What: Financial Times special report about the current downturn offering opportunities for distributing leadership and the use of flexible virtual teams
Posts to which it is related: What President Obama Teaches Us For Leading Virtually, So Far And Yet So Near, Leading Virtual Communities: Do We Have the Answers, Are Casual Virtual Team Participants Endangering Virtual Teams
Bottom line: According to the article’s author, Professor Lynda Gratton of the London Business School, downturns often lead to fresh ideas. Two new fresh ideas are likely to emerge from the current downturn: wider distribution of leadership and creation of flexible virtual teams. Today, many question the wisdom of placing so much power in the hands of few people at the top of an organization. Research has shown us that often the best decisions are made by an “intelligent crowd” rather than an omnipotent individual. With the availability of technology that enables democratic and distributed decision-making, the time may be ripe for a shift towards wider distribution of leadership. Prof. Gratton states that people tend to assume that face-to-face working trumps virtual working. Borrowing from her own research, she argues that this assumption is wrong. As long as virtual teams are inspired by a meaningful task, a fascinating question, or a compelling vision, they can be more productive and innovative than face-to-face teams. Prof. Gratton suggests to executives that they respond to the opportunities provided by the current downturn by experimenting with new practices.

What: NY Times blog article about Cisco making permanent cuts in travel
Posts to which it is related: What President Obama Teaches Us For Leading Virtually, So Far And Yet So Near, Wonderland: A Tool For Online Collaboration, Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology
Bottom line: John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO, recently told analysts during an earnings conference call that Cisco has saved approximately $4,500 per employee by cutting down on travel. The CEO also indicated that these cuts are going to be made permanent. In addition to showing investors that Cisco is careful about it expenses during these difficult times, the CEO was also trying to advertise Cisco’s technology, such as telepresence videoconferencing, web meeting applications, and collaboration software, that enables businesses to cut down on travel.  According to the article, Cisco now holds 4,000 video conferences weekly and its use of the WebEx meeting software has surged 3,100 percent. Additionally, activity on discussion forums has jumped 1,600 percent.

What: NY Times article about significantly improved video calling with Skype’s new program
Posts to which it is related: Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology
Bottom line: Skype released version 4.0 of its program a few days ago. Among the most notable change in the latest version is the ability to have a high quality video chat with no delay. The improvement is most significant when users at both ends have the latest program and are connected by high-speed Internet. Even if one of the users has the latest software, there is an improvement in quality. The article’s author found that alternatives to Skype (iChat, Oovoo, and Sightspeed) did not match Skype’s immediacy or audio and video performance. However, video-chat on Skype is still one-to-one, whereas the alternatives enable video meetings with participants from different parts of the world.  The Leading Virtually team is a big time user of Skype and it looks forward to using Skype’s new program.