1. GroupMind Express
Seven Pitfalls to Avoid When Starting
Online Collaboration
Jon Kennedy
October, 2009
Many efforts to use web technology for team meetings or virtual planning
sessions end up with less than stellar results. There can be many reasons why
dispersed work founders, just as many in-person meetings or projects do not
work out as imagined. Assuming that you pay reasonable attention to setting up
a project, and that you consider the steps to be encountered in forming a meeting,
there are still areas that present “holes in the road” for working online. We
believe there are key planning issues that must be addressed, in order to ensure
a smooth and successful voyage into virtual work space.
(While we recognize that there are technological issues to be planned for, this
paper is not about those. We provide a check list as an addendum which
suggests some steps to mitigate such purely technical hiccups.)
You can think of these preparatory issues in two groups: those which typically do
get attention, and are generally understood organizing principles for teams in any
configuration. Then there are seven issues which we find are missed repeatedly
in online work – they are glossed over, or assumed, or not even thought about.
We believe these two areas (along with good basic management and preparation)
form the make-it-or-break-it conditions for walking the path of beneficial web
collaboration.
First, the basics. These are essential planning steps, but we don’t include them
as stumbling blocks, because they usually get reasonable attention from project
leaders. These are key principles, and should be applied to online work. They are:
• State a clear purpose, in writing
• Clearly organize work areas, seeded with pre-existing content
• Well-defined roles
• Small, defined teams within a larger online structure
• Periodic scheduled check-in calls
• Personal connections opportunities (profiles, introductions, team lists)
These steps are very important, and some are specific to working in a dispersed
mode. We don’t suggest these (and other regular planning steps) are less
important; we are only pointing out that the next set of issues are more often
overlooked and have critical importance, especially when working in the online
medium.
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In a face-to-face world, deficits in planning can often be fixed in the normal give-
and-take of meetings and clarifications. Since everyone is sitting together, signs
of discomfort or misunderstanding are more easily read by everyone (or at least
by some) in the room, and can be quickly rectified.
Working online, in contrast, offers fewer opportunities to assess and ‘course
correct’ in the moment. Team meetings are shorter, tighter affairs. A perceived
lack of clarity or planning can have a larger effect on the team as a whole,
because the “holes” in the process left by these omissions cause a sense of
chaos or lack of cohesion, and this is harder to remedy in the moment without
pre-set tools or facilitative roles. The result can be a quick drop in motivation by
individuals, and this can be ‘catching’.
Online teams operate more in asynchronous modes, and need more specificity of
steps and opportunity for interaction – in the room these can be ad libbed, but in
the disconnected world, processes need to be already set up and defined, so the
group can effectively move through any potential bumps in the road.
Here are seven issues we think are often missed, or poorly managed, when
beginning an online collaboration. Any one of these mistakes can have an
unnoticed, large disruptive effect – similar to a large wave in the ocean. At sea,
when first noticed, the swell and amount of water seems unimportant or regular.
But when such a wave hits a harbor entrance or a group standing in the water,
the effect can be much more dramatic. We will state these in the positive:
1. Provide a context (both explanation and background information)
2. Involve additional stakeholders
3. Ask what members want
4. Set up a multi-mode communication plan (push, pull, viral, calls, news)
5. Start with simplicity and focus (a clearly-defined, small ‘test’ process)
6. Make explicit agreements, created by the team (communication, values,
conflict, control, roles, motivation)
7. Assign gardeners to specific areas of the work space
You will notice that these issues are not obvious, or are easy to overlook. They
don’t usually end up on a leader’s check list. Perhaps communication falls into
the preparatory group we mentioned earlier; but typically, even this has
omissions, and all these seven issues are subject to big mistakes. For instance,
while a team may plan for some communication, this is usually around shared
emails and updates about meetings or status. Many critical issues (such as
redundancy, notification or escalation) are usually ignored, resulting in confusion
and sometimes too much additional mail.
Context.
