In Search of Permanency --A Founder's Perspective on Sustainability of Purely Virtual Team--
By Chin Hoon Lau
Introduction
This article describes developmental experience and perspective of Internet Biologists (URL: http://www.internetbiologists.org, which is treated here as a model for international, purely virtual, voluntary, knowledge-intensive project. (A recommended background reading is "Internet Biologists: The First Two Years").The main question addressed here is:
Being a purely virtual entity, Internet Biologists is subject to the same vulnerability and instability inherent to the Internet. How then can such entity last long enough to realize its mission and to establish itself?This article contends that continuity is the key. It looks into the underlying factors contributing to the limitation of Internet as a medium to provide for this continuity, and how we may be able to respond to them.Content
Introduction1. Challenges to Stability1.1 The built-in fragility of the Internet2. Possible responses
1.2 The problem with distance
1.3 Founder-bottleneck
1.4 The Tragedy of Commons2.1 The meta switch: A structure for sharing both responsibility and glory
2.2 Inherent advantages of Internet Biologists
2.3 Virtual leadership: "anticipate, create, dissolve"
2.4 Emphasis on project-based management3. Towards long term organizational relationship: "ask, learn, follow-up and grow"Acknowledgement4. Concluding Remarks
1. Challenges to Stability
Longevity is not in the gene of assemblies on the Internet, especially those voluntary in nature.Some virtual projects are short-lived simply because they are not developed to serve long term purposes. A user can join a group on the Internet for an immediate need such as learning new skills or seeking advice. Whether his goals of this engagement can be fulfilled or not, people tend to leave to concentrate on their usual business off-line. An end and dissolution after a couple of weeks or months is only natural and is thus inappropriate to be equated with ineffectiveness or failure.
On the other hand, there are projects which are intended to live longer to achieve certain goals but could not. This is the category that this article is addressing to.
Many online communities work on issues and projects which take time to fruition. Their existence is critically dependent upon the ability to improve on its scope, depth and resources, and effectiveness. These factors are natural requirement for accountability, quality and relevance of its services. In building these qualities, Internet Biologists has to term with some hurdles discussed below.
1.1 The built-in fragility of the Internet
When said that Internet is light, fragile and chaotic, one can look at these aspects.
Firstly, Internet is only an optional institution. One has the freedom to enter and exit a virtual group without having to be responsible or accountable in most circumstances. It is far too easy for one to create and alter digital documents and environments. Webpages and Websites can come and go, and so do the people behind them. Internet lacks crucial standards, authority, reference and creditability to command respect and order.
Secondly, as Internet and its use are new, there is a lack of an established operation structure. This is a genetic handicap compared to physical organizations which have evolved an established set of laws, rules and contracts. Semi-virtual alliances created by physical organizations are also governed by the physical pre-existing norms. Internet Biologists has no such guidelines or administrative precedents to lean on. Smooth day-to-day operation is only possible by continuously finding innovative solutions, mostly ad hoc in nature, and having members who are tolerant, mature and patient
Thirdly, purely virtual teams cannot avoid the problems in defining relationship, bond and obligation among its members, between its members and the virtual organization, and of the ownership of its products and processes. When there is no contractual bonding, first, we need to find a way to build trust and a sense of community for everyone to continue to collaborate and move on despite these uncertainties and obscurities.
Fourthly, Internet is too young to offer a system of appraisal, reward, standard, authority or accreditation. Many virtual projects are likely to serve future niche rather than fulfilling the need of present job. These novel innovations or forward-looking ideas, concepts and approaches may have run too far ahead of the established institutions to be appreciated under present recognition, value and reward systems.
A direct consequence of this gap is that there is no immediate material incentive to stay, or to perform and to strive for excellence on the Internet.
People team up for short term or irregular learning and professional development and Internet has become merely a means: a place for processing thought, for collecting information and verifying ideas, for tapping expertise and resources. Up to a certain point, it is always more tempting to check out to personal and institutional agenda for reward relevant to butter and bread. Internet, while having some advantages as an excellent vehicle for exchange of information, behaves against prolonged and complete knowledge development.
Network eliminates some cost and geographical barrier, but it never makes the distance become distance-less. Online community lacks the important chemistry that forms among people. Reading a few lines of text on the e-mail is definitely very different from verbal expression, physical visualization and body language.
