Recently I made a post where I talked about how “e-mail” can kill your company and you; at the end of it, I mention “…but Gtalk is vital for virtual companies…”

Right after I made that statement and hit “Publish” I got to thinking about the truthfulness of what I just said. For some reason it felt “stupid” - if checking my email frequently is a problem, then how can CONSTANTLY chatting on Gtalk be any better?

The next day I evaluated my day and realized something that down right PISSED me off. I was WASTING hours just “chit-chatting” away on Gtalk and not getting anything done - all useless ramble. I was shocked, appalled and wanted to slap myself.

I am going on record today CORRECTING my prior evaluation of Gtalk and all other instant messaging programs.

Yes, they ARE vital for virtual companies - but not if you also have your friends on that account and if you “chit chat” with those who you work with.

Here’s How I’m Changing Things Moving Forward…

Everyone that I typically talk to now knows that to reach me, they need to either e-mail me with URGENT in the subject line or CALL me and ask me to get on Gtalk.

Will I still use instant messaging to communicate with my team? Yes, of course. But, I’m not going to be 100% reachable all the time - they can easily ask me to get on and I will, but then log right off afterwards.

I’ll also get on instant messaging when I am taking a break.

I am officially on record, sorry for giving you the bad advice on the prior post.

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Given that I am just returning today from an international trip where I met with two seperate teams that are absolutely critical to our business and obviously working virtually - I figured it would fit to discuss how we manage a virtual team.

From day 1 our team has been virtual so I’ve gotten quite used to it, however, the more I meet other companies, I have learned that managing a virtual team is quite a task for many and also unsuccesful.

There are many things that we do, some purposely and some just happen by chance that really make a virtual team possible.

Today, let me share some of the TOOLS we use to make it possible…

1. Conference Call Lines

In the U.S. we use www.freeconferencecall.com to run at least 1 team call a week where we have a very specific outline we use:

A) General reporting from the CEO and any other team lead with major news. Here we discuss the status of all on-going projects and any other major developments.

B) We go through all members of call 1 by 1 and ask the following 2 questions:

i) What are the 3 main objectives for this week.
ii) Anything you need from any team members?

** The great thing here is that it makes everyone’s commitments public and also gives everyone a chance to chat live.

If someone commits to doing something, they are now obliged to the entire team. The sense of responsibility drastically increases.

C) We go through any questions anyone has regarding anything going on.

** Our calls range from between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

2. GTalk

Most of us all have Gmail accounts and are constantly logged onto Gtalk so we can easily ping each other instantly if needed.

GTalk allows you to do instant messaging chat and also allows you to use their system for live chat through your computer (which is crystal clear even internationally).

3. Skype

You can host multi-user conference calls through Skype for free which are also free to use.

4. Project Management System

We currently use BaseCamp. This is a system that allows you to create many projects, deadlines, to-do lists, chat boards, etc…all around specific projects. You can also control who has access to what.

http://www.basecamphq.com/

My confession here is that I’m still not very good at using BaseCamp (the rest of the team is), I still prefer receiving e-mail threads, but am trying to get out of that now.

These are the 4 major tools we use to run a virtual team, they are simple and mostly free!

Tip of the Day: Even if you don’t have a virtual team, a weekly team call is critical - it has tremendously helped us stay organized and also build relationships and repore between the team members.

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