Because people are working separately, and usually without clear step-at-a-time
briefing, building context into the online environment is a large distinction
between half-baked and effective efforts. When you ask people to provide input,
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or to share their knowledge, it is critical that they understand the perspective in
which the work is to be done. While this may be obvious to the leader, and even
to half the team, there are several reasons why the context should be explicit and
presented right on the page where the work will be done:
• No assumptions. You want to make sure that everyone is working from
the same assumptions, or referencing the exact data. While this could be
“obvious”, experience shows that you do not want to make assumptions
when you have dispersed people, different values, fractional attention, and
hurried-at-the-deadline participation.
• Same data. It helps to have the material available at the moment that you
are asking people to think or react. People need to operate from the same
data set.
• Where we are so far. Recounting the steps leading to the current position
or decision point can help to provide a sense of place, an added
understanding of the path of project, and can trigger key knowledge or
experiential issues in various team members – which is what you need:
you want each person to bring their differing experience to bear on the
issue at hand.
Stakeholders.
The success of combined, representative thinking lies in “getting the right people
in the room.” This is actually easier to do in the online world, since people do not
need to travel. In online focus groups, it is easier to get the VP of your customer
account to participate than to cajole him or her to fly out from New York for a day
(especially if you don’t have a great golf course or a Napa wine dinner to dangle
as an incentive.)
The mistake is too often made by thinking about the “near” members of the team
who should be involved. This is fine, but you should also think about who has a
stake in the outcome of project – perhaps an executive sponsor within your
organization, perhaps a key supplier or an outsider with particular knowledge and
passion. Get key people who know the project issues to make a list of possible
stakeholders who could be included, at least in seeing some of the interim results.
Another reason to involve people further from the center of the action is to build a
sense of support and ownership. Even if they will not be participating, your
project can benefit from other key players being able to see your progress and
your issues; they may be able to help solve some roadblocks or provide early
warning of potential conflicts with other groups.
What do members want?
Too often, the project lead or meeting convener builds the agenda, and with all
good intentions, tries to set out the issues and the requirements. In planning for a
collaborative effort, you get a double win from clarifying early what the needs and
concerns are from the disparate group you are assembling.
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Instead of discovering issues part way into the collaboration, you can surface key
points, and perhaps add additional information or requirements before you really
get started. You also will build a much better sense of togetherness, both in buy-
in and in a shared understanding from all the participants. It may be helpful to
gather these needs in a survey, where everyone can see the combined results,
structured across several key themes. It may be wise to have a frank discussion
about the results, in order to be clear about any issues that are explicitly not
going to be covered in the project.
When expectations are clarified, when important desires are listed, the team can
go about a process that will include the needs of its members. See the later
section on setting team agreements.
Communication plan.
Many intact teams need a better arrangement for communicating. Once you are
working with a dispersed group, the reverberations of not thinking this through
carefully grow exponentially.
We suggest that you build in redundant systems for communicating – to address
different styles of working, to better catch people on the run, to make sure the
updates actually get to everyone, to make the connections between the team
work on different levels.
• Post summaries and updates regularly. Put these (or links to them) on
the landing page, where everyone will see them. Make sure they change
several times a week.
• Encourage members to subscribe to their key discussions, so they will
receive emails when new material is added. (This is pull.)
• Use team mail, so that everyone receives key messages, with links back
to the content. (This is push.) Decide how often these updates are sent, so
the team is not barraged by email.
• Hold regularly scheduled update conference calls, so members know
there will be review coming. There is nothing like a deadline to motivate
people to work on their extra obligations.
• Distribute the roles of posting meeting notes, updating status lists,
sending out monthly reviews, etc. among the members.
• Consider the use of a dashboard, that graphically summarizes the status
of the overall project, and automatically rolls up data from sub-teams to
this indication of the current condition of all initiatives in one place.
• Periodically review your team communication, and check with members
to see if there is enough information flow.
Start with simplicity and focus.
When you begin an online project, you will increase your success if you
intentionally choose a small pilot project, which is clearly defined and limited in
scope. Keep the steps simple. Make it absolutely easy for team members to “get
in and get out” – that is, to see only what they need and to understand clearly
how and what they are to do to interact on the site.
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We suggest you have only one or two steps, and then review the results in a
phone conversation. If your members feel, “wow, that was easy; and it was cool!”
then you will have an easier time getting participation on the next project.
You might set up a survey, and then have a discussion area in which members
are asked to summarize the findings of the survey; then follow that with a
conference call to move those findings to the next step.