In addition, there is an additional layer of context interpretation. Due to the discontinuous nature of e-mail communication, all misunderstanding or confusion is being prolonged, and in some cases permanently present due to the digitization of the mail. A one-day delay in replying an e-mail from a sender at a different time zone may result in two days lapse in the developmental time.
Distance community also lacks the physical set-up that one naturally internalizes as part-of-the-life or routine; there is a strong likelihood for one to forget his involvement in virtual projects amidst hectic physical schedule.
Another factor that affects the sustainability of virtual projects is what I term the "founder-bottleneck" effect, in which the burnout or exit of the founders or key organizers lead to dormancy of a project or disintegration of a virtual team.
Organizing Internet or virtual projects is a no-thank job which takes away most of the time needed for social and family life, part-time job, contract and most importantly, rest. When the virtual work is not part of job duty but an additional load, an active organizer may have basically no rest for a prolonged period of time. In many cases, the founders or key organizers are the only person knitting the online dream and bearing the total responsibility, while others come in for a brief visit or irregular contribution. The quality of content and interactivity may deteriorate as the organizers become exhausted.
In a different scenario, expansion in membership and interactivity, which is supposedly a good news can be a curse in disguise. The organizers may get overwhelmed and bogged down by backlog of mails and follow-ups, and necessary contact and sourcing could not be established or pursued. The result is an externally perceived lack of professionalism, and lack of timely support for the internal surging need which lead to a drop in value for others to stay or to contribute.
1.4 The Tragedy of Commons (1)
Nothing in the history of mankind breeds the habit that one can always take without giving as thoroughly and effectively as the Internet. The Internet honeymoon culture that "the best thing in life is free" still linger on at a time more and more services are moving towards either cost recovery, advertisement driven, or subscription-based access, if not die off.
When a knowledge worker has got used to free access to scientific data and information, and remain idealistic of universal access to scientific information, the temptation to free-ride is strong. High degree of visitor hit and popularity are good for commercial purpose. However, this may not be a suitable approach for voluntary community. Unless there is a way to ensure reciprocation that benefits the team, the shear size of participants can accelerate the depletion of resources.
One learns before he drives and one learns before he manipulates recombinant DNA. But being an even more powerful empowerment medium, seldom are people being taught to use the Internet. The level of responsibility may take some time to grow but not until then will the Internet honeymoon culture ends.
2. Possible responses
2.1 The meta switch: A structure for sharing both responsibility and glory"If literally thousands of players, from enormous diverse backgrounds, all generate the same qualitative behavior patterns.... The causes of the behavior must lie in the structure.... itself" --Peter Senge, in "The Fifth Discipline" (2).One way to prevent the causative effects of founder-bottleneck is to develop a more distributed, decentralized system of roles and responsibility. I call this transition from a personal effort into a teamwork with basal administrative definition the "Meta Switch" ("meta", being opposite to solid and tangible content creation). Completion of this switch means a transformation from a temporary virtual entity to a permanent virtual entity. The members are no longer a participant of a project; they are members of an organization. At Internet Biologists, we are at the transition.The fact that virtual entity has a flattened administrative structure does not mean structure is unnecessary. The administrative endeavor is a necessary evil if one were to expect lasting union for knowledge development.
Most dedicated scientists distaste paper work. The slave of mankind until today is still preoccupied with zest for creation and discovery and unended quest for scientific fame. Informality, in which knowledge can be transferred with ease, is what attracts many to the Internet. They tend to overlook or ignore the importance of structure and organization. Or simply, these have not been part of their trade.
A structure-free environment is both ideal and conducive for transient gathering, social interaction, professional exchange and of course, for fun. However, as one desires to get out of mere information exchange and move into knowledge development pertinent to his professional interests, structural frameworks become necessary to accommodate the transformation of the temporary alliance. This is just like the way administration and technology machinery lend support to academic and research pursuit at any university. A timely appreciation of this need and development of necessary structure is essential to support expansion and complexity.
As a virtual team grows or prepares to grow, two of its original attributes must evolve.Firstly, the way need is being addressed. Members in any groups are bonded by common interest and need which are very specific and defined. However, need and interests are time dependent and they do evolve or change. For prolonged participation, a virtual team need to anticipate and cater for fading common need and interests. One solution is a shift from need to mission covering common paths at a broader and higher planes within which personal interest could continue to evolve.
