E-team

E-TEAM: FORMING A VIABLE GROUP ON INTERNET


John S. Edwards
Aston Business School. Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, U.K.

K.C. Burgess Yakemovic
Group Performance Systems, Inc., 4776 Village North Court, Atlanta GA
30338, USA.

Denis P. Cowan
33 Burilda Street, Hendra, Brisbane, Queensland 4011, Australia.

Ted J. Gaiser
Sociology Department, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Boston College,
140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167, USA

John Gancz
BP 872, RR #1, Chelsea, Quebec, Canada, J0X 1N0

Ed Levin
Essential Systems Group, 917 S. Normandie Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90006, USA.

Jim Vezina
Systems Technology and Services, Carnegie Group, Inc., 5 PPG Place,
Pittsburgh, PA 15222, USA

Eleanor Wynn
Interactive Intelligence, Inc., 19363 Willamette Drive #500, West Linn OR
97068, USA.




abstract

This paper describes a case study in working as a virtual team. It is not
a standard "industrial" case, but an account of a team distributed across
the planet whose common interest was to explore the possibilities of remote
working. It concentrates on the "partnership between people" aspect of the
team's experience, including the task and process aspects of a virtual
team; the role of side channel communications; the need for trust; and the
need to allow for the different viewpoints of the people involved in the
team.


The main learning points which emerge focus on four issues: the relevance
of having a task; commitment from


team members; how the team organizes itself; and the
roles of the individuals in the team.

Keywords: electronic mail, group development, leadership, remote working,
virtual teams.

INTRODUCTION

This paper is a case study of a virtual team. A virtual team is a group of
individuals working toward a common goal who do not interact face to face,
and may or may not be geographically close to each other. This case is not
a standard "industrial" case, where a team forms to tackle a specific task.
The individuals making up the team "met" over the Internet because of a
mutual interest in virtual teams; and had no other reason to form a group
or team at all. This is therefore an account of a team distributed across
the planet whose common purpose as a group was to explore the possibilities
of remote working. Although different in this respect from an industrial
team, as coalitions between individuals are widely seen as the
organizations of the future, the experience of this team is potentially of
great relevance to organizational tasks.

This paper describes how this virtual team came into being, some of the
main happenings during its first 9 months of existence, and the lessons
learnt. It concentrates on the "partnership between people" aspect of the
team's experience, especially the development of the group. This leads to
reflections on:
the task and process aspects of a virtual team
the role of side channel communications
the need for trust
the need to allow for the different viewpoints of the people involved in
the team

In places, therefore, a slightly unusual style will be adopted in this
paper, using direct quotes from team members, including the authors
themselves, to illustrate what happened. Quotes from the authors are
identified by their initials; quotes from others are unascribed. Two or
more viewpoints will be presented on some aspects, without attempting to
resolve any disagreements. This is not to suggest that consensus was never
reached on anything, but to emphasize the importance of being aware of
these multiple viewpoints when working in a virtual team over the Internet,
even more than in "face to face" teams.

How the team came into being

The team formed as the result of a posting to the Internet bpr-l list in
January 1995.

"As a group facilitator I am beginning to wonder if there is now the
need to develop a new notion of group development. Possibly one which
is based on limited face to face. I am aware that there are people who
find Internet a very safe way to communicate and others who would
rather still do the contact face to face. So how will groups work in
the future? How will we develop intrapersonal, interpersonal and group
skills over the Internet?
Without having any idea on how to do it or where it might lead .. Any
one interested in exploring this avenue and possible setting up a team
over the Internet to see how it works??" (DC)

Most of the members joined as a result of this posting, but a few were
individually invited by other members. It was therefore a self-selected
group; all members volunteered to join it.

