Individual's Self Reflection


By Winnie Lo

Introduction


The group project of High Performance Collaboration forms an important element in our learning journey of all the theories we have learnt in this course including negotiation, creativity, virtual organizing, knowledge management and conflict resolution. This ensures the translation of knowledge into work environment which leaded to continuous improvement of an organization.


Team Structure


The team consists of 5 students who come from two classes:
  • No of full time (day time students): 3
  • No of part-time (evening class students): 2
In this group project, I only worked with one night time classmate (part-time) together with three day time students (full-time). It was the first time for me to do a project with day time students and I think that it’s very challenging for me to do so as the all the students come from different places like China and France whom have different perspectives, ideas and thoughts, fortunately, both sides were satisfied with final project outcome.



Goals


At the very beginning of this project, we have committed to put our best effort based on what we have learnt in classes and contribute back to our group in achieving goals as follows:
  • To complete the project as well as the blog and presentation with high quality level on time by using different communication tools to liaise and negotiate with different team members.
  • To generate and enhance the knowledge of this course required regarding to negotiation, creativity, virtual organizing, knowledge management and conflict resolution.


Communication Tools & Frequency


  • Communication tools: Emails and WhatsApp Messages
  • Frequency: nearly every day

Due to the time conflict and based on the rationale of the project, I couldn't and didn't meet the daytime teammates as what we have to form and collaborate with is a virtual company. Hence, I communicated with daytime team members through emails and WhatsApp messages which are the most common and convenient communication tools for us. When the team first came together, all the team members had very big ambitious in doing a good project and committed to put our best effort in achieving this target in doing a good project with the purpose of focusing on not only what Frank's want, but also much more information and knowledge we can generate from different sources outside. Hence, we did set the timeline related to what we had to be done from time to time like finding two companies for collaboration in 2 weeks as its the core pillar for us in completing the project. So, in those two weeks, many suggestions and ideas ejected out every day from both day time and evening class members. For example, toy company vs design company and toy company vs charity organization. As the project schedules were very tight, I nearly communicated with my teammates every day for the update about the directions, content and theme of the project based on the timeline and goals being set and committed by whole teams for having a high quality project finishing on time before through email. This kind of actions had kept very well until the end of the presentation which was not an easy task for all of us as all of us were very busy no matter in business matter or other subjects. 


Responsibilities and Beliefs


As mentioned, my group consisted of both part time and full time students. For part time members including me, we have advantages / competitive advantages of having much more working experience and hence would focus on contributing on the practical skills like reminding if all the ideas suggested were logical, acceptable, reasonable or even rational where for full time students that they have higher talents in theoretical aspects in which they are very familiar with the theories being taught in the class. In other words, what I shared with my group was the analytical skills rather than theoretical using. I believed that our team would have a sparkling effect or synergy effect as each member have different talents and strengths amongst our group mates that I think each of us are professionals. So, I believed all of them are capable enough to provide creative and valuable ideas in order to have a high quality project completion on time.


Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Technology



There are many Advantages of using technology including:

  • High accessibility
  • Time saving
  • Efficient
  • No time limit

As mentioned, for all the discussions, we used many kinds of technologies like emails and WhatsApp as the core tools for communication due to the advantage of convenient and high accessibility. It’s no doubt that technology has been well developed in Hong Kong. It is not very difficult for us to access internet as well as email or WhatsApp to connect with each members. By using those technologies, our group members could contacted with each others for asking questions, providing resources and guiding members around the project from time to time at anytime anywhere. In order words, it’s very convenience for us to connect with each other through using technology. The main reason is that due to operation need, I have to attend the business trip in sometime, the use of the technology allowed me to connect with my group even if I was out of town or with time lap.




Apart from the advantages, there are many Disadvantages of using technology including:

  • Blur or ambiguous messages / information
  • Communication noise
  • The occurrence of company languages or slangs
As one coin has two sides, the use of technology also has its disadvantage. In our group, as some of the members used slangs or computer languages, it leaded to the occurrence of noise during the communication processes. It means that the using of those technologies might not the best methods or channels to communicate. To solve the problem, its essentials for us to communicate via mobile phone to clarify the points we didn't make it clear. After making a phone call with member related and came up with summarized emails, all communication noises could be settled finally.  


