{"id":21296,"date":"2017-08-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/insights\/increase-the-quality-of-input-in-virtual-teams-stop-using-reply-all\/"},"modified":"2020-05-11T15:35:07","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T15:35:07","slug":"increase-the-quality-of-input-in-virtual-teams-stop-using-reply-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/increase-the-quality-of-input-in-virtual-teams-stop-using-reply-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase the quality of input in virtual teams: stop using \u2018reply all\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the co-located team in US that now has to deal with global expansion and offices opening in China and Japan; to swiftly formed transient project teams with members from all over the world who have to deliver a solution to a tricky challenge in a matter of months (or even days) without ever meeting face-to-face, we\u2019re all in virtual teams now.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed three years ago, a Harvard Business <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2014\/12\/getting-virtual-teams-right\">Review study<\/a> of 1,700 knowledge workers found that 79% reported working always or frequently in dispersed teams. But have we fully adapted our ways of working to this virtual world?<\/p>\n<p>A key difference with virtual vs. face-to-face working is that there\u2019s a lot more asynchronous working in a virtual team (that is, working out of sync with each other).\u00a0 This causes many virtual team managers to spend a lot of time figuring out how and when the dispersed team can \u2018meet\u2019 (usually virtually), across different time-zones and working cultures. They are preoccupied with what time to schedule a conference call, or how to get everyone to contribute to the latest internal collaboration tool.<\/p>\n<p>Making sure everyone can be \u2018present\u2019 is important \u2013 however it\u2019s only the first level issue. \u00a0The deeper issue is how to ensure the <strong>quality<\/strong> of each virtual team member\u2019s input.\u00a0 For example, it\u2019s common for a number of virtual team members to be in a similar time zone to the team leader \u2013 however there are usually a few that aren\u2019t.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy for the team leader or co-located peers to unconsciously get into the habit of sending out a group email with request for input or comment during their working day.<\/p>\n<p>By the time the more dispersed team members wake up, there has already been 5 or 6 reply-alls.\u00a0 And as Economics scholars Andres &amp; Shipps have shown, as the number of people adopting a specific opinion or perspective in a virtual team increases, others will be influenced to assimilate to the majority consensus<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a>.\u00a0 Our workers waking up in a later time zone feel that everything of value has already been said in the discussion that has raged for the last 6 hours, and that a general conclusion has already been reached.\u00a0 So they don\u2019t bother contributing anything further.\u00a0 Over time, this can lead to disengagement and the boss might start to question those team members\u2019 dedication.<\/p>\n<p>A simple change can be for the team leader to consider when it is worth making the specific request not to \u2018reply all\u2019, but for people to send their individual contributions to them (or another nominated peer) to assimilate views and pull out key themes.\u00a0 This will lead to more diversity of opinion, greater chance for innovative ideas and higher quality of input \u2013 from all corners of the globe.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> Andres, H. &amp; Shipps, B. (2010) Team Learning in Technology-Mediated Distributed Teams, Journal of Information Systems Education, Vol. 21(2), 213-221.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the co-located team in US that now has to deal with global expansion and offices opening in China and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":21263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","type-blog","training-virtual-teams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.6 (Yoast SEO v27.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Increase the quality of input in virtual teams: stop using \u2018reply all\u2019 - Global Integration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the co-located team in US that now has to deal with global expansion and offices opening in China and Japan; 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