"I, like everyone else in the group, saw Denis's post on the BPR list.
One of my primary areas of interest is telecommuting." (JG)
"Actually, I don't know anything about the bpr-l list. I was in a
discussion on a list and received a note from DC asking if I was
interested in a discussion group about virtual teams. At first I
thought I was joining a discussion list, but then I discovered I was
in this small group. As the group became more intense and focused on
tasks, I became clearer on what we, the e-team, were all about." (TG)

In terms of technology, the group has restricted itself essentially to
electronic mail (e-mail) throughout. This was because several members did
not have access to other, more sophisticated, remote working tools.

The members of the team

Membership has varied from a minimum of 8 to a peak of 14. Unfortunately,
space does not permit the inclusion of a complete set of personal
biographies here, only a brief identification of common factors.

Those common factors which were perhaps to be expected include: access to
Internet facilities, enough technical ability to be able to use them, and
an interest in some aspects of working in virtual teams. Because of the
way in which the group formed from the bpr-l list, most members also had an
interest in business process re-engineering.

Less inevitably, all members have been from English-speaking countries.
This was partly to be expected, as the original request for participation
was in English, but bpr-l is based in the Netherlands.

A voluntary exchange of Myers-Briggs personality types yielded perhaps the
most interesting result; all those willing to be categorized were N
(intuitive) rather than S (sensate).

Theory (or absence of it)

It is not our intention to carry out a deep theoretical analysis in this
paper or perform a rigid scientific experiment, but rather to report our
experiences as a case. We shall, however, rely on theories of two kinds to
provide a framework for the case description and our observations about it.
They are:
"soft" systems theory
theories of group development

These are but two of the many kinds of theory which could be applied to our
experience. Our intention in this paper is to apply theories sparingly, to
let the case speak for itself as far as possible. The selection of
theories was made with that in mind.

Soft systems theory, as developed by Checkland (1981) and expounded further
in Checkland and Scholes (1990), will be used as a higher order theory, to
enable us to reflect on the purpose of the group and the analyses that we
can sensibly carry out on our own working.

The ideas from soft systems theory which are most relevant here are:
The idea of "emergent properties" of systems, most familiar in the well-
known phrase 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts'.
The idea that what is represented in any analysis is a view of what
exists, not simply "what exists". The term used in soft systems theory
for the corresponding view is the German word Weltanschauung. This was
deliberately chosen to mean something more than just "view" or
"viewpoint"; it is that view of the world which enables the observer to
attribute meaning to what is observed, i.e. the mental filter that makes
sense of what the observer perceives.
The idea of "root definitions" of the system under study. A root
definition is associated with a particular view (Weltanschauung). There
may be several root definitions of "the same" system, each associated
with a different view. The key element of any root definition is the
verb which tells you what the purpose of the system is. (Note that there
are other elements in the root definition concept which we shall not be
using in this paper.)
The root definition that we shall adopt as a starting-point is that the
purpose of the group was to explore what a virtual team could do. The
associated view is that virtual teams are sufficiently different from face
to face teams to need exploring. We shall discuss the implications of
this, and the properties which emerged, later.

The theories of the stages of group development which we shall use are
chosen on two criteria. The first is that they should be widely known and
broad in their application. The second is that, to be consistent with our
first root definition, they must apply to a group whose purpose is "to
explore" rather than to accomplish a specific task such as "to produce the
budget for the first quarter of 1996". Some theories of group working
appear to be predicated on a pre-existing task.

We shall use the theories of Schutz (1955, 1967) and Tuckman and Jensen
(1977). Schutz identifies three stages, namely inclusion, control and
affection (called openness in his more recent works). Tuckman and Jensen
identify five stages: forming, storming, norming, performing and
adjourning. These are shown in Figure 1. As will become clear, our
experience so far suggests that these theories are as valid for virtual
groups as for more conventional ones.



The initial phase - building relationships

The initial phase in Schutz's model covers inclusion, and forming in
Tuckman and Jensen's. It was characterized by high e-mail traffic, ever-
increasing group size, a considerable degree of enthusiasm and a lack of
focus.

"From 1 Feb. through 8 March we had a lot of activity. We did a lot of
who's here?, who am I?, who are you? stuff. But we also talked about
lurkers, issues with using e-mail, leadership, possible tasks, how big
the group should get, vision (or the 30 year plan)., and what we should
call ourselves." (KB)

It became clear early on that a group is different from a list. The bpr-l
list numbers between 1200 and 2000 members worldwide. Such a list is a
broadcast medium. Messages can border on the personal, just as a speaker
in front of a large group might tell a short personal anecdote as an
icebreaker, but on the whole the messages should be widely relevant. A
small group must cohere in a more personal way, involving more dimensions;
virtually or not, people will be spending time "together."

At first, members made formal introductions of themselves, describing
occupation, location and census-type details about their lives. EW
published a possible double entendre about her marital status, then
published a correction to clarify that the spouse who had been referred to
generically was indeed of the opposite gender. This constituted a
disclosure by opening up a "non-professional" slightly risky line of self-
description. One member followed shortly with a description of his
household, including children, dogs, cats, and hamsters. JE then disclosed
the presence of a large number of fish in his household. These humanistic
details suddenly brought the group down to earth in terms of the stance
that could be taken and defined the boundaries of discussion to include
more of the person. Indeed there was an explosion of mail following this as
the team began to look like a fun social exchange. Analyses were intermixed
with informal exchanges.

E-mail traffic reached such an intensity (a peak of 58 messages on February
10th) that when, for the first time, 24 hours went by without any new
postings (on March 1st/2nd), members started wondering what had gone wrong!

"Hey! It just dawned on me..no messages today. Am I persona non
grata, is the net dead, or am I simply paranoid?"

In the early stages the group continued to grow, which led to repetition of
material as new people came in. This is consistent with Schutz's model,
which suggests that every time a new member arrives, the group has to
return to the inclusion phase.

Those who joined all seemed to very keen to do something, but no one was
very clear about exactly what. In the early stages discussion ranged from
high level visions of what we might accomplish to details such as whether
signature files should be included in every message; plus social/personal
topics. Even brief exchanges about the weather, tacked on to other
postings, seemed to be performing a valuable function in helping group
formation (and perhaps trust). A map showing everyone's location (see
Figure 2), circulated by fax/mail, proved a popular innovation.

The common area of interest was in exploring how groups could function over
the Internet, but getting more detailed than that proved difficult. One
reason for the apparent lack of focus was the absence of any procedures by
which a focus could emerge.

The "to task or not to task" debate

Almost from the outset, there appeared to be a basic disagreement within
the team as to whether or not a specific task was needed, in order for it
to "achieve something".

Among the arguments for having a task were that it would make it easier to
separate experiences about process from experiences about content, and that
it would improve the relevance of what the team was doing; an industrial
team would not be formed unless it had some task to carry out. Conversely,
having a specific task might narrow the focus and/or dampen the enthusiasm
of the team, or decrease the generality of any findings the team might come
up with. A further element in the debate was whether the team was actually
ready to attempt a task yet, whatever that task might be.

Suggestions for possible tasks naturally arose as part of this debate.
More than 20 tasks had been suggested by February 20th, ranging from the
academic (writing a paper) to the practical (acting as process
consultants to an

Figure 2: Location map of e-team members (only current members are shown)

industrial project in which two members were involved), and from the
concrete (creating electronic versions of popular group games/activities,
such as tit-for-tat multiround negotiation, beer distribution or paper
plane factory) to the visionary (search for a new paradigm for a
distributed electronically connected work environment).

The first major focus for the team proved to be the choice of a name, which
necessitated the first use of formal procedures, in the shape of a voting
process. It is worth describing in some detail here, as an illustration of
some of the problems which arise over the Internet.

Discussion of a name first arose in the context of what label members had
given to their e-mail distribution list, but within a couple of days the
discussion had broadened into the question of the name for the group as a
whole. Some reservations were expressed in the discussion as to whether
the time was right for naming the group.