Secondly, the way the responsibility for the well being of the project is being re-defined and shared. Various measures for division of labor and re-definition of roles must be tested and improved. They mean to be burnout-proof measures. This structure will enable all members to share both responsibility and glory. In addition, this switch will make it easy for an organization to monitor and identify gaps and deficiencies that need to be addressed, and shorten the orientation time for a newcomer before he could function actively.
Ultimately, a stable system must be well developed so that the organization can function independent of any founder, successor or key organizer.
2.2. Membership quality: the inherent advantages of Internet Biologists
Besides the various measures that are being developed to anticipate structural challenges as discussed above, there are other factors that assist in sustaining Internet Biologists.
Firstly, the selection process. Internet Biologists has a philosophy of working through a small and effective group, and its quality is decisively sustained through a unique selection process of its members. A big proportion of the members was previous participants of our courses and were invited due to their experience, talents, and commitment. Other members come from frontrunning networks or are established scientists and they enriched Internet Biologists with their prior experience.
Secondly, organizational advantages inherent to our mission and objectives. As a professional group catering mainly for graduate biologists and educational specialists, we have the advantage of natural selection for mature members who have a common understanding of scientific enterprise and knowledge development. In addition, most biologists working in the fast lane of molecular biology and biotechnology would have cultivated the skills and disciplines needed to cope with the Internet. A good (post)graduate education cultivate in one, as Peter Fiske pointed out, "the ability and courage to start something even if you don't know how yet.. ability to suspend judgment, to work with ambiguity"(3)
There are other critical attributes: the ability to tolerate repetitive setbacks, understand and accept the limitations of Internet as a vehicle for communication, be able to work through imperfection, chaos, messiness and are ready to make things right. These attributes would normally give a new team a conducive and productive head start. However, in moving from an one-off assembly to continuous pursuit, more attributes are demanded. Ideally, every member should be a leader in one niche or the others. This natural and voluntary leadership is needed to serve two purposes.
Firstly, as there is no precedent for making decision on the best course of action, there is a need to build the Cyber-architecture of the organization de novo, e.g., in creating communication channel and structure or in improving the scientific content. The diverse and voluminous work need to be initiated, motivated and coordinated by a conscientious member.
Secondly, initiative to lead is needed to support a decentralized and flattened structure conducive to knowledge exchanges that Internet Biologists is adopting. This pro-knowledge structure will not be possible if everyone tend to rely on a central leadership as in general business or governmental organization.
2.3 Virtual leadership: "anticipate, create, dissolve"
In contrast to some pictures of an online organizer as a hot-blooded and techno-centric young punk, one requires eternal patience and understanding of human behavior to make things work for a longer time while not receiving tangible reward! Nevertheless, ultimately one needs to look for burnout-proof measures to conserve the organizational knowledge.
In an organization with flattened or distributed leadership, developing in an environment as fragile like Internet, I would suggest a member, especially its core organizers, to anticipate, create, and dissolve in the common creation. This would help to converge personal brilliance into organization creativity. The need for successful synthesis will motivate one to innovate; learning and growth would come naturally with it.
Firstly, to anticipate possible scenario and pro-active in action so that there is no need for another actor to actively ask and do follow-up. This helps cut down the effect of concentrating the thinking and workload on certain individuals. There are simply too many questions to ask on the Internet. However, it would be more productive if we take the initiative to offer an answer, solution or a model at the same time.
Secondly, to create. Internet is an empirical and practical medium. Once gaps or need are anticipated, one goes on to propose what needs to be done. By proposing and acting, one is actually creating a new scenario or process that others can readily see, comprehend and respond. This reduces unnecessary philosophical discourse and steps in decision making. In addition, having a creation gives you a sense of ownership, and ownership is very much tied to sense of achievement and belonging.
Thirdly, to dissolve. Once all the team members find the results acceptable, they must dissolve in that structure to keep improving, protecting and proliferating the creation, be it a course, project or a sub-division. "Dissolve" here compels one to let the common structure overrides other interests that may be at conflict with the common objectives. An active worker on the Internet very often belong concurrently to other network, as well as having demand and agenda from physical institutions and not least personal forward planning. Should people see every project only as a step in his pathway to fulfilling personal need or future projects, the problem of cooperation will always exist and the cross-networking vigor cannot be induced. There will always be re-invention and duplication along the line with the resulting short-lived creation littering all over the Internet. Both civility and civilization on the Internet could hardly advance this way.
