While there is no single accepted way to kick off a group in a collaborative process, my experience and the available research says you should start small with a specific, achievable goal, rather than trying to implement a full technology platform at the same time as you’re organizing the project.  Stewart Mader, author of the book Wikipatterns, says that you should focus on the work; help people see the value from the work and the rest will follow.

Organizational scholar Karl Weick wrote in 1984:

A small win is a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals. Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.

This still holds true today. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer followed 238 professionals in 26 creative teams across seven companies and three industries, gathering over 12,000 person/days of data. They report their results in the forthcoming book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. In a recent talk I attended, Prof. Amabile described how progress in meaningful work is the most important factor in people’s engagement. This progress doesn’t have to include a breakthrough — just maintain forward momentum.

Keep these ideas in mind when you start your next collaboration project. Go for the small wins, rather than the stretch goal, and focus on the work rather than the tools. Follow Georgina‘s advice and take a “tools last” approach to collaboration. She says, “tools are not the process, nor are they the work. Tools are there to make complex tasks easier or more efficient for your team.” Get the team’s work started, then see what tools will be most helpful.

What is your experience?  Do you agree that small wins beat out stretch goals for kicking off a new collaborative project?

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The problem with this purely quantitative approach is that it misses the great potential of collaboration: innovation.

Using a team, rather than an individual, isn’t just a way to get things done faster, it’s also a way to do things better, and do better things. Gone are the days when innovation was handled by management. Smart businesses know that idea generation, prototyping and testing happens on the ground, on the frontline, at the coalface — whatever cliche you prefer.

When viewed in this context, the shorter timeframes implied by the increased capacity in a team must necessarily expand. Why? Because innovation takes time.

Research

You don’t know what you don’t know. Innovators understand the value of research, through resources, other people, practical experimentation, and so on. And good research — the kind that’s thorough, creative, collaborative, and gives the innovator time to build prototypes and test cases to reduce the risk of innovation to the business — takes time.

An iterative philosophy of innovation might shorten the time it takes to get your innovative idea up and running, but it still takes time, as do subsequent iterations of the idea.

Discussion

We can’t innovate in a vacuum. Team-based innovators need opportunities to speak with other team members, to debate, contribute, conduct more research and report back on their findings.

They need to understand how the innovation they’re proposing will impact others’ work. What parts of their idea can others piggyback onto? What parts present potential risks or dependencies for others’ inputs?

Reflection and Planning

Most team leaders love a good plan, but we can easily underestimate the value of reflection.

Once a team member has conduced research, and discussed it with others, that person will need time to reflect on all that information if they’re to formulate a solid working plan to implement the innovation. Multiply that work by the number of people collaborating within your team, and it’s easy to see that reflection is both important and potentially time-consuming.

It’s true that reflective time isn’t bounded by the restrictions of the working day, but that doesn’t mean we can avoid allocating time for reflection at work.

Through reflection, the team can anticipate problems, mitigate risks, and pull together the strands of teamwork to make the implementation proceed smoothly. Skimp on reflective time — or ignore it altogether — and your increase the risk of having good innovations fail.

Managing Multiple Inputs

Innovating solo avoids many of the hassles of effectively integrating multiple inputs — inputs that may themselves be innovative (and therefore behave unpredictably), or may need to be integrated within an unprecedented system or framework (which in itself is unpredictable).

In the one-man-band, you know what you’ve created, and you know how it all needs to fit together. But innovative teams must manage the unpredictability of their individual innovations (and the processes by which they are developed), the unpredictability of the innovative system into which they fit, and the unpredictability of their colleagues’ innovations.

Communication is never perfect: a team member may believe they understand how something will work, but be surprised when they finally see the finished component. Using a transparent approach to innovation is a common way to lessen the likelihood of this eventuality, but it also takes time.

Making Collaborative Innovation Efficient

Plenty of techniques and tools have been developed to help us innovate more efficiently and more successfully. But it’s important that we understand the nature of team innovation if we’re to get the most out of the models we choose.

People are central to this equation. Smaller, more tightly-knit teams may be less likely to see each other as “human resources”, but it’s still important to understand how team members develop ideas individually and together, and to allow sufficient time for the less-visible aspects of those processes to take place.

How do you manage the time your team takes to innovate? Are you using a specific model for innovative collaboration, or are you winging it?

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Throughout my online career, I’ve been part of several web working teams. On most teams I am just a regular member, but there’s the rare occasion when I find myself the team leader. Like now, for example, when my former graphic design classmates asked me to lead their new studio.

Here’s the problem: we’ve never worked together before. How could we work together and have a united approach to design? What’s so unique about us? Can we figure this out even if we’re working remotely?

