Transcript Improving distributed work - Organization Communication 2014

How Can We Support Geographically
Distributed Teams
Virtual teams are often less efficient &
effective than collocated ones
But many can be successful
Boeing-Rocketdyne team was successful
• Small distributed engineering team radically
& successfully redesigned rocket engine
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Reduced part count fm 1,200 to 6
Reduced first unit cost from $4.5m to $47K
Reduced design time from 6 years to 10 months
Increased quality three orders of magnitude
(from 6 sigma to 9 sigma)
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What Did the Boeing-Rocketdyne Team Do
To Be Successful?
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What Did the Boeing-Rocketdyne Team Do
To Be Successful?
• Recruiting: High quality team
• Explicit contracts
• At organizational level – level of effort, intellectual property,
autonomy, budget
• At group level – ways of using technology, amount of & place for
communication, role of leader (all modified with experience)
• Technology
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Voice communication
Data repository
Real-time drawing
Technology facilitator
Modifications of technology & SOP to deal with problems
• Frequent communication
• 2.5 virtual meetings per week
• Data repository
• Combination of documented conceptual sketches + verbal
annotation
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Communication Intensity
• Compare 3 global teams within
a single company
• 2 effective:
• 1 ineffective
Effective
• Effective teams
• Matched type & duration of
communication sessions with
function/topic & complexity
• Used periodic, face-to-face
meetings to drive function
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Maznevski, M., & Chudoba, C. (2000). Bridging
space over time: Global virtual team dynamics and
effectiveness. Organization Science, 11(5), 473492.
Effective
In effective
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What coordination techniques help?
Cummings & Kiesler, 2007, Distributed scientists
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Appropriate launch activities
• Often helps to start the work with face-toface meeting, with food, time for leisure, etc.
• Goal is to build rapport & short-circuit the
us/them social categorization.
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Smooze or loose
• Analogous to having a ‘get-to-know-each-other phone
chat’ before email negotiation
• In email negotiation vs face-to-face negotiation, partner
• Less likely to ask questions abt preferences
• Less likely to reveal non-negotiable issues
• Threats, ultimatums and references to obligations were more
likely to result in impass
• But the preliminary phone chat reduced these effects
• Increased rapport
• Reduced likelihood of an impasse
Morris, M., Nadler, J., Kurtzberg, T., & Thompson, L. (2002). Schmooze or lose: Social friction and
lubrication in e-mail negotiations. Group Dynamics, 6(1), 89-100.
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Reduce Needs for Communication
Stealth Bomber/Boeing 777
• Digitally designed and tested aircraft
• Database of component specifications & designs (CAD)
• Simulations and modeling to test the integration of
independently designed components
• Visualizations to help identify alternative design
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Consequences
• Digital models increased model precision  increased the “first
fit ratio” from ~50% for conventional aerospace manufacture to
~90%
• Makes the tacit explicit  reduces need for communication
• Reduces likelihood of misunderstanding
• Reduces need for shared knowledge among engineers, typically
developed within-firms
• “Technical grammar” allows coordination without hierarchy
through social convention
• Reduces likelihood of honest mistakes and agency  allows
vertical disintegration
• Reduces lobbying the central authority
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Agency problems
• The principal–agent problem
• One person (the "agent") is able to make
decisions on behalf of another (the "principal“)
• Agent is motivated to act in his own best interests
rather than those of the principal.
• Occurs when the two parties have different
interests and asymmetric information (the
agent having more information
 Principal cannot guarantee that the agent is
always acting in its (the principal's) best
interests, particularly when activities that are
useful to the principal are costly to the agent
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Generic Methods for Countering Agency
Problems
• Aligning incentives
• Clan control
• Liking
• Pay for performance
• Control
• Monitoring
• Trust
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Hudson’s Bay Company
1670-1826
• The challenge
• Owners & headquarters in London
• Local management & work in North America
• Communication restricted to annual ship runs
North American operations had substantial autonomy
• Agency problem
• How to align interests of owners and operators?
• Agency costs definition
• Costs associated with self-interest
• Costs resulting from monitoring & preventing self-interest
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Map
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Techniques
• Clan control:
• Selection to get right type of people
• Socialization to develop a company-centric value system
• Transition rite of passages on leaving England & arrive in new world
• Total institutions
• Onboard ship
• In posts
• Promotion from within
• Communication
• Annual letters
• Detailed daily journals (like ship logs), with more detail after post fire
• Lists to make important information more salient: supplies, personnel,
salaries, movements, expentitures, disciplinary actions,
• Active management by senior managers (governor) in Canada
• Longevity
• Wandering around
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Surveillance Reduces Agency
Conflicts
• Both knowledge that
actions are visible &
self-monitoring can
increase compliance to
norms
Guard tour patrol system
Body-worn police camera
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Police & body-worn cameras
• Police wearing body-worn cameras reduces
frequency of police use of force against public
• Year experiment with Rialto CA Police reduced use of
force by 50% (17 to 8 incidents)
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Alternate: Use Technology to Increase Monitoring
•Portholes
•Ms Fields: Point of sales terminal connected to central office;
Monitoring & detailed feedback  tight reign
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Summary: Improve Success of Distributed
Work By
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Reducing needs for direct communication
Using appropriate launch activities
Increasing communication intensity
Developing tools for Awareness
• Task state
• Participant state
• Increase quality of communication sessions
• Develop contracts with clear expectations
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