What kids can teach us about living and working virtually September 27, 2010

My son RJ (on the right) and his friend Toby (on the screen) are two happy 9ish kids who have known each other for years; they’ve gone to school together, and actually both sets of parents get along pretty well too, spending holidays and other fun times together.

About 2 months ago, Toby and his family moved from Amsterdam to Lagos, Nigeria — Toby’s dad is on an international assignment.

RJ misses Toby, Toby misses RJ. We miss his parents, his parents miss Amsterdam and their friends and family. We know that we’ll see each other at Christmas, but that still does not completely fill  the break in the cadence of our previous day-to-day living.

Toby and RJ are physically separated by 3170 miles/5101 kilometers.

Not even as long as 50 years ago, such physical separations between people were the death knell for most relationships; jetting about was not yet in vogue or available to the masses; international phone calls were outrageously expensive and letters could only fill the gaps so far and for so long before contact would become sporadic and then flicker out completely. That’s just the way it was: out of sight, eventually out of mind.

With the rise of the Internet and email, and then later the World Wide Web, an amazing thing started to happen: asynchronous communication with shorter cycle times meant that relationships could remain more “vital” through repeated contacts as people moved from paper to electrons flashing on a screen. Later came real-time voice and video communications, and then finally came the tidal wave of mass communication computing through commoditized, integrated social networking platforms combining mail, IM, voice and video.

With all of these new, interconnected tools and  technologies at our disposal, it is not only possible to maintain relationships, but rekindle long lost ones; it seems that we have finally overcome physical barriers in maintaining our friendships and other relationships. This is all a wonderfully creative amalgam fueled by disruptive technologies and the need for human beings to communicate, to be seen and heard, and to maintain a sense of belonging.

But all of this potential is not limited to us as individuals, friends and families; the implications are far broader. Businesses and organizations are becoming increasingly aware that fundamental change is afoot and that technology is the leading, enabling edge of that change. Clients come to Pentacle with three questions: “how can I make all of this work for me? How do I, my team, my company, work successfully in this increasingly virtual world? Can you tell us what the rules are?”

At Pentacle, we call of this glorious confusion the World After Midnight and in response to our clients’ questions, we teach the 12 New Rules for the New World day in and day out. Working virtually – that is to say, at a distance and through the use of technology and specialized organizational and behavioral rules – is a way of life for Pentacle tutors; we are spread out around the world and sometimes do not see each other physically for months at a time. But we talk to each other frequently as individuals, meet virtually in groups at regular intervals and in doing so maintain our rhythms as a team.

We hear from many of our friends “yes, yes, I hear you…. but in the real world …..” when we propose solutions on how they can get their organizations to embrace and benefit from virtual work practices just as we do — except at greater scale. People see and hear the buzz about these new technologies, but cannot quite see themselves or other people in their organizations actually working that way. They cannot see themselves adapting the technologies in such a manner; they insist that face-to-face meetings, which require huge expenditures of time and money, are the only way to maintain purposeful relationships and “control” over people and resources, and a “grip” on the predictability of their businesses.

Hmmm.

I set up a Skype video call between Toby and RJ last weekend so that they could say hello to each other. They promptly went into a full-scale play date. Virtually. For the next hour, there were no barriers between them. They laughed, they played with their cameras to show different things in their rooms, they screen shared each other playing video games (the bandwidth between the Netherlands and Nigeria is very good); in short, they were present, they were effective and their interaction was natural. Like ducks to water, these children adapted spontaneously to the shift in their environment. They did not hesitate and ponder the implications of how they were interacting; they just did it. They know who they are to each other, they know their shared history and they just picked up where they left off. I spoke to some friends of mine and they have observed the same phenomenon with their kids.

Can we take these kids’ experience as a learning point for ourselves and the organizations we work in and with? I think so.

Communication and information technologies are innovative and forward looking; they are just as much about tomorrow as they are about  today. Our children represent the adaptive tomorrow. I would say that if they can absorb and successfully integrate into their lives what we are throwing at them today – and do so quickly and effectively – then we must be on the right track in proving a fundamental proposition: not only can we work, play and otherwise interact with each other virtually in a meaningful and natural manner, but it would seem that we are biologically and intellectually predisposed to do so. Our children are proving tomorrow’s business and organizational development case today.

The key challenge to realize tomorrow’s benefits today is to unlearn what we think we know works and is possible and instead learn and apply the New Rules just as your children and other young people already have. Just watch them and remember what Eddie says “the future is now, because many of us are already too late.”