To address these questions, we had to figure out our team culture. But as Jason Fried of 37Signals pointed out, culture is not something you create. How do I, as the leader of the team, provide a working environment to foster the right culture? Here are some of the strategies I’m trying:

Deep Involvement

The way that I used to set up web working teams was that each member just kept to him or herself, not minding the work of others or the business as a whole. While this was good for productivity, it wasn’t a good environment for generating new ideas or making everyone feel invested in the team. They need not be involved in the daily minutiae, but they have to know the essential business processes. Getting them involved in research, planning and brainstorming sets up an environment where you can cultivate hidden or underdeveloped strengths. This also provides opportunities for new ideas, often with a fresh, external perspective on how to make the team work better.

But this doesn’t mean that you should hold virtual group meetings for every important business decision. In fact, deliberating on big decisions as a group isn’t a good idea. Those with strong personalities tend to be more expressive of their opinions, while others end up just following the herd. To get the most out of each person, talk to them individually before coming together as a group, so that everyone’s opinion is heard equally and you merely moderate or summarize their ideas.

Encourage Sharing

If your team uses collaboration or social media tools, don’t limit it to business use only. Encourage your team to share other things  – whether it’s inspiring quotes, interesting blog posts, or the odd personal photo. Although these may look like informational clutter, they create a good environment for deeper collaboration. Also, they allow you to peek at each member’s individual culture and background.

Freedom to Engage

When looking at one designer’s recent work, I asked him why his digitally rendered drawings didn’t have the detail and dynamic lines of his hand rendered ones. He said “I’m not used to starting a drawing digitally.”

“Why don’t you draw it by hand, polish it, and then digitally render it?”
“I thought you wanted me to do it this way.” he replied.

While the designer made the wrong assumption, I should have been clear about the flexibility of his workflow from the beginning. Officially giving your team the freedom to find and develop their own processes is important. Team leaders can give everyone tips on how they can do their job better, but nothing beats the strategies they come up with on their own.

Taking a cue from Google, I also encouraged my team to spend some time working on projects that they’re passionate about. To one, this was a comic strip, to another, it was his own typeface. These projects might not directly result in profitable endeavors, but it allows them to explore different ideas and gain new skills.

Postpone the mission/vision thing

It used to be that whenever I started a new venture, I always had a solid business plan written out, complete with mission and vision statements, SWOT analyses, etc. Now, I just make a mind map or a one-page overview. Here’s why: I realized that it’s rare (or impossible) to know exactly what the final result is going to be like. The same could be said about forming teams. Give your team a bit of time to play around and figure out where you want to go before officially launching anything. Only craft your working manifesto or mission statement when you’ve settled and formed a collective identity for yourselves. Even then, it should only serve as a reminder of the things you wanted to do anyway.

As for my team, I don’t know who we are — yet. But by involving them in the important aspects of the business and allowing them to engage freely in projects that move them, I’m hopeful that we’ll arrive at the definition together.

Do you work with an online team? What is your group culture like and what process did you go through to establish it?

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What this really means is that I finally have a decent reason to use Google Groups. In the past, I think I’ve belonged to a maybe one Group, and it didn’t work out all that well. The members generally forgot it existed, and it acted more or less as a glorified mailing list. Now, though, since I already use Docs and Calendar and often want to share content from both with multiple people, Groups has matured to become a full-featured business tool.

Replacing PM Tools for Small Teams

There are a lot of online project management and collaboration tools available free online that do the same sort of thing Google’s new sharing features do, but most of them are overkill for small team work. Say, for example, that you’re tasked with forming a small team at work with three or four people. The entire purpose of your team is to draft a new statement of purpose for your annual holiday dinner and year-end review.

Using a complex tool like Basecamp to manage this kind of task is unnecessary, and could be distracting for the team. Setting up a quick Google Group for those involved, and then sharing drafts and meeting times via Docs and Calendars with members of said group is a much simpler and more effective solution, especially if everyone already has a Google account, which, at this stage, shouldn’t be too much to ask for.

Simple, Single-Solution Event Planning

If you already have a Google Group set up for your work place or professional network, then there is no easier way to plan and prepare for an event than using the new sharing features.

Your invitee list is built-in, as long as everyone in your work group is invited to your work-related function or unit-wide meeting. Scheduling a time should be easy, thanks to Google Calendar access. Finally, drafting, finalizing and circulating agendas and meeting documents and supplementary material is a snap with Docs.

Maybe best of all, you can solicit post-meeting feedback from all of your event participants without having to email people individually, or prepare a paper-based survey or feedback form.

Freelancer Resource Sharing and Collaborative Solution Sourcing

If you have a like-minded group of colleagues you consistently go to for tips and advice, and who you help out in turn, then you may already have a Google Group in place for that purpose. If you don’t, the addition of resource sharing gives you a reason to start one.

