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At SIIC 3

This week at SIIC finds me taking a class from Terry Brake in Virtual Teams. So far, it is fascinating. Yesterday, there was a very physical exercise. I was an observer. Crawling around on the ground is not exactly something I can do right now. My team was awesome. They were blindfolded and given a task to find an object and put it together. They did it in record time using tactics that were very effective. No, I am not revealing what they ereced but I will disclose why they were successful:

1. They looked by holding hands and rotating around one stationary member (did not lose contact with their original location).
2. They communicated constantly--very concrete information about what they were feeling and making suggestions.
3. They had one "expert" who recognized the object and could offer good directions and suggestions.
4. They got 'into it"--down and almost dirty on the ground coping with the object in a totally involved fashion.
5. They had fun.

This was a simulated virtual event! Later in the day, we were put into three teams to accomplish a task by the end of the week. Our design--I am in the NGO group with three men, each from a different culture. There are times when I haven't a clue what they are talking about. One is very tech-saavy and there are times when he confuses me. Another is almost as good but a bit clearer. The third is about at the level I am. He went on facebook yesterday for the first time. They are a super group.

Today we started our project work virtually. Sitting in the same room, we worked silently (other groups were doing the same thing) through G Chat and creating a document to document what we were producing. We made a lot of early group mistakes.

1. We were all talking at the same time on the chat and, thus, having a terrible time keeping up and making any sense at all.
2. I was assigned me to lead the group but that was not easy--I floundered and Ash took over by creating an outline for our process in a document.
3. Norman assigned the tech role to Ash--perfect. Creating the document was the first step in his assigned role. He assigned Jean-Yves the role of getting pizza. Soon a virtual pizza was sent to us. The cheese could not be removed.
4. We negotiated an identity for our project target audience. it took a while but we did reach a decision.
5. We changed the target group.
6. We created an objective, a mission, and a vision.
7. Ash completed the outline for process--clearly he does this a lot.
8. Everyone was filling in different sections of the outline and going back and forth on the chat. It was not the clearest process in the world but we hung in there until
9. Ash had to leave to catch his bus. We closed down.

Tonight both Norman and I have been working on the document. I added a secondary objective, mission and vision and will have to ask if that is all right. I think it is ok to work on the document when we are not all on line but there is something to clarify. We are arriving at a working style totally by accident and I'm not sure it will work as we move forward.

Posted by MDPUSCH on 2008-07-23 03:23:50 | Rating: