Tag Archives: Management

What Multiplayer Games Have to Do with Leadership Development and the Future of Work

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When not gallivanting around Gielinor slaying monsters, completing quests, or working on skill levels on my own, I’m leading a small group through an activity that involves finding several roaming pixelated penguins disguised in bush, rock, or barrel costumes. It all sounds very silly and lighthearted but, let me tell you, this can turn into a challenging endeavor! Although I didn’t initially seek out leadership, I took up this task as planning the sequence of places to visit and the optimal route through them as well as coordinating sweeps (where we split up to efficiently cover a large area) came naturally to me. The challenge is in communicating directions to people you can’t see face-to-face and, similar to those familiar conflicts that arise when driving around with your significant other and getting lost, the interpersonal frustrations that flare up - What do you mean you don’t know where Piscatoris Fishing Colony is?! You just did a quest there recently FFS!!!

As described in this article, Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders: Online games put the future of business leadership on display (IBM, Seriousity; 2007), practicing the art of navigating your way and interacting with others in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) facilitates building communication and leadership skills necessary for working in fast-paced dispersed, virtual work environments where the people you may be working with come from far-flung places around the world. Moreover, as the article points out, the MMORPG environment often prompts people who would not ordinarily seek out leadership opportunities to step up and give it a try for short “projects.”

Such short-term opportunities that give more people a chance to lead reflect the nature of leadership in dynamic, ever-changing situations that today’s organizational leaders find themselves in. In this scenario it becomes more advantageous to elect one person to take the lead for a special project or circumstance and then have someone else take over leadership for another. So, it can be the case that people will increasingly find themselves taking turns leading and following. Other key points about the nature of leadership in virtual environments made by this article are included below:

Online gaming environments facilitate leadership through:

  1. Project-oriented organization
  2. Multiple real-time sources of information upon which to make decisions
  3. Transparent skills and competencies among co-players
  4. Transparent incentive systems
  5. Multiple and purpose-specific communications mediums

In fast moving distributed environments, leadership can be:

  1. A temporary phenomenon
  2. Task-oriented
  3. Dynamic and constantly changing

Hence, I agree with the article’s concluding point below that this form of play can contribute  to gamers’ professional development.

It’s not a stretch to think resumes that include detailed gaming experience will be landing on the desks of Fortune 500 executives in the very near future. Those hiring managers would do well to look closely at that experience, and not disregard it as a mere hobby. After all, that gamer may just be your next CEO.

Nice isn’t it that the hundreds or even thousands of hours some of us have spent in these MMORPGs hasn’t been all for naught? I have often suggested that I should list my in-game accomplishments on my resume just to show how tenacious I am: Lynn’s MMORPG achievements. Finally, for those who have a similar tenacious interest in how the online gaming experience provides a training ground for functioning in the distributed workforce of the future, here is a long but interesting lecture about it at Stanford University:

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Join us at the next Better Collaboration online Meetup which takes place Wednesday, May 22nd, 2:30-4:00 pm EST (11:30-1:00 pm PST): Innovating the way dispersed teams collaborate! 

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Featured speaker is Paul Brody, CEO and Co-Founder of Sococo. Sococo is an innovative tool for fostering impromptu collaboration without having to physically be at the same place. Everyone can see who is around and, with one click, can immediately start a conversation or meeting (voice, video, chat, multiple screen shares).

These educational video conference series are geared towards organizational leaders who wish to learn more about improving collaboration and productivity through the use of online tools. Visit the Better Collaboration website or register here at on the Better Collaboration meetup page!

Virtual Teams and the Challenge of Cross-Cultural Differences

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Cover of "The Handbook of Culture and Psy...

