetings calendared without the team member being involved, more meetings and discussions happen, time passes and suddenly the individual has been disconnected from the rest of the group for weeks and potentially has missed critical discussions.



Causes and management of marginalisation



Marginalisation in more conventional virtual team situations can occur where one individual or group calls in to a meeting, the meeting concludes, those who have called in leave the call and those who are physically together continue to discuss things, perhaps reaching additional decisions without the participation of the personnel who have left the call. These creeping marginalisations can rapidly lead to personnel feeling isolated and disconnected from their colleagues and organisation.



In the new work from home environment many businesses are adopting the opportunities for marginalisation are similar, but in some instances different.



Self marginalisation



It is relatively easy for an individual to marginalize themselves through not participating in group meetings when they are held on line, no end of reasons can be presented for being unable to attend, none of which can be tested since everyone is working remote from their colleagues, and over time their absence becomes normal, with them potentially dropping off other meeting invitations.



As a manager or colleague in this situation the first thing is to realize that someone is missing. This can be challenging in larger teams, but once identified it is important to reach out to the individual and endeavour to bring them back into the group. For some, the causes may be discomfort with the technology or social awkwardness which others may have deeper reasons to cease participating. As such it can be hard to identify the root cause of this behavior, but through ongoing dialogue, possibly offline of the main meetings,

Conflict in any social environment is inevitable. Whether it occurs within a family, between friends, over sporting events or in the workplace, disagreements and the resulting tension are simply part of who we are and how we function socially. In a conventional social or workplace setting, where personnel are co-located and able to discuss their differences, or are even forced to do so by proximity, conflicts will generally be resolved quickly and with the minimum of ongoing tension.



However, once individuals are separated, particularly in situations such as we are currently navigating, with personnel sequestered in their homes, with minimal social contact outside of their immediate family, with the background tensions of health concerns and long term employment viability, the smallest tension, misstep or disagreement can quickly escalate into major a falling out.



Conflict in work from home situations



As organisations are increasingly moving from co-located to work from home situations in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, staff are suddenly finding themselves in unusual and challenging situations. They are physically isolated from their social groups, closed away in whatever room in their home they have been able to convert into a home office, potentially finding themselves working alongside partners, with children home from school and supporting relatives. All of these additional tensions will build up in their minds, leading to internal stress that will make them highly susceptible to mental triggers that otherwise would have not registered.



“In virtual team environments, perception really is reality”



A glib comment on a phone call, a poorly expressed email or even the absence of a message can all suddenly take on a much greater perceived meaning in the mind, and in a situation where perception is frequently reality, these little events result in sudden conflict between co-workers. Sadly the triggers for these things are the part that is hardest to control. As individuals it is not within our power to control the things that can trigger our reactions, it is, though, completely in our power to control two other things.



* We can control how we react to things that may trigger conflict* We can also control how we behave relative to others where our actions may initiate conflict with them.



Reacting to triggers



In the second part of this series of pieces I discussed the need to assume no wrong on the part of your colleagues when they are communicating with you. To enter into every discussion, whatever the topic and whatever the medium, with the belief that they intend what they are saying and how they are expressing it in an innocent and non confrontational manner.



This “assume no wrong” stance is hard to maintain when you are under stress from many different directions, but it is essential to maintain a relatively conflict free working environment. If, on a call of any kind, someone says something that you disagree with or that feels like it is directed at something you have done, try not to react in a negative manner, ask for clarification rather than attacking, or pause before responding. Even a short pause can deescalate the need to react in your mind and asking for clarification will generally result in a much clearer picture of the intent from the other party.



If the potential conflict comes from written correspondence, you have much more latitude over how and when you respond. Your gut reaction may be react immediately with a response that will escalate whatever you believed was being said and turn an innocent comment into a full co...

Trust between members of a virtual team emerged as one of the strongest themes in my research and a constant challenge for virtual teams of all sizes. It is of particular concern in newly formed teams and situations where people are finding themselves in unusual situations, such as suddenly working from home after a career of co-location as is happening increasingly as organisations navigate the COVID 19 situation.



