New means of Communication

Last November I looked with disbelieve at CNN realizing they were relying on blogs to comment the situation in Mumbai. The real up-to date information was coming from bloggers that combined data gathering in their neighborhood with reporting. It allowed the world to follow. Combined with the iPhoto mechanism put in place several months ago, it transformed the way TV’s are reporting events.

But the Mumbai situation was only one step in the change, the Iranian elections and follow-up events have taken this a whole new direction. Twitter has become the center of the battle, and I have been fascinated seeing the events unfolding right from my TweetDeck screen. Courageous people have and are still keeping the world aware of what happens. Several of them seem to have disappeared in prison or even worse. But at the same time we have started seeing the limits of this real time reporting. Israelis, posting themselves as Iranians, have started trying to destabilize Iran through false information.  Fortunately, the Twitter community has quickly reacted and pointed at their feeds as being hoax. They are probably not the only ones conveying wrong information and as such putting people’s life in danger. But that’s probably the least of their problems.

Now, if we bring this to a business community, we will, albeit at a different level, have similar phenomena. We can learn from what happened and put a couple elements in place:

• First, clearly establish rules of engagements between the members of the community. In the context of Iran, this was obviously not practical, but in a business community it is.
• Second, motivate reporting of unacceptable behavior
• Third, warn and then exclude the participants that do not follow the rules of engagements and make this visible

In doing so, one establishes a certain discipline between the members of the community and ensures they are followed. All members quickly understand the implications of not following the rules. Occasionally refreshing those and reminding members helps keep a community functioning well. 

Actually meeting your virtual partner

Years ago, I started working with a team that was based in Bangalore and was given the name of a contact with whom I was supposed to arrange the use of Indian resources in EMEA projects. I will actually never forget my first call to him. First it took me quite some time to get through, and finally when I got him on the phone, I kept hearing horning and noise on the line. I had the impression he was sitting in the middle of the street, with cars buzzing all around him. And he must really be in a strange position as all those guys needed to horn to get around him. My imagination went wild

It's only six months later, when I finally went to Bangalore, that I started to understand. The building in which we had our offices were not really air conditioned in those days, as it was quite difficult to ensure a consistent supply of electricity. So the team was used to open the windows, and those were facing a busy street (actually, are there any others in India?). I also understood the two fundamental rules of driving in India (The bigger the more priority & Horn any time you do something), and its implications on the environment of the team that quickly became friends.

This short story to illustrate the importance of never to assume things. Actually, imagination is not really a good thing when working with remote people as it may get you believing things that are far from reality. I learned about the importance to visit the people and understand in what environment they are operating. Now, if visits are impossible, photos and short videos can be used to show remote team members what the environment is and how the person on the phone looks like. Pragmatic approaches should be used for people to understand each-other environments and habits. That's what I learned then.