"You may have noticed that I am having difficulty giving this group of
people a name. I think this is because we are still in the group
forming stages and have at this point in time a general willingness to
work together without yet having reached agreement on what our goal
should be." (DC)
"Perhaps we will want to refrain from naming ourselves until we have a
task more clearly defined?" (KB)

Nevertheless, within four days of the start of the "naming" discussion, one
of the group had proposed a process for deciding on the name, and
volunteered to handle the voting involved. The process was:
1. an initial "trawl" for names already suggested
2. a period in which further nominations were invited
3. a first round of voting (each member indicating 1st, 2nd and 3rd
preferences)
4. a second round of voting for the three leading contenders

The eventual choice of name was the "e-team", by the narrowest possible
margin. In fact the two leading names were tied exactly in the second
round. The member in charge of the voting broke the tie by returning to
the first round votes. There would certainly have been an argument for
another run-off between the leading two, but the group was getting
impatient by then, and no-one objected to this example of leadership in
action.

It is worth noting that the process took 24 days in all; four days to the
point where a procedure was suggested, and twenty days to carry it out.
This was partly because generous deadlines needed to be set for members to
reply and/or vote, because of uncertainty about availability of time and
reliability of communications.

Although slow, the naming process had led to a satisfactory outcome, and so
the team decided to embark on another choice. As mentioned above, an issue
which had stirred up a lot of discussion was whether the team needed a
specific task on which to focus, or whether it could do something useful
without one. In an attempt to avoid bias, the adopted process was to vote
simultaneously on the two propositions:
Do you want the group to work on a task?
Do you NOT want the group to work on a task?

The "tools sub-group" episode

The voting on "to task or not to task" was almost complete, and
substantially in favour of working on a task. One member of the e-team
proposed the task of investigating alternative tools to e-mail, in the hope
that they would help the team function better. Following up on private
responses to this posting, he then sent individual messages to those who
had communicated an interest in forming a sub-group to work on this task.
All of these communications happened "offline", "back channel" or "side
channel" as the team referred to one-on-one, or indeed any communication
not involving the whole list. This led to five members forming a sub-
group.

"A small sub-group of us are interested in addressing a "tools" "task"
and are ready to declare ourselves.... We have started dialog around
what the "task" might look like, although no conclusions as yet. Is
anyone else interested? While we haven't discussed this, I envisage the
sub-team doing some work together off-line from the e-team and
reporting back every week or so.
Comments appreciated."

This announcement to the rest of the team caused some negative reactions.
Most were about the process by which the sub-group had formed itself, i.e.
the apparent lack of consultation.

"Did I leave the room and not know it? :-) Have I missed some
messages?" (KB)
"What happened to our process of the team deciding what to work on
?....PS. I have to be honest and say that I feel ****** off in not
being consulted on the team task." (DC)

However, one also contained an element of annoyance at not having been
invited to join the sub-group.

"Hi. I think I may have missed something here. Some slight turn where
sidebar discussions may have turned critical. Of course it may just be
paranoia that makes me feel ****** on rather than ****** off.
There seems to be some discussion of tools. A subset of the team is
working on tools. What happens if there is someone interested in
working on tools who isn't in this sub group. Is it a closed group?"
(JG)

During the period of "healing" which followed the immediate reactions to
the announcement of the "tools sub-group", there was the sense of losing
momentum, although this was not reflected in a lessening in the e-mail
traffic.

"On 23 March, the subgroup issue reared its ugly head. But (oddly?)
after a day or two, the message flow resumed at about the same level.
We talked about moving on." (KB)

It was noticeable that although discussion of social/personal matters had
helped the group along in the earlier stages, an exchange of messages about
the game of cricket, which took place at the height of the tools sub-group
episode, only seemed to make matters worse. The social/personal messages
were perceived by some as a deliberate attempt at distraction, and as
further delaying the choice of a group task.

Some attempts at healing/soothing were successful....