Cover of The Handbook of Culture and Psychology

From David Matsumoto’s The Handbook of Culture and Psychology:

The next two decades promise to be even more exciting for research on culture and emotion. Interesting programs have sprung up all around the world and in all disciplines of psychology. New technologies for mapping culture as a psychological construct on the individual level are being developed, as well as ways to measure precisely moment-to-moment changes in our brains and bodies when we feel or judge emotion. Collectively, these endeavors will tell us more in the future about the relationship between culture and the physiology of emotion, the representation of display and decoding rules, emotion perception, and culture itself in the brain (p. 161)

Having written a couple of posts (here and here) on the difficulties of cross-cultural communication and misunderstanding, the quote above provides hope that advancing technology and emphasis on cross-cultural research may help promote improved cross-cultural understanding in the future. Indeed, at the time that The Handbook of Culture and Psychology was published (in 2001), academics acknowledged that, even though contact and communication via computer-mediated technologies across different cultures around the world would increase dramatically (especially for work-related reasons), we are a step behind as far as cross-cultural communication research in this realm goes. Up through this point in time, cross-cultural researchers had focused on cross-cultural face-to-face communication and had largely neglected cross-cultural communication via technology. Just as we don’t want to assume that our understanding of people from the standpoint of Western psychology applies to everyone around the world, it’s also vital that we don’t assume that communicating via technology is identical to communicating face-to-face.

However, what can organizational leaders and managers do at this point in time to assure that their virtual team members around the world collaborate effectively? As I mentioned in this post, expecting to become an expert on another person by picking up and reading a book about that person’s culture isn’t reasonable. It’s unlikely that a summary of a culture will describe all the components of that given culture. Additionally, people in any specific region will differ from each other culturally due to many other factors – e.g., socioeconomic status, education level, life experiences, gender, age, etc. Comparisons of culture on a large-scale can tell you something about group-level differences, but knowing these averages will not help when dealing with individuals from a given culture as they can fall anywhere along the group distribution representing the whole group’s characteristics.

When cross-cultural miscommunication occurs however, it would be helpful to understand the way in which the other person views the situation. To this end, some steps that organizational leaders and managers can take include employing the services of culturally knowledgeable mediators or arbitrators and using behaviorally-based culture learning programs (Matsumoto, D., p. 427). The latter includes the following programs:

  • Information giving
  • Cultural sensitization
  • Simulations
  • Critical incident techniques
  • Culture assimilators
  • Experiential learning

Finally, in this video, Geert Hofstede compares and contrasts the acquisition of culture within societies and organizations, explains the introduction and impact of people’s native (i.e., acquired within society) culture on relational dynamics within organizations, and much more!

Want to learn about other aspects of innovating and improving collaboration of dispersed teams?

Don’t miss Better Collaboration’s upcoming videoconference! These events are specifically geared towards organizational leaders and this next one, on April 24th 1:00-2:30PM EST (10:00-11:30AM PST), will feature Matt Boyd, Co-Founder at Sqwiggle. Sqwiggle is an always on online workplace for your remote team to work together throughout the day. Their slogan: Remote Working, Made Awesome.

Register at the Better Collaboration Meetup site and check out services offered through Better Collaboration.

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Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix it

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Conventional wisdom posits that the needs of employees and their employer are at odds with each other, however this assumption is not necessarily true. A mutually symbiotic relationship granting employees freedom and flexibility while increasing engagement and, hence, productivity is achievable! Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix it: A Results-Only Guide to Taking Control of Work, Not People will force you to examine how you think about work as well as how we unknowingly support the current, conventional view of work through the establishment and use of flexible work arrangements. Conventional flexible work arrangements, by the way, can’t achieve what a results-only work environment (ROWE) can.

In this book, authors Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson make a solid case for prioritizing and measuring results, creating a culture of transparency, trust, and accountability in the process. This means tossing out the misinformed notion that employees’ productivity is somehow correlated with the hours they put in. How is this misinformed? Just think about all the possible ways to stretch out work assignments or subtly fill in some of that time at the office with non-work related activities. Wonder no more about how workers in an entire nation can come to be known for pulling long hours and yet not be all that productive!