Conflicts and Solution






Apart from the communication barriers mentioned, there was the occurrence of conflicts during the discussion process. Details are as follows:

1. Company


Conflict: Company we should choose for collaboration

In order to achieve the aims of virtual, it required all the team members from day time and evening classmates to think about what kind of company we would like to choose for collaboration with the purpose of establishing a new virtual business. During the process, day time members suggested to use Toys Company to collaborate with Design Company where my team (evening class team) thought that it couldn't achieve the aims of virtual. Hence, my team suggested choosing Toys Company to collaborate with non-profit charity organization. As it was the first step of the overall project, it’s very important for us to identify the right company in order to follow the right direction to achieve the final goal of establishing a virtual company. After providing several reasons or how virtual of using for choosing non-profit charity organization with a long and winding discussion processes, day time members accepted our points of view as we had provided many physical evidences to them and finally decided to collaborate with Toys Company and non-profit charity organization. 

2. Business Model


Conflict: The details of business model

During the process of developing the business model, each member had different ideas. Day time students planned to make use of the discussion board ideas through e-portal for designing product where evening class students thought that make use of ideas from HKYAF is much better. Both sides held our point and finally we accepted to use day time students’ ideas as we though it’s not a big deal for overall project that the business model could be freely to adjusted if reasonable.

3. Presentation Method


Conflict: Presentation tools used for the presentation (PowerPoint vs. Blogger)

This is an only conflict occurred amongst my evening teammate and me. Throughout the overall project, my classmate held the same points of view no matter on what aspects. However, for the presentation, my evening teammate would like to present it by using power point as she thought it would be much more attractive. However, I hold my point that why we didn't use the blog directly as the blog had already been finished. It could also be attractive if we designed the blog well with much more effect on it. By providing much more information about the advantages of using the blog for presentation, my classmate did make a concession and accept my point finally.


Conclusions
All in all, this project offers me many knowledge regarding to negotiation, creativity, virtual organizing, knowledge management and conflict resolution. In this project, we have to negotiate with different team members, make use of the creativity to complete the project or presentation to make all the things fun, have a virtual organizing with day time students' company, pick the best choice of our ideas as well as have knowledge management and solve the conflicts based on what we have learnt in the class. Although this project is work on a virtual company, these knowledge plays an important role in the reality as the success of business sector in Hong Kong is highly dependent on it. Therefore it is crucial to understand and develop expertise in collaboration in order to yield long-term success. Although this project is focus on collaborating with two groups to form a virtual company, it still fascinates me because of its applicability to the real world. It is very more relevant to daily life than most people realize and very few other academic disciplines offer comparable daily life correlations. The market place nowadays is so competitive, I believe knowledge of collaboration is a key to helping companies stand out from competitors and is therefore indispensable to any businesses. 






By Terrica Lun


Introduction

The final project of creating a virtual collaboration in virtual teams is a project that I need to work with my teammate as well as one of the groups from morning class. During the whole project, I have to apply different theories learned from the course, including collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution, virtual organizing, etc. It can provide a real environment to me to apply what I have learned to a real situation.


Team Structure and Timeline


For our group, we have one group from morning class and one group from evening class:
  • Morning class students (full-time students): number of team mates is 3.
  • Evening class students (part-time students): number of team mates is 2.
This was my first time to do a project with morning class students, who are full-time students and come from different countries, like China and France, by using with virtual way. It is very challenging for me as I do not have many experiences on how to work with them. I did not know what their expectations to the project were and working style because of different culture. But when I started to communicate with them, I found that my worries were meaningless as all of them were very nice. Even though we came from different countries and had different background, they are students and we have working experience, all of us used our own strengths to do the project to add more values in order to have the synergy effect. For example, the morning class students were very creative and had better understanding on theories, they could always suggest many ideas and applied with the theories. We, the evening class students, had working experiences, we could always raise some points about how a company work on their ideas.


Goals

At the beginning of doing this project, all of us committed that we would try our best effort and time to complete our work and achieve the below goals:
  • To complete the blog and presentation in high quality by using different virtual communication tools to communicate with each other and applying what we learned in the course
  • To enrich of our own knowledge of collaboration through a real situation, such as the skills of collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution, virtual organizing, etc.
Luckily, both of two groups could work well and felt satisfied to what we did in the project.