Trust was seen in virtual teams, as in the rest of life, as slow to build, easy to maintain with the appropriate behaviors on all sides yet so easy to break through even the simplest and seemingly innocent actions. It is a difficult and challenging matter in a more traditional virtual team and in this new world of work from home, the risks to trust between personnel is probably even greater.



Even a seemingly innocent email that is very blunt and out of context can begin to erode a trusting relationship, making the recipient begin to feel defensive and to withdraw their level of commitment, so, as an opening comment, be careful how you communicate!



Forms of trust



Trust is generally formed in a working situation through one of three mechanisms:



* Transactional trust – This is the most common in most workplaces. The trust is developed over time based on performance of both parties. The person delivering the work shows that they can be trusted to deliver the work by delivering on time, to the anticipated quality and with no surprises, the person receiving the work establishes their side of the trust relationship by working in a predictable manner, not surprising the person doing the work and allowing them to work without excess supervision.* Relational trust – This is a less common way of forming trust though still applicable in the environment where companies are suddenly fragmenting their workforce into a work from home regime. In relational trust the trust is established through the enjoyment of working with colleagues. In this situation personnel develop a trusting bond with people they enjoy working with and through this are more inclined to trust the work performed, the person performing the work and the person for whom the work is being performed.* Group trust – In group trust, team members are inclined to trust one another because of common backgrounds, experiences or relationships. It is particularly common in cultures where different social groups feel a strong sense of internal cohesion. This form of trust may actually be quite important in organisations suddenly moving from co-located to work from home as the common experiences being faced, such as the sense of being in this situation together, may lead to a greater feeling of social cohesion.



Each of these three forms of trust will impact an organisations workforce when they find themselves working from home differently, transactional work must still be maintained and delivered on time without the emergence of unnecessary levels of micromanagement, relationships must be maintained or if possible strengthened, this can be challenging when physically separated but, with the social media and communications tools now available (see my first post in this series), it is relatively easy to at least stay in touch, and a sense of group cohesion emerging from everyone being in this situation together and all trying to make the most of what they have may strengthen that mechanism.



Maintaining trust when working from home



So how does all this discussion of trust relate to a work from home scenario. Essentially, trust is the glue that will hold a team together as well as the lubricant to getting work done productively.

For the second post in this quick series I thought I would consider engagement. How do a team of people who are used to seeing each other daily in an office environment maintain their engagement with each other and the organisation when they are suddenly separated. And conversely, how does the organisation maintain its engagement with its people.



Inward engagement



For the employees of an organization finding themselves working remotely from their colleagues for the first time there are many things to consider:



How do I maintain my connection to my work – This can be a very confronting situation, especially for those whose work may be made up of a series of short tasks. Knowing how and where you can coordinate your tasks with those you would traditionally sit adjacent to when you cant see them, don’t know what they are doing or even where they may be is a sudden and very alien experience. For others who may have longer cycle times on their tasks this may not be as big an initial hurdle to overcome but it will still cause concern when they need to check things or even just test ideas with colleagues.



How do I maintain my connection to my colleagues – Humans are generally social animals, most of us, even those who are more introverted, still appreciate the company of others and our workplaces are part of our support environment. You may not notice it until its not there but the opportunity to have a quick conversation with a colleague can break the monotony of a task. These connections can help with quickly clearing blocks that may be holding up work or just giving you an opportunity to clear your thoughts before progressing with the task in hand.



How do I maintain my connection to my staff – If you have staff who report to you or who look to you for guidance and allocations of work, moving to a remote team with little planning or previous experience can be very challenging. There are a whole range of tacit skills used in leading a team, these skills are very contextual and rely heavily on how and where they are developed. Many leaders will develop a sixth sense for when one of their staff needs guidance or assistance based on little more than reading facial expressions, body language and posture, all of which are no longer visible when everyone is working remote to each other.