It’s cleaner and less complicated than Twitter, doesn’t have the character restrictions, and allows for file sharing in addition to discussion. It’s a nice, private way of sourcing solutions for hiccups in your projects, away from the prying eyes of clients. Asking questions on public message boards always carries the risk of an embarrassing discovery.

Another good way for independent freelancers to use Google Groups with sharing is as a document template store. Having less to leverage from is one of the major downsides of being a freelance consultant. Sharing blank templates is a great way for a group of independent contractors to gain some IP to leverage from.

Share and Share Alike

Google Groups always used to be a bit like an awesome collector’s edition comic book. Really seemed like a good thing to have, but at best you put it on a shelf and never really look at it again. Now, it stands a chance of becoming a well-thumbed paperback, thanks to Google Apps integration that really should’ve been there from the beginning.

Does tighter integration with other Google products make Groups more attractive to you?

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I was recently asked to manage a team of graphic designers, all of them fresh graduates with hardly any professional experience. Always eager to help, I accepted the opportunity, knowing that it would be challenging and educational, for both myself and the team.

I soon discovered that working with new freelancers is very different from working with my more accomplished peers. It required me to get back to basics and deal with issues that I hadn’t encountered before. Just as I had expected, there’s a whole new set of opportunities and problems that come from working with “newbies”.

The Benefits

One observable benefit to working with new freelancers is that you’ll be forced to keep things as simple as possible. It’s not a good idea to overwhelm them at the start with new tools and complex work processes. Introduce these things gradually. This will give you the opportunity to keep the work process streamlined.

Another advantage is the fresh perspective they have. This allows them to bring more innovative ideas to the table. Sometimes, getting too used to a certain process can leave us less likely to see the flaws in the way we work. If your team of newbies is perceptive enough, they can spot these flaws for you.

While there may be some benefits to working with new online freelancers, there are also many challenges. These challenges seem daunting, but fortunately there are ways to work around them.

Underdeveloped Work Habits

Usually, new web workers haven’t established efficient solo working habits. It might take a while before they get the hang of setting deadlines, boosting productivity, and motivating themselves to work well without someone looking over their shoulder all the time.

For this particular problem, writer/editor Ruth Thaler-Carter recommends setting official working guidelines. “Anytime you deal with people new to a given arena, you have to provide guidelines. Even experienced pros might need some direction to deal with a new topic or genre,” she says. Prepare a document showing the ideal work process, including the roles of each team member. This gives everyone a better idea of the scope of their own work.

It also helps to discuss all expectations from the start. This helps to get any misconceptions out in the open, allowing you to correct them early on.

Familiarity With Tools

If some members of your team aren’t tech-savvy, they might not be familiar with the communication and project management tools you use. Even if they are used to social networking tools, like Facebook and Twitter, they might be unaware of how the web is used for business.

To fix this problem, provide a list of required tools, including the reasons why they’re needed, as well as video tutorials on how to use them. Leading by example and sharing your expectations also works, as suggested by Mary Ellen Schutz, an editor. According to her, “If [they] are very skilled at what they do, just very informal in their communications, show them a better way. Be very clear in your expectations.”

Need For a Physical Office

Although this might be less common in the future, there’s also a chance that your team of new web workers will see the virtual office as “less professional” or “less real” than physical offices. This perspective can be detrimental to the team if it means they’ll take their work less seriously.

When I was leading a local group of freelance designers, many of them brought up the idea of moving to a “brick and mortar” office in order to boost their professional image. It was unnecessary at that time, because they had minimal capital and all their clients were offshore. If your team feels this way, shift their focus to the things that really will make them look more professional instead – whether it’s their quality of service or skill levels.

Sometimes, they might be looking for a physical office because of the interaction and collaboration with colleagues that physical proximity brings. If this is the case with your team, encourage them to interact with each other while brainstorming over Skype. Or, if you work with a local team, you could schedule coworking sessions at least once a month.

It may take a lot of initial hard work to turn fresh, inexperienced students into reliable professionals, but investing the time and energy to do it is worthwhile. After all, it was only a few years ago that I, too, started out just as green as they did.

Have you worked with new or inexperienced freelancers? What was your experience like?

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Late last year, Celine shared some tips on avoiding conflicts within a teleworking team. Around the same time I came across UK-based “business psychology” consultants, Psycuity, a company that asserts that it can help design better teams through understanding the underlying psychology of individual team members. Could this type of understanding be useful in figuring out how distributed web workers could work together more effectively?

Using psychometric testing and a long pedigree in psychology, Psycuity has codified a lot of the personality types, compatibilities and behaviors we might ordinarily find difficult to measure. Using these measurements, we can make helping more informed decisions about our teams.