"How to address an emotional issue in a way that will not escalate this
issue. ? I do not know. I can tell you why I am/was upset but have a
fear that it will degenerate into a "you said this/ no I did not" type
of activity.
So all I will do is >
I perceive that we have a situation where the lines are drawn with both
sides feeling right about what they are doing.
To continue to work as a team we have to move past this position.
Where to from here ??" (DC)
"Hum... to me this would be a win-win situation if
a) we all learn something from the experience
b) we apply that learning in the future" (KB)

Others less so:

"-- "select a task" process seems to have disappeared from view, but I
don't think that the "tools sub-team" is intended to pre-empt wider
task selection, rather as a complement to it." (JE)
produced the reply
"Hm. This seems like double-speak. The tools task is a task. If a large
percentage of the team are engaged in one task, it is unlikely they
will also support the development of another one, especially as that is
slow in coming." (EW)

The effect of the "tools sub-group" episode was followed by further
setbacks in the departure of three members of the e-team. The timing of
this (shortly before Easter) did not help, since other members of the team
were going on vacation. The team has never reached the previous levels of
intense activity since (except in the writing of this paper). It is
tempting to blame the drop in activity on the discord resulting from the
"tools sub-group" episode, but this is misleading.

"Then we had a very interesting situation. Over about five weeks
left, left, DC had system problems and dropped "out of
sight", EW got a new project (which I presume took a good deal of
attention), my daughter got chicken pox (which took me out for a week
or 10 days), left, JE and JG both excused themselves for a
period. One might be tempted to think that the subgroup issue "caused"
the lessening of interest. Maybe. But I doubt it caused my daughter's
chicken pox... or EW's new project... or the (apparently) work related
situation for JE or JG." (KB)

Another member of the team was having problems, too:

"The way it seemed to me at the time (admittedly through a narrow
lens):
a. I received a monthly bill for about $200 that shocked me into
shopping for a cheaper way to participate.
b. I withdrew somewhat. Coincidentally or not it was at the same time
as the fragmentation around the "tools" issue.
c. I felt strongly that things were falling apart and I wanted to help
guide the conversation back on track by making extended summaries as I
had before, but wasn't able to because of my preoccupation with
changing mail programs. I was cursing my inability to participate
while I saw the project self-destructing.
d. By the time I had switched over to Eudora the opportunity to pull
things together had come and gone.
e. I felt strongly at the time that it fell apart because my role as
summarizer, continuity finder, had suddenly disappeared.
An interpretation definitely open to debate, and certainly not the only
thing that was going on. But it is part of the pattern that seemed
important to me." (EL)

Perhaps the best summing-up of this period is:

"Indeed there were many small peripheral events distracting
participants, but it seems likely that the activity of the tools sub-
group would have bridged the participatory gap by creating a focus
during this time." (EW)

rejuvenating the team with "round robins"

Various endeavours were tried to get the team going again, including more
discussion of suggested tasks. It was not until June that a really
successful innovation occurred. This was the use of a formal "round robin"
approach, asking every team member to contribute in turn. There were two
of these, the first addressing what members most loved/hated about using
the Internet, and the second tackling the question of how members would
have tackled the e-team project differently with the benefit of hindsight.
The details of the first are best left for another paper. The second set
are highly relevant to the discussions here, being in one sense the main
outcome from the team's original purpose of "to explore". They are
presented in full in the conclusions section, with the intention of being
the catalyst to further discussion.

A summary of the key events mentioned in this paper is shown in Figure 3.


DISCUSSION - THE "TOOLS SUB-GROUP" AND OTHER MATTERS


Early on, before even introducing herself to the list, EW had an extended
side exchange with DC, because he is from Brisbane and she had submitted a
résumé to a university there. The topic was Brisbane, but also wound
around to personal interests: children, money, cosmology. There were side
relationships between most or all of the e-team's members, as participants
saw, on occasion, that a topic was more of a one-to-one than a one-to-many
issue. Clearly this kind of communication can act as a bonding exercise.
However, there may have been ways in which the side channels raised issues
that should have been open to the entire team. This had already been a
topic of discussion before the tools sub-group episode. However, it only
became apparent during the writing of this paper that the "proposer" of the
sub-group had possibly missed some key discussion.