Addressing these concerns means a substantial shift in the frequency and mode of engagement. Everyone needs to take additional responsibility for how they reach out and engage with others. This may mean sending messages to colleagues over email, text, slack or any of the many other platforms available to keep each other posted on progress of tasks, check ideas and pass work along the workflow. Similarly, taking breaks at a common time and having a group phone call or video chat just to keep connected is something many small organisations have adopted, clearly this gets harder when there are timezone differences, but the connections there are typically managed through other mechanisms, so I would recommend trying to keep theses “virtual coffee breaks” within smaller groups.



For team leaders it is critical that you check in regularly with your team, this could mean an email at the start of the day to let everyone know what you are up to and when you will be available, ensuring you have your phone on at all times, having an accessible and open calendar that your staff can see, calling, whether by phone or video, staff members on a regular basis and generally being hypersensitive to any nuance in messaging from your people. It is also very important that you work hard to not appear judgemental or critical of your people as they adapt to this new and alien environment.

Readers of this site will know that I have been passionate about project based virtual teams for a number of years, I’ve written about it in magazine articles, presented on it at a number of conferences, set up this website and blog to share my insights and, in the background for the past 8 years been working on a PhD exploring how team members communicate and interact in large, complex, project virtual teams. The PhD was completed last month when I graduated and my thesis is available for download here for anyone interested. The timing between that and the emergence on the global stage of the corona virus/Covid 19 has been an interesting coincidence.



So, the question I have now is how can I help individuals and organisations, as many struggle to come to terms with working remotely, sometimes for the first time. And how to do this while staying in my area of expertise.



For a lot of organisations and projects, virtual teams have been the way of life for a decade or more. However, the majority of that work is done with large teams of people congregating in a number of offices around the world. The teams are often large but separated into teams, communicating along established channels.



Self isolation/work from home therefore is going to be quite a shock to a lot of people and bring some real surprises to their employers. There is too much however to cover in one article, so, what am going to try to do is write regular, short pieces on different aspects, some will be accompanied by podcast episodes, others will come out stand alone. There is quite a library of articles already on the site, some of which may be helpful in the current situation, others possibly less so.



Let’s start with technology.



I will start here with some thoughts on technology. It can be easy when you first start virtual teaming to assume that you need to go instantly to video for everyone. This is really not the case. Yes, your team will need access to some video technology, but many of the other communications tools you use in your normal office environment will suffice as a base line. Email and the phone are still the most common tools for communications and can cover much of your day to day needs. BUT, you need to use those tools well, use them often, and back them up with video where appropriate. You need to replicate the personal conversations as much as possible to keep things flowing.



Email can and should still be used for group communications, sharing materials and much of the one on one communications. However, you need to be more aware of context and content, particularly when it is a new subject to the recipient. In a traditional office, word of mouth covers so much background context that simply isn’t there in an email without context, so try to communicate fully and maybe proceed or follow an email with a call or video chat.



On the subject of email, also be careful how you react/respond to email. It is easy both to poorly phrase an email so that a benign message can be taken to be incendiary, equally, it is to misread a benign email and become upset. Assume, therefore, as a staring point, when reading any email, that it is not meant to cause harm or offense and keep that it mind when you reply, take a breath, leave your reply for a while before sending etc. Overall, It is rare in a project or business environment for people to write intentionally offensive messages.



Use the phone as much as sensible.



Voice communications are still very effective for communicating, particularly one to one. It is much easier to communicate a clear and concise message verbally (and to test it for accuracy),

This is the final theme from the complexity series I began some time ago. Environmental uncertainty complexity impacts the complexity of the project through issues such as the uncertainty of the marketplace for the product and surrounding the project while it is being undertaken; the ways in which the project communicates with its stakeholders; the stakeholders influence over the project and; the political landscape influencing the project and its outcomes.



Marketplace – Many projects are undertaken in corporate and social setting in which the marketplace for the outcomes of the project are uncertain and rapidly changing. You can see responses to this in the way in which software development is undertaken in short cycles under methodologies such as agile. On the other end of the spectrum are projects such as infrastructure developments which are typically performed using techniques developed for more longer term environments, this works well when the project is a road or a similar piece of built environment but is less effective when it is deploying new telecommunications equipment.