Indeed, Ressler and Thompson recount how naturally competition on the basis of being physically present for long hours emerges when managers don’t make results their one and only measure of productivity. The message: Treat employees like the adults that they are and allow them to own the work as well as the process through which they perform it. It doesn’t matter when, where, or how the work is performed as long as the agreed upon outcome is achieved on time.

Ressler and Thompson walk you through real case studies, providing a clear understanding of how their trainers facilitate the necessary culture change within the organization. For example, they explain why it is critical to:

  • Rethink and reestablish how everyone in the organization perceives and talks about when and where employees work (i.e, disregard whether an employee is putting in long hours or not, is physically present or absent, and early or late).
  • Leave it up to employees to decide when they take time off, which means allowing unlimited vacation and sick days (as formal vacation and sick day policies must be managed and having a ROWE means that only the work is managed, not the employees).
  • Ensure meetings are absolutely necessary as unproductive meetings are one of the biggest time wasters (practical guidelines are provided in the book), and make all meetings optional.

Finally, Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix it shows how a ROWE is compatible with all kinds of jobs that’re commonly cited as being incompatible with a ROWE. This is my absolute favorite part of the book. For instance, they describe how a ROWE can be established for non-exempt employees (while staying in compliance of regulations that have been considered obstacles). Ressler and Thompson also describe how their trainers facilitated transition to a ROWE for an organization in the field of education as well as a public sector organization.

In a previous post, I’ve acknowledged individuals who stated their preference for the conventional, Industrial Age system of work and accepted their own self-assessment about their abilities and desire not to work under a new system. However, it is my hope that even some of the most reluctant among us will, at some point, choose to take the plunge and find out that the water is just fine! Ressler and Thompson’s thoughts on the human need for self-determination as well as their optimistic view that so many of us can come to enjoy working under a ROWE inspires this hope. Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix it is a refreshing, practical guide that will show you how all of this is possible.

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Having finished some books on managing virtual workers, I’ve come to realize that there is some content overlap. All thoroughly address the leaders’ and managers’ roles and responsibilities as well as the process through which they can develop and maintain an organizational culture that supports a telework arrangement – i.e., one built upon trust, frequent and effective communication, clear expectations, and accountability. For the sake of avoiding repetition, I’ve decided not to go into heavy detail here as all authors appear to agree about the important components of such an organizational culture.

I’m starting with Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams by Kimball Fisher and Mareen Fisher because this book goes in-depth into some specific areas not covered in the others I’ve read. In particular, they stressed the importance of understanding how to set up a functional, cross-cultural team and explained the problem of cross-cultural miscommunication. This spoke to me as I’ve experienced this issue only recently, and this is a subject I will expand upon in a future post. The authors point out that there is greater potential for cultural differences to emerge when working with team members dispersed around the world. They also correctly state that the problem is that one cannot effectively become an expert on another person simply by picking up and reading a book about that person’s culture because it is highly unlikely that a written summary of a culture describes everything. Additionally, the people in any given region will differ from each other culturally due to many other factors – e.g., socioeconomic status, education level, life experiences, gender, age, etc.   Thus, the authors provide guidelines on observing cultural sensitivity as well as emphasize how important it is to establish an organizational culture that will bring virtual team members together in such a way that they will collaborate effectively.

Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams not only provides guidelines on effective use of various information technology tools (with consideration of etiquette) but also instruction on how managers can preemptively help their virtual team members understand business and finance principles (as virtual workers don’t have as much opportunity to pick these up compared to traditional, office workers). This book also addresses the nuts and bolts of effective communication and feedback and explains how to use tools for creative problem solving (Force Field Analysis; Weighted Criteria Analysis; Stop, Start Continue Exercise; Brainstorming; Creative Brainstorming; Reverse Brainstorming; and Brainwriting). The authors conclude with chapters on effective performance management which includes procedures for goal-setting, effective decision making using the consensus method in particular, exercises for team building, and tips for maintaining work-life balance.