No matter how clever communications technology becomes I’m still not convinced it cannot adequately replace face-to-face meetings. We are very much a matrix organization in the TM Forum with people located all over the world and mainly working from home. We communicate regularly by email, Skype, GoToMeeting and conference calls and, for the most part, the communications is effective. But there’s nothing that beats getting together in one place to ‘chew the fat’ and interact personally.
This is not an indictment of the tools we have at our disposal, it appears to be the need for us humans to be able to see, touch, smell and observe body language of others in order to maximize the communications experience. Don’t get me wrong, services like Telepresence video conferencing are brilliant but it’s not quite the same.
My theory is well illustrated at our bi-annual Team Action Week events and most evident at this week’s in Baltimore. Members across all teams were able to generate output that would have taken months to do otherwise. The networking during the breaks was intense. There was laughing, arguing, debating and, above all, decision-making all round. Although we have the fallback of ‘Roberts Rules’ to settle disagreements, it was hardly used. The general understanding was that this was a time to get things done.
Everyone attending was introduced to a new way of managing the collaboration program with the introduction of the TM Forum Roadmap and running of teams in a more ‘project specific’ way so that deliverables could be agreed on and managed in a sensible time frame, supported by TM Forum staff where applicable. The ‘productization’ of all our key assets, and particularly the Frameworx, allows for input and strategy to be set not only from the top down at board level but also from the bottom up by members keen to contribute to existing efforts or develop new processes, applications or interfaces for the enhancement of products driven by new technology or market requirements.
It is fair to say that the proposals were met favorably and a record number of teams made great progress. Some of the results are already out (see the blogs below) but we will see much more over the next week.
The highlight of the week for me, personally, was getting expert tuition on blogging techniques from my colleague, John Reilly. That alone was worth the trip!
Posted
07-22-2010 7:22 PM
by
The Insider