Once going through the process of anticipating, creating and dissolving, one will become alert of future need and be able to play instrumental role on the stability and growth of the online community. When most of the members manage to gauge an understanding of what makes or breaks a virtual organization or online community, a purely virtual entity would have the foundation to make a difference in both science and Internet.
2.4 Emphasis on project-based management
We set mission and long term goals. But if everything were to be seen as attainable only 4-5 years from now, it can be a mental torture for all the kind volunteers. The result can be the burnout, dilution of focus and break-down of team dynamics or the team. No virtual work should be allowed to drag on without a regular pause for a sign which says "we have done well again, let's have Champagne!".
There is a need to rely on several smaller projects, run in parallel or consequentially in the course of fulfilling the long term organizational objectives. A project also allows members who can give their best shot in a given period to work together and to innovate. One can expect beautiful synthesis to take place from these focussed need, interests and commitment.
At Internet Biologists, each edition of BRI which lasts for about three months from planning to delivery are examples of these smaller projects. These short-term projects serve excellently as an avenue for leadership renewal, and for cultivating organizational leadership.
3. Towards long term organizational relationship: "ask, learn, follow-up and grow"
Marshall Goldsmith, in "The Leader of the Future" (4) suggested that the effective leader of the future will consistently and efficiently ask, learn, follow up and grow. This is critical in the management of knowledge intensive environment, like Internet Biologists.However, as Internet is a very different sociological medium, and assuming the present level of civility, it seems to me the leader of new or short-term Internet-based voluntary projects will not likely to have the structural support to play his role this way.
Dedicated leaders in these circumstances are the obedient servants of their colleagues. This may even be the case for some profit-based online projects where the leader or moderator needs to be accommodative to sustain the customer base or memberships.
Interpersonal relationship is a key component to organizational development. While the model of virtual leadership "anticipate, create, dissolve" expounded above may help to improve short-term working effectiveness and project development, a long term personal relationship, as motivated through the notion of "ask, learn, follow up and grow" is crucial to Internet Biologists which has set a mission with long term goals.
Although some members (especially among project leaders and supporting organizers) who have known each others for a longer period of time develop among themselves personal understanding and rapport, many virtual projects have been very much preoccupied with getting results and have done little in general relationship building. I am hopeful that, as Internet Biologists grow older and become more stable, and all the projects and roles are well defined, the future organizers would have the privilege of leading Internet Biologists the "ask, learn, follow up and grow" way.
It could spell trouble if not: the expansion of projects, scope, direct and indirect membership, and increasingly complex inter-project or divisional coordination and organizational issues will necessitate somebody to be the main and central information and knowledge processor. The future organizer of the Internet Biologists will be less of a project activist, but more of a true knowledge manager who will concentrate on and probably do just knowledge and relationship management. The time may not be very far from now.
4. Concluding Remarks
Most of the issues related to development and sustainability of a purely virtual entity may not be new to somebody well versed with organizational management. For instance, some of challenges mentioned here fit nicely into the system archetypes discussed in Peter Senge's "The 5th Discipline". However, being manifested in forms not encountered before, these issues and problems take both time and experience to be recognized and characterized. This article lists a few of them and suggests measures for the development of a cyber-architecture within which knowledge can be developed. The author hopes that more perspectives from other online organizers will be available to fill the gaps in our search for permanency on the Internet. This will fasten the pace for making Internet a meaningful and effective sphere - be it a supplement, an extension, or a better substitute for present institutions.Acknowledgement
The author thanks M. Goldsmith for discussing the contextual application of "ask, follow up, learn and grow", and pointing out the need for long term relationship in building an organization, and H. W. Ng, W. K. Chai and G. Fuellen for editorial comments.1. This is an excellent article about cooperation on the Internet: Peter Kollock and Marc Smith, "Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and the Conflict in Computer Communities" http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/vcommons.htm
2. Peter M Senge, The Fifth Discipline (London: Century Business, 1992)
3. "The Skills Employers REALLY Want" http://www.nextwave.org/server-java/SAM/pasttool/tool9.htm).
4. Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith and Richard Bechard (eds), The Leader of the Future (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996), p.227.
The author can be contacted at chlau@emile-21.com.
Public release November 4, 1998.