Don’t Forget to Talk!

By Michael Sampson
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Recent research highlighted the importance of actually talking with the other people in your global business team, as opposed to just relying on technology enablements such as email. A Duke University professor of management, Jonathon Cummings, studied 108 project teams at Intel over multiple years. The 675 employees spanned 53 locations in 22 countries, and Professor Cummings looked at the different technology enablements they used to communicate—including email, telephone, instant messaging and Web conferencing.

Cummings concluded two main points. First, when team members did not share overlapping work hours, so that real-time interactive conversation could take place, the coordination delay of waiting for others to answer questions or provide data for an issue was the highest. For those that couldn’t actually talk, work took longer. One Intel engineer said, “The engineers need to work together to talk through problems. So, when there are significant time differences, they just can’t make good solid progress without being able to talk.” Based on this main point, Cummings and his co-authors recommend that managers design teams so that there are at least two hours of overlapping work time each day.

The second main point is that while email and other technology tools have a role to play, they were most effective when used in the context of overlapping work hours, and thus the ability for project team members to communicate in real-time. They were good as supplementary aids to communication and collaboration, but not as the whole story.

This study is good evidence for the importance of people being given the opportunity to work together directly, at least some of the time. Getting together in person is great for building trust and making rapid progress on work efforts, and interactive conversations via phone, video or telepresence are essential main stays when face-to-face isn’t possible.

The research has been published in Information Systems Research, a top IS academic journal.

Published January 28, 2010