Working in marketplace uncertainty it is important that the project scope is regularly monitored and adjusted as needed against the changing market. Not doing so can result in a well delivered project outcome that is no longer relevant to its perceived customers.



Stakeholders – Understanding the ever changing requirements of stakeholders has been a part of the demands of virtually every project yet is often only treated superficially. Many projects consider at depth the demands and expectations of those they consider their key stakeholders, but, in doing so, miss many others who may be influential in more subtle or tangential ways.



Mobile phone manufacturers listen to their current customers who tell them the current features are great and need to be reinforced, but miss the potential users for their product who could tell them about features they would not otherwise have considered – think here of Nokia versions of their handset with more different covers etc. while Apple were busy developing the smartphone which eventually led to the virtually total demise of Nokia.



Politics – Many projects are undertaken in highly political environments. Whether the politics is governmental with a capital P or organisational or social with a lower case p, politics have a major influence over the complexity of almost every project. At its most visible are projects which are initiated with a political agenda, these would include infrastructure development, defense procurement, educational changes and similar and, being politically triggered can find themselves at the mercy of changes in political needs. Roads may get cancelled, defense contracts deferred and educational changes redirected to reflect the needs of new political representation.



Harder to read but often as influential are the corporate politics that impact internal or commercial projects. Organisations may have internal political tensions where one faction may support and another object to a commissioned project, as leadership changes so will the support and commitment to any given project. Along side this are situations where there may be internal tension between project personnel, with some maneuvering to have personnel removed or promoted within or onto a project. All of these changes can be complex to understand and very detrimental to the productivity of a project.



How does a virtual team impact environmental uncertainty complexity



Environmental uncertainty complexity essentially is a reflection of the environment in which a project is undertaken, and it is hard to imagine many facets of a project that can bring more uncert...

Back in 2012/13 when I began research for my PhD I had the opportunity to spend time with a number of major resources project personnel, where I interviewed them as part of my research data collection on the good and bad of using virtual teams to deliver their projects. Within a few months, practically all of the teams I interviewed had dissolved as the resources boom began to end, but my research continued on.



After spending the succeeding years analyzing the data and reflecting on the insights, I am now watching the emerging wave of new resources projects and wondering how many the lessons of the last wave have been retained. So, just in case they weren’t, here are a few points for those leading or working in these new projects to consider.



New tools, old thoughts



Since the end of the last wave technology has clearly advanced, its now easier than ever to talk to team members in other locations, we have a far more robust and user friendly version of Skype, most mobile phones have at least one built in app for face to face communications, there are a number of free to use tools on most computers and tools like Slack are part of the day to day landscape of many businesses.



However, for many organisations and many individuals the tools are all that has changed. The same thought processes and level of understanding of what constitutes good communications remain. Many still see technical prowess as the yard stick to measure their abilities and the abilities of their colleagues, ignoring or at best minimising the need and perceived value of empathy and good communications skills.



All this is a little like repainting a rusty and unreliable car, yes it may have the most fashionable paint scheme but underneath it still runs the same. Many project managers are still indoctrinated to lead by control and their mastery of Gantt charts, budgets and earned value curves, issuing commands and edicts by email and then grudgingly holding a quarterly town hall meeting to inform their personnel of the project status (often only in one location regardless of the locations of their people). Cross cultural skills are still seen as the domain of HR, and organisational culture is typically given a passing reference in a few pieces of corporate and project handbooks.



Much of the above could be seen as just a task waiting to be completed if there were a sense that the fundamentals of leadership that differentiate a virtual team project from a co-located one were in place. Sadly though this seems to be rarely the case. Projects are essentially still applying the same practices to these new projects as the last time. Budgets are developed that do not acknowledge the differences such as increased integration costs to keep the different locations aligned, increased travel costs (still projects delude themselves by believing the technology will remove the need for travel) and the needs for additional checking for consistency and localised standards needs.



Loss of corporate knowledge



When the last project wave ended most companies shed their project personnel as they had no work for them. For a while these personnel remained on the market then progressively were lost to other roles, retirement or relocation. This shedding of staff was done quickly with little thought of capturing corporate knowledge – many companies assume they will just hire that knowledge back in or buy it elsewhere.