Communication Tools and Frequencies




Since this is a project that needs us to do the collaboration as a virtual team, we used the two popular and easy ways to do the communication: emails and WhatsApp messages. Our first communication was using email after we knew who would become our group mates of the virtual team, and using of WhatsApp messages afterwards. At the beginning of the discussion, we nearly had emails or WhatsApp messages every day since we still did have any conclusion on about our topic and very clear direction. After we had a clear direction of our topic, we reduced the frequencies of emails and WhatsApp messages as we could to work at our own side separately. Also, we mostly started the discussion on a particular point via WhatsApp messages and having the discussion. This is because WhatsApp message is a faster and easier way to discuss among the group. Afterward, in order to make sure we were on the same direction and had the same thought, we would send an email as the conclusion of what we discussed and agreed on.



It is no doubt that there are both advantages and disadvantages of using technology, i.e. emails and WhatsApp messages for our case, to facilitate the team’s work:



Advantages:



  • No time limitation. Since we, the evening class, need to have work in the day time, it is very difficult to be reached immediately when we are at work. By using the technology, we can just send the emails or WhatsApp messages anytime and reply other afterwards.
  • Able to access anytime anywhere. We can send emails and leave WhatsApp messages anytime anywhere when we have the phone on hand when needed.
  • Having reference of what we discussed. Like in the business world, “black and white” is very important. By using emails or WhatsApp messages, we could have the record of what we discussed and concluded. 





Disadvantages:


  • Easy to conduct misunderstanding. By using of words only, it is not easy to explain some difficult or conceptual points, for example the actual flow of the business model. It may cause misunderstanding easily. So, more time is required to explain the unclear points, or even had a phone call, in order to make sure we are on the same direction.
  • Easy to miss or overlook. If we have many emails or whatsapp messages, it is easy for us to miss or overlook the emails or whatsapp messages. A better way is to create a meaningful subject so that others can identify the emails or whatsapp messages are related to what.
  • Waiting time of reply. Since we were not face-to-face meeting for the discussion, we needed to wait for the reply from others after sending out the emails or whatsapp messages, especially emails. So, we would remind others via whatsapp after sending the email.

Conflicts and Solutions


During our discussion of the virtual company, we have few conflicts:


1. Industry/Company selected for the virtual company


In this project, the first important decision was that we need to decide was which industry or company that morning class students and evening class students would be chosen for collaboration. Firstly, the morning class students suggested to use Toys Company and Design Company to do the collaboration. However, the collaboration between these two industries could not achieve the basic objective to build a virtual company. So, we suggested to change the companies to Toys Company and a non-profit charity organization. During the discussion, we provided many reasons and explanations for the suggestion. Finally, both of morning class team and evening class team agreed the final decision of the selected companies: morning class students to be the Toys Company and evening class students to be the non-profit charity organization.


2. Business model for the virtual company


The second conflict was about the business model for the virtual company. During the discussion on developing the business model, both sides had different ideas from our own perspective. The morning class students suggested to use the discussion board which was developed in the website to collect the ideas for designing the toys. But we would prefer to use the design made by the youngsters from HKYAF which should be a better and more close to the our company’s objective. We could not make the decision for nearly 2 weeks. Finally, we compromised to use the idea of morning class students as we thought that it should be a big deal no matter of using which way and we did not want to hold at one stage for so long time.


3. Presentation method/tool for presenting the idea of the virtual company


The third conflict was about the presentation method/tool within my team, evening class. Firstly, I would prefer to use PowerPoint to do the presentation as it was more attractive. But my team mate preferred to use the blog to do the presentation directly as the blog was ready. It could still be attractive if we could design the blog well. After discussing the advantages of using 2 methods, I accepted my team mate’s idea finally.


Conclusions 


As concluded, from this project of virtual collaboration between 2 teams, it is a very good chance for me to work with  those unknown morning class and a good chance for me to apply what I have learned from the class which are just the theories in real situation, including collaboration, negotiation, conflict resolution.

Using virtual communication ways, e.g. sending emails, are neither an efficient nor effective way to work with others , especially for the first time cooperation, which is also aligned to what I experienced form my work. Many conflicts and misunderstandings should occur and need to take time to solve them and clarify among the teams. However, from this project, I have learned and experienced about how to solve the conflicts and clarify the misunderstandings in more practical ways, such as "Devise and implement a common method for resolving conflict" for solving the conflict of "Who is the final decision maker on final designed toys?" and "Provide people with criteria for making trade-off" for solving the conflict of "How to spin-off the cost and profit amongst HKYAF and HOW2WORK?". All of them are very useful to my real working life as well.







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