After completing a short online questionnaire — it took about 20 minutes — I was called by one of Psycuity’s cofounders, Ian Hudson, who talked me through my test results. Ian had no prior knowledge or understanding of my work or personality, but spent half an hour or so breaking down his analysis of my interpersonal style, thinking style, coping strategies, leadership qualities, influencing styles and where in teams I would best fit. Frankly, I was astonished at Ian’s insights, which he later provided to me as a printed report. They accurately reflected probably around 90-95 percent of my self-image.

Psychometric testing is by no means a new tool for those managing and recruiting personnel, but the Psycuity guys have managed to package and streamline the experience to require minimal input from the test subject, while still providing a rich and very detailed analysis of their capabilities and qualities.

Circling back to Celine’s original thoughts on avoiding conflicts within teams, I wonder if it’s possible to use a company such as Psycuity to predict how well a group of untethered workers will work together. There are some interesting questions to consider:

• Could Psycuity-style tests help prepare guidelines on how best to coalesce a diverse group of people into an effective team?
• How would this type of screening be applicable to assess the “fitness” of a coworking community?
• Can it only really work for people that work together in the same organization — or  would it also be useful for a group of collaborating freelancers.

Individually, I found a great deal of insight into my own behavior, but I’m curious to hear what others think. Can business psychology be used to enhance team spirit between disconnected, untethered, web workers?

Do leave your thoughts in the comments below — I’d love to hear everyone’s views on this.

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With Quickoffice, users can view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files and share them over a wireless connection. Quickoffice is actually a collection of three individual apps, two of which are already available for the iPhone now. These are Quicksheet ($12.99, iTunes link), for editing Excel spreadsheets, and Quickoffice Files ($3.99, iTunes link), for viewing a variety of files, and transferring them to and from your device. The third application in the series is Quickword, which brings the crucial addition of Word document editing.

When (and if) it’s approved, it’ll also retail for $12.99 separately, or you can get the whole Quickoffice package together in one app for a price that’s yet to be revealed. I’d guess you might save a few bucks by getting the bundle, so look for it to be priced around $19.99.

News of the app’s submission comes closely on the heels of Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop dropping hints at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this week that document editing was indeed on its way to the iPhone. I’ve thought, until now, that the reason we hadn’t seen it yet was that Microsoft and Apple together were blocking it, but maybe Elop was referring to third-party apps like Quickoffice with his subtle suggestions. Then again, maybe they want to release their own branded solution and Quickoffice will be swiftly denied. We’ll find out next week.

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Inspired by the thinking behind Dave Winer’s concept of “river of news,” it is a reflection of the changing nature of news in our time-constrained life. Many of our readers and sources have lamented that they have to read the full story when the real information can be wrapped up in two lines. At the same time, I was finding that my growing network on Twitter was feeding me more interesting stories to read than I could find myself.

So why not combine the two and come up with a live microblog-based newswire? Bloomberg, Reuters and Dow Jones have been using headline and news alerts forever. Except now we can do this on the Internet, using an open source platform (WordPress) and some clever hackery. (More details, along with notes about current and future features, below the fold.)

A Quick Rundown of Features:

1. It will feature 15 to 30 short posts every day. Each post will be less than 250 characters. Headlines are restricted to 115 characters.
2. You can receive the alerts by subscribing to RSS or on Twitter. Or, just sign up for once-a-day e-mail newsletter.
3. We’ll post topical headlines from GigaOM network and partner sites.
4. GigaOM Network editors and writers will file quick news bits relevant to their beats, including breaking stories and hot tips we pick up while on the go.
5. We can use Twitter to file news “from the field” using our Blackberries and/or iPhones. We have worked out a way to interface Twitter with our CMS, WordPress. (Related post, Meet GigaLogue.)

Open To Other Blogs, Too

We are going to use our network to build up this new service, but if you want to participate, it is as simple as getting in touch with us. We are in the process of working with some other blogs who will be feeding their news headlines and short excerpts into our system.

Over a period of time, we are going to open this to more folks and eventually have correspondents from around the world send in their “alerts” to us. But that is in the future. For now we just to make sure it works smoothly.

Other Planned Features:

1. Photos directly from our cell phones or digital camera when we are on the go.
2. On-the-go video clips to this service as well, again mostly from mobile phones or handhelds.
3. IPhone/Mobile Browser version of the site.
4. Special widget that you can embed on your blog.
5. Social networking widgets that will allow you to enjoy this in Facebook or on one of the many social networks and a desktop application based on Adobe Air. (If you want to help us on this, get in touch with me.)
6. More undisclosed features…Stay tuned.

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