However, reality is that much of this corporate knowledge is irreplaceable as it is held in a collective conscious rather than in written documents or individual heads. Groups of personnel will have developed ways of working together across distance over month to years of collaboration,

This is the third podcast interview associated with the excellent book ‘Integrating Program Management and System Engineering: Methods, Tools and Organizational Systems for Improving Performance’ from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and published by Wiley. In this interview, which is part 2 of a 2 part series, Betsy Clarke talks about her background, and the second of the case studies she contributed to the book, an examination of the electronic support upgrade for the Royal Australian Navy’s ANZAC class frigate.
Betsy Clark is President of Software Metrics, a leader in the practical application of measurement for predicting, controlling and improving software process and product quality, working with clients who include government organizations, commercial companies as well as other consulting companies.
The book is the product of five years of research and writing by a large team of contributors led by Eric Rebentisch and is both a really solid reference and a guide for integrating the two often conflicting disciplines of program management and systems engineering. It is available for purchase from a number of different sources, here through PMI (where members receive a discount), here via INCOSE (where members receive a discount), via Wiley who are the publishers of the book or from Amazon or most other on line retailers.
Many of our most complex projects are undertaken by teams integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering yet these two critical disciplines often end up with high levels of conflict as they each try to achieve their goals, so guidance that helps organisations do better at this integration, whether it is directly between program managers and systems engineers or between project managers and their various engineering disciplines is critical to a successful future.
The first part of this interview, which looks at a different project also included in the book is available here. The first interview in the series, with Stephen Townsend is available here

This is the second podcast interview associated with the excellent book ‘Integrating Program Management and System Engineering: Methods, Tools and Organizational Systems for Improving Performance’ from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and published by Wiley. In this interview, which is part 1 of a 2 part series, Betsy Clarke talks about her own background, the development of the book and one of the case studies she contributed to the book, an examination of the development of the F/A 18E/F Super Hornet aircraft.
Betsy Clark is President of Software Metrics, a leader in the practical application of measurement for predicting, controlling and improving software process and product quality, working with clients who include government organizations, commercial companies as well as other consulting companies.
The book is the product of five years of research and writing by a large team of contributors led by Eric Rebentisch and is both a really solid reference and a guide for integrating the two often conflicting disciplines of program management and systems engineering. It is available for purchase from a number of different sources, here through PMI (where members receive a discount), here via INCOSE (where members receive a discount), via Wiley who are the publishers of the book or from Amazon or most other on line retailers.
Many of our most complex projects are undertaken by teams integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering yet these two critical disciplines often end up with high levels of conflict as they each try to achieve their goals, so guidance that helps organisations do better at this integration, whether it is directly between program managers and systems engineers or between project managers and their various engineering disciplines is critical to a successful future.
The second part of this interview, which looks at a different project that is also included in the book will be released shortly. The earlier interview with Stephen Townsend is available here

This podcast is a special interview with Stephen Townsend, Director of Network Programs at the Project Management Institute (PMI). In the interview we discussed the recently published book ‘Integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering: Methods, Tools and Organizational Systems for Improving Performance‘.  The book is a joint effort between PMI and International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).  The book is the product of five years of research and writing by a large team of contributors led by Eric Rebentisch and is both a really solid reference and a guide for integrating the two often conflicting disciplines of program management and systems engineering.
In reading the book, I found that it has been put together to read in a consistent way, so rather than being a series of academic chapters, each written by a different contributor or group this work is written with a consistent approach, structure and voice throughout, making it easy to read and follow. The material is well structured and easy to understand and the case studies, drawn from a range of high profile endeavours provide excellent examples of how the integration can be undertaken.
Many of our most complex projects are undertaken by teams integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering yet these two critical disciplines often end up with high levels of conflict as they each try to achieve their goals, so guidance that helps organisations do better at this integration, whether it is directly between program managers and systems engineers or between project managers and their various engineering disciplines is critical to a successful future.
PMI, INCOSE and MIT’s Consortium for Engineering Program Excellence (CEPE) recently ran a free webinar entitled How to Improve Performance through Integration to look at what happens when you integrate program management and systems engineering when managing complex engineering programs which is still accessible here.
The book is available for purchase from a number of different sources, here through PMI (where members receive a discount), here via INCOSE (where members receive a discount), via Wiley who are the publishers of the book or from Amazon or most other on line retailers.
Stephen is best contacted via PMI, but he did also provide additional contact details in the podcast.