"The issue of "back channel" conversation, and what should be on it was
discussed in early Feb., around the 4th and 5th. didn't
join us until later. I can't find any evidence that he was sent back
messages.
I wonder then if part of the problem was some of the group having
discussed when to use the "outside" connection and when the
"inside"..." (KB)

In the end, the side channel activity became a precipitator for the
distrust occasioned by the tools sub-group. However, the explanation was
also delivered by side channel. The "proposer" of the tools sub-group had a
real agenda with the e-team, to understand remote team issues and select
tools for a project he was assigned. He is a senior manager. He was
accustomed to directing groups, and early on raised some hackles by
enjoining the group to "get moving" on an exercise involving a name. He led
the name exercise and organized it very well. There were exchanges between
him and the de facto leader and founder, DC, where the latter disclosed
openly his ruffled feathers about the former's direct manner. This all died
down, with public and private apologies from both.


But later on, when the announcement came, seemingly from nowhere, that a
small group was going to study tools as a task, both DC and KB came back
with messages expressing discontent at the side channel nature of this
move. In fact, the "proposer" had expressed interest in the tools task in a
public message. A few members publicly expressed support, but did not have
the time or inclination to do that task. When DC and KB objected, EW
exchanged side channel communications supporting their objections, perhaps
adding fuel to the fire of their discontent. There had been a division in
public discussion about a member's suggestion to consult for the "proposer"
in his corporate mission to learn about online teams. Some of those in the
team who consult for a living objected, and the proposer stated that was
not his purpose. His responsibilities and a job-related deadline on this
subject, however, could have aggravated the concerns that arose over the
announcement of the tools task. This raises a rather subtle issue in the
configuration of trust factors as to whether all are getting more or less
the same "value" out of a voluntary virtual project.

Meanwhile, EW was also inquiring of the proposer about the situation via
side channel, as he fell silent after the objections. His explanation was
that a few people had responded with a side channel message to his public
announcement regarding the tools task; and he had responded to them. He
then announced their plan. Possibly it was his managerial bent and phrasing
that again aroused a sense that group process wasn't being observed in this
declaration, especially as the main objectors had themselves adopted quasi-
leadership roles, in terms of volume, organization, setting up agendas, and
so on.

"In my view, the failure of the tools task to go ahead was a threshold
event in the group, which had been struggling for some time to come up
with a task. To allow a small group to pursue a task, to which others
were invited to contribute at will, seemed like a way to go forward
without having to reach full consensus: a quick win, as it were.
Stopping this one decision in its tracks--which is easy to do in a
small group where consensus is important--made it seem as if a task
would never be decided upon. Or alternatively that without everyone
being involved there could be no task, when some might have wanted less
involvement." (EW)

Thus three dilemmas emerged:
Side channels can be productive of trust or distrust, depending.
In a group without a specific leader, anyone can step forward to
nominate and complete a task. Alternatively, it leaves the group open
to splits such as occurred with the tools sub-group."
The latent issue of power was never adequately dealt with. The group
was essentially egalitarian, yet there were "stakeholders" for the de
facto direction of the group. These emerged once an alternative move
toward leadership was evident.

We believe that these dilemmas are not specific to the e-team. The first
applies to any group using remote working, and the other two to any group
without a specific leader.

In some ways it is difficult to see how the leadership and power issues
could have been dealt with better in such an informal group.

"The defacto leader because of founding the group, was DC, a process-
oriented humanist, who admittedly started "without a plan" due to his
nature as measured by M-B. Another strong leader was KB, who had
organizational skills and groupware experience (as did EL but he seemed
to back out of any leadership role). At the same time,
WAS a leader in real life, and tried to rein himself in to be more
participatory for the purpose of working with the group. I felt that
the introduction of the tools task by him raised the power issue to the
surface. He was also on a deadline. Once he realized that it would be
difficult to achieve his real-life goals in time for that, he dropped
out. He continued side conversations with me for a short while, and
responds when written to." (EW)
"In an action learning perspective the "tools issue" was the incident
which contributed most to my learning. It highlighted for me that we
did not have a mechanism by which we could talk about group process.
This was the stage at which I felt most aware of what was going on and
at the same time most powerless. I did not know how to even raise the
issue of control let alone a way to resolve it." (DC)
Considered in an action learning context, using the model Act - Reflect -
Generalize - Plan (Kolb et al, 1984) there was an action (the tools sub-
group) which had an impact on the group, but no group mechanism by which we
could reflect as a group on the impact of the action. In the storming or
control phase, early attempts at using the group reflection mechanism are
seen as further attempts at gaining control.