You might get your group to brainstorm the strengths and weaknesses of your
newly proposed product or plan, then arrange these in themes and ask the group
to prioritize the weaknesses or barriers, then open an online discussion to
generate what to do about the key barriers. Follow that up within five days with a
conference call where you decide which actions to take.
Be sure that your simple process is
• Clearly laid out on the main page, with steps enumerated
• Provided with enough context so members understand both the why and
the what
• Bounded by dates: start, update calls, next steps, a clear end
• Showing members a contact where they can get more information or help
• Explaining clearly what members are expected to do, and when
Set team agreements.
While beginning an online project with a team, it is important to establish some
shared norms for behavior. How will the team handle communication, conflict and,
roles; what shared values do they have, what motivates the individuals, and the
team as a whole? How will control and decisions be handled? Discussion of
these issues ahead of time can help to build shared expectations for recurring
issues such as return of urgent emails, attendance at meetings, working with the
inevitable tensions that arise under pressure, and keeping other members
updated on changes.
We have seen good results from leaders taking time to have a frank discussion
of these themes, focusing on one at a time. Once issues are aired, and members
have a chance to see where there is agreement, it is helpful to write down the
resulting operating agreements in specifics, and to publish them on the site, so
people can refer to them.
Assign gardeners.
Online collaborative sites need attention, in the same way that a garden does. It
is important to have people assigned to roles for watering and weeding the
interactions on a site, particularly at the beginning of an implementation.
Members will need help and reminders to get them participating in an effective
manner. If a gardener plays the role of facilitating the interaction in a discussion –
by summarizing, by sending some email highlighting the themes so far, and
perhaps asking a leading question, or by re-focusing the dialogue toward the
goals of the project – other members will have something to respond to, and will
have encouragement to offer their own thoughts.
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Sometimes, weeding is a critical role. If suggestions are supposed to have
headlines as titles, and someone enters a long and rambling comment without a
title, either suggesting or editing a short pithy title will help others understand the
comment, and will build momentum toward a shared behavior. Make sure
individual points are separated, if you are brainstorming. Normalizing a list of
comments by taking out digressions or extra phrases can help a group make
sense of their combined input.
In looking at a brainstormed list that gets to be 35 items, it helps the group to
understand their input if the gardener arranges the list so like-subject ideas are
together, and so extraneous phrases are removed.
If different people are assigned this role over time, perhaps for different sections
of the work area, then everyone develops an appreciation for clarity and for full
participation.
It is very helpful to have gardeners explicitly provide periodic summaries of the
work so far in their individual areas. This helps the team to keep the overall
project goals in mind, and to clarify recent progress.
Summing up.
By planning for team context as well as process, and by making accommodation
for human behavior, so that the right people are involved in a clearly laid-out,
simple process, tied together with redundant communication and assigned
facilitators, many of the pitfalls that could derail an online project will be avoided.
One beauty of working online is that it is very easy to set up a page to get your
team members to offer issues that need to be addressed; this type of reaching
out and inquiring for direct concerns helps to surface issues that otherwise could
become barriers to an effective process.
Here are the two groups of preparatory issues we listed at the start of this paper:
• Clear purpose
• Organization of work areas, seeded with content
• Well-defined roles
• Small, defined teams within a larger structure
• Scheduled check-in calls
• Personal connection opportunities
• Provide context
• Involve stakeholders
• Ask what members want
• Multi-mode communication plan
• Simplicity and focus
• Explicit operating agreements
• Assign gardeners
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Here is a list of suggestions for mitigating the technical issues that often plague
teams who begin to work with online collaboration.
Technical check list
 Designated help contact
 Ensure browsers can accept cookies
 If high security is set on a browser, make the collaborative site a ‘trusted
site’
 If there is a corporate proxy server or VPN, get the site white-listed
 Provide an email with clickable site URL, so there won’t be typos. Include
the individual’s name and password, and a contact phone number
 Do a first sign-in during a conference call or a face meeting, so any
troubleshooting is immediate.
 Provide a link directly to the work area
 Provide redundant navigation aids (list of main links, breadcrumb trail,
next step buttons, link back to work area home page from all other pages)
 Provide a page with sign-in list, so we see who gets online
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