In this installment of the short series looking at the different complexity influences on and from project virtual teams. Here I am considering method and scope complexity and uncertainty, how these factors impact complex projects and how project virtual teams both contribute to the overall complexity and compound the challenges.
Method and scope uncertainty complexity occurs around issues such as the maturity of the scope of the project, the proportion of new or highly novel technology to both the project and the team, the quality and maturity of the estimate and the accuracy and reliability of the assumptions that went into the formation of the estimate.

* Scope maturity – theoretically every project will have a clear scope before sanction, it should have gone through a series of developmental phases prior to full sanction where the owners systematically work to define the required scope, including costs, materials, time frame and how overall success is defined. However, reality is somewhat different. Some projects will be initiated with little to no definition, either to meet a critical need, plug a gap, address a crisis or simply because the owners were so excited to get started they jumped straight in without really taking the time to plan. Even in most of these situations there should be some level of definition around the scope, though budget and time frame are likely less well framed. However well defined the scope may be, conveying the definition across any project team beyond whatever may be written can be challenging, personnel will interpret definitions based on their previous experiences and through their own lenses, leading to confusion and misunderstanding. This confusion becomes substantially compounded in a project virtual team environment, where not only are personnel contending with interpreting the scope definition, they are frequently doing so remotely without access to anyone who was part of the development of the scope to help with any required clarification. It is important to ensure all members of the team, regardless of location, have a full and clear understanding of the required scope as it impacts their tasks.
* Proportion of new technology – Many years ago now a manager of mine advised me to avoid having more than one new major piece of technology on a project. It has been advice that has stuck with me for many years and one which I have seen cause several projects to encounter problems. Several small and unobtrusive new pieces of technology are fine but if more than a certain percentage of the effort on a project is associated with a single new piece of technology it is very easy for projects to slide from simply complicated to complex. Trying to integrate a number of pieces of new technology into a major project while using a virtual team to undertake much of the integration work, and here I mean that the integration is split between a number of locations rather than all of it in one office, can lead to major issues as team members separated by time and distance battle both their displacement and the challenges of the new technology. Examples of this can be seen in things like the problems faced by organisations like Airbus in the development of new aircraft across multiple European centers.When planning for your project identify the major new technology and even the less major but high risk new technology and ensure it forms a manageable portion of the overall project.
* Maturity of estimate – There has been a lot written on the need to have a mature and well developed estimate before committing to the full execution of a project. Some of the best work has been by Ed Merrow of IPA in his book “Industrial Megaprojects” where he discusses what is known as the Front End Loading (FEL) approach to the development of projects, where substantial efforts are expended in a very structured manner to de...

This post is a continuation in the series on different forms of complexity in a project environment, we have covered structural complexity and social complexity in earlier articles and now, in this article, we are exploring goal complexity and its influence on project delivery. Goal complexity contributes substantially to the ability to deliver projects, with every additional unknown compounding the overall complexity of the endeavour.
Goal uncertainty complexity occurs around issues such as the clarity of project objectives, any bias the project may have toward particular outcomes and solutions, how mature the decision making policy is and the overall understanding of any required trade off between cost, schedule and quality.