"Possibly the tools incident was the vehicle for the natural challenge
against the perceived leader?" (DC)

The "tools sub-group" episode as a whole raises the question of whether the
e-team had in fact reached the norming stage at the time. Looking back, it
appears that we thought we had, after the "choose a name" and "choose a
task" processes; as far as we can judge from our biased viewpoint, the team
appeared to be behaving that way. However, both the details of what
happened, and the analysis from an action learning perspective above,
suggest that perhaps we had not, and were still in the storming stage.

EXPLORATION AS A PURPOSE

As mentioned earlier, the e-team formed with a purpose of exploring what a
virtual team could do, rather than in response to a more specific task.
Did we achieve this purpose, given that the "to task or not to task" debate
clearly showed differences in understanding between team members of what
"exploring" actually meant in this context?

Examined in terms of soft systems theory, the key divergence between e-team
members was (and is) a difference of view at one level deeper than the root
definition based on "explore". One view is that a team needs a task and so
all analyses of the team should be in the context of what its task is. The
other is that in a team whose purpose is to explore, tasks and task
emergence/formation are just one of the aspects to be explored. Note that
such a divergence of view will apply to everyone, not just e-team members.

At the higher level, therefore, the e-team had a common purpose, and we
have succeeded in achieving it to some extent; the reader is left to judge
exactly what extent. At the deeper level, there was disagreement, the
nature of which forms much of the content of this paper. It could be
argued that, given the team's exploratory purpose, then dropping out must
be equated with failure. (The alternative that dropping out means "got all
I wanted" clearly does not apply yet.) Certainly some of the e-team
members failed to get out of it what they wanted, and so left. However,
several of those who remain prefer a task orientation, as the vote on that
issue demonstrated, and the majority of drop-outs appeared to be because of
lack of time. Perhaps the original purpose of some of those who dropped
out was not really "to explore"? Note that the verbs we used earlier in
describing the purpose of the proposer of the "tools sub-group" were "to
understand" and "to select (tools)".

In terms of theories of group development, as mentioned in DC's original
posting, our overall conclusion is that the general theories we have used
do apply, at least to the broad level at which we have applied them.
However, the specifics are very different for a virtual team than for a
face to face one. It would be instructive to take several theories and
apply each of them to this case, but there is neither time nor space to do
this for this paper.

It will have been apparent to the reader that we have had some difficulty
in separating the "story" from the analysis. Our position on this is that
we cannot fully achieve this, because of who we are, and the exploratory
purpose of the e-team. The quotations serve to illustrate that we all
bring our own views (including theory) to our exploration. This is both a
strength and a weakness, and it cannot be avoided without changing the
"loose" nature of the e-team.. A study using a virtual team set up under
more rigorously designed experimental conditions would undoubtedly yield
interesting results, but the e-team's purpose is different.

Conclusion

We believe that many aspects of our experience are transferable to a
business context; after all, people are people. The lack of a specific
task may not, we concede, be a problem for many virtual teams in industry,
but processes, trust and multiple viewpoints will be just as relevant in
any context.

Interestingly, the task orientation revived in the production of this
paper, originally suggested by JE.