* Clarity of objectives – It may seem obvious, but if the goals of a project are not clear to all parties and individuals, the project is going to get into trouble. The trouble may not be major, though often it is, but at some point in the life of the project there will be a clash of understandings when one party is working to what it believes are the objectives while another is working to theirs and the two do not mesh. This could be a situation where one group is trying to design something to have a long functional life where the intent is to have a product that is only going to be used for a few months, or it could be one group believes the objective is to develop a major piece of landmark social architecture while the other is developing something purely functional (think opera house versus car park for instance). Whatever the circumstances, if the objectives are not made clear to all from the very start you are headed for problems. Define and socialise all of the objectives of your projects to avoid goal complexity.
* Bias – biases can occur in a number of ways but again, unless they are understood, they can lead to lots of issues. In a client to supplier relationship the biases are usually quite clear, the client typically wants the most “bang for their buck” and the supplier wants to make the largest profit possible from the venture, resulting in clashes over quality and scope of supply where the client may well pursue the supplier to deliver beyond the written contracted scope and the supplier may try to either just meet the scope or, in some circumstances, deliver slightly under it. In internal projects similar situations can also occur though the lines are often murkier in the absence of a formal contract. Identify the real and potential biases in your project and plan for their management
* Decision making policies – how are decisions made in your project and your organisation? do your project leaders have the right levels of authority to make the decisions they need or do they have to seek approval from outside the project? who has final say on decisions, is it the person most informed and able to weigh the decision or is it a client or senior manager? All of these need to be carefully considered when setting the decision making policies for your project and your organisation. If a project manager must explain every decision they make to someone outside of the project several things will happen – the project will be slowed while decisions are processed, the project manager will become frustrated at the delays, and, you will expose the project to political influences outside of the project that may impact the success of the project. None of this is to say that projects should not have good governance, but sensible policies need to be implemented to ensure the overall interests of the project as defined and agreed are considered. Establish sensible and fit for purpose decision making processes for your projects.
* Cost,

This post follows on from an earlier one on structural complexity in project virtual teams and forms part of a short series on the subject. In the world of complex projects and complex working environment the impact of social complexity is one that needs to be carefully considered and incorporated in any and all planning.
Social complexity in a project environment occurs around one or both of two areas; social interaction and rule based interaction.
Social interaction and social complexity
Social interaction in the complexity sense happens where communication lines between project team members are complex, where it is difficult or impossible to undertake team building, where respect and trust is either not present or not easily built and where commitment and motivation toward the project and teammates are absent.

* Communication – Virtual teams are notorious for the inherent complicated nature of the lines of communication. Even the most compact virtual team, one where only a few members may be located remote to the hub of the team, will suffer from strained communication lines from time to time. The difficulties of coordinating communications when team members are distributed across multiple locations means that it can be hard to manage even simple task based communication, ensuring the phrasing is accurate enough to avoid confusion yet transparent enough for all of the team to understand it is an ongoing problem for virtual team members. On top of this task based communication is then the extra layer of trying to also build and maintain a team spirit and morale through the same platforms. Organisations grasp for any shiny new tool or platform they feel may help them with this task yet frequently forget that the most simple tool is the human voice and physical presence in occasional meetings. I have seen projects that have run for a couple of years burn through numerous different communication tools as new ideas hit the market when in reality they would have been better to stay within a sensible pallet of tools – voice, video, email and some form of immediate text based tool will typically be it – and try as much as possible to retain the same tools for the duration of at least each phase of the project. Solid communication plans need to be developed for the life of the project.
* Team building – As humans we are intensely social creatures, yes some are more outgoing and gregarious while other often prefer their own company, but at our core we work best when we feel included in the team we are tasked to be part of. Consequently, team building is a vital part of the establishment and maintenance of any project. While virtual teams add complexity to team building they do not mean it is impossible or even excessively costly. Team building can be phased across the project, it can be done on a location by location basis with then an overarching exercise held to bring together team members who will work across the boundaries of the locations. Whatever approach is taken there is little argument that doing something is hugely more effective than doing nothing – so long as the something in question is properly considered. Team building also needs to be held at each change of phase of the project and as large proportions of the team change out. Even small changes of numbers in a team can lead to substantial changes in the overall team dynamics so leaders of teams and groups need to be vigilant for these changes and be ready to undertake some form of team building or rebuilding from time to time. Build and nurture your team carefully and rebuild it each time a major change happens.
* Respect – Largely built on the back of effective communication and team building, respect and trust are vital to the running of a virtual team, whether the team is undertaking a simple or a comple...