"At that point, JE's effort to pull something together mobilized
others. Once they saw a prototype paper, there were comments and
contributions. So a task did eventually emerge, and it was a task that
had been discussed early on in the conversation about possible tasks.
This task is real, has a real deadline, is impartial as to interests it
serves, and JE gained leadership in it simply by doing the work." (EW)

This all came together several months after the "tools sub-group" episode.
Thus the e-team retained its group quality even when dormant. We have
certainly reached the affection/performing stages, even if we had perhaps
temporarily adjourned. Having shared so much experience together, the e-
team remains a viable social entity. This speaks to the effect of the
social cohesion created during the stage when personal relationships are
being built using personal disclosures, reflection on process and side
channel communications to build up a sense of reality both among the group
as a group and between the members as individuals.

True to the unusual nature of this case, this Conclusion is not the last
section of the paper. This is partly because the work of the e-team is not
finished, but principally because our intention is for our experience so
far to serve as a jumping-off point for ourselves and others. We therefore
end with the key learning points we have identified with the benefit of
hindsight, based on the complete results of the "how would I do the e-team
differently?" round robin.


HOW WOULD WE DO THIS E-TEAM DIFFERENTLY?

DC
I would address it as a project and put a time limit on it. e.g. 6
months.
I would ask people to send a weekly message saying that they were still
involved.

KB
I would (if I were the instigator) have a task planned prior to starting
(hindsight is a wonderful thing!).
I would be explicit about the role I wanted to play, and the time I had
available.

TG
I would spend more time reflecting on my expectations and articulating
them to the group.
I would encourage the group to do more group processing such as we have
been doing lately, in an attempt to overcome some of the difficulties of
being dispersed and communicating through a computer-mediated medium.

JV
At group conception (or close to it) define a minimum amount of time
required to participate, and if no specific task is planned, have
something pretty close to it.
Have an official leader designated to give the nudge to those of us who
need it.

EW
I would have let the tools subgroup go ahead with their project. The team
lost momentum over that.

JE
I would have spent more time understanding the strengths and skills of
the others in the team.
(Having done the above.) The team should have tried to suggest specific
people might do specific tasks (with the right to decline, naturally -
but "volunteering" over the Internet is very slow).

JG
Have a task in mind at the outset or the determination of a task in a
period of no more than a week.
I would have searched for some relevant, available, literature for the
difficulty in group interaction over the Internet for team review. This
could provide us with a common base of knowledge that could be beefed up
through individual experience and discourse.
Have a stronger commitment from infrequent communicators.
Have the listserv set up earlier and run back channel comm. through it
unless of a personal nature. This may have averted the tools sub group
problem.
Have scheduled a decent daily time slice to the team work. It was
surprisingly more important to me than I thought and the sudden slowdown
more distressing than I thought it would be.

EL
At the first sign of the "tools" misunderstanding I would have sent off a
message tying together the loose ends that I saw and pushed hard to
retain the unity, nipping the division in the bud. But I didn't because
I was worrying about my costs.
I would have found a way to participate uninterruptedly, rather than
switch from Lotus Notes to Eudora right at the critical point in the life
of the team.


KEY "LEARNING POINTS" WITH HINDSIGHT

As may be seen, the main points which have emerged focus on four aspects:
having a task (not surprisingly)
commitment from team members
how the team organizes itself
the roles of the individuals in the team

As explained in the Introduction, no further attempt will be made here to
produce a single prescription under each of these headings. Instead, they
are presented for wider discussion, and for further investigation by the e-
team and others.

References

Checkland, P.B. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. John Wiley: Chichester,
1981.
Checkland, P.B., and Scholes, J. Soft Systems Methodology in Action. John
Wiley: Chichester, 1990.
Kolb, D.A., Rubin, I.M. and McIntyre, J.M. Organizational psychology : an
experiential approach to organizational behavior. Prentice-Hall: Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, 1984.
Schutz, W.C. What makes groups productive? Human Relations, 8, 1955, pp.
429-465.
Schutz, W.C. JOY: Expanding Human Awareness. Grove Press: New York, 1967.
Tuckman, B. and Jensen, N. Stages of small group development revisited
Group and Organizational Studies, 2, 1977, pp. 419-427.