Final Group Project: A Virtual Collaboration Between Bank of Warmhearted & Nidas

The Two Sponsoring Companies

1. Nidas - A global sporting goods company
2. Bank of Warmheared - A Chinese retail bank with presence in China and Hong Kong Project objective

Our position is...

"Why not applying commercial practice in fundraising for non-profit charitable organization?"

High Fundraising Cost

Take Oxfam as an example. In the past year, it used $24.671 million in fundraising and marketing, it's approximately 11% of its income.

According to the research from Charity Navigator, the typical charity spends 75% of its budget on programs, 10% on fundraising and 15% on administrative.

Charitable organizations usually need to pay the fundraiser a fixed fee of a percentage of the money raised as return. For example, the MSF (Medicines Sans Frontieres) Doctors Without Borders paid 8% of the donation to the agency - Mission Support for organizing the street fundraising.

Fraud in Fundraising

Fraud may occur in fundraising activities. Criminals may posing as fake staff or fundraiser and committing fraud.

 

From the Perspective of Two Companies

Besides Corporate Social Responsibility

 

Promote Brand Image -> Facilitate Brand Differentiation 

-> Customer Engagement -> Gain Market Share & Increase Sales

The two project sponsoring companies aim to expand their business by promoting their brand image, obtaining brand recognition and gaining access to potential new customers via a charity event.

It targets to attract individuals who enjoy outdoor sport exercise and their friends who are interested in participating in a chartable event. If the event is successful, it will attract a group of individuals and corporations to participate this event on an on-going basis and forming a community. Eventually, it will become a signature national sport and charity event.

The Project destines for a win-win for the commercial companies, participants and charitable organisations. Through the project, those non-profit organisations can have a lower cost in fundraising and more funding for their programs.

 

Project Details

 

An annual charity fund raising, non-competitive long distance cycling event.  

The two commercial companies team up to launch a cycling event to raise fund for charitable organisations. The event will be 1st launched in Hong Kong which is one of the most strategically important location for brand promotion for the China market and Asia. The potential choice of the location of the event will be starting from the Tsing Ma Bridge, a famous landmark of Hong Kong, to the Lautau Island where the participants can enjoy cycling and scenery along the route. It can attract both locals and tourists since normally this route can only be assessed by car.

If take one more step, a “No-driving day” can be promoted for the event or the event can be held on a public holiday to mitigate the effect on the traffic. With the successful in Hong Kong, the event will be held in different major cities in China in subsequent years.

What does the sponsoring companies do?

The two sponsoring companies will launch the event portal together. The site name would be “XXX-YYY-Cycling-for-charity.com”.

The two sponsoring companies will need to line up the local sports related organizations and the local government to support and approve the event.

The global sporting goods company will cooperate with a local bicycle company to provide bicycles to the participants on a loan basis. The participants can custom made their bicycles and choose different parts for their bicycles through the website. Participants will need to pay the costs upfront online via a special launched credit card issued by the event sponsoring bank - Bank of Warmhearted. Then the bicycles will be sent to the participants before the event and so they can have time to adapt to their bicycles. After the event, the participants can keep the bicycles if the participants intend to or they can return the bicycles and get partial of the payment refund.

The global sporting goods company, Nidas, will donate the profits on the bicycles to the charities. The event work jointly with several charitable organizations. Each of them work for different causes. Through the portal, the participants can choose which charities they prefer their donation to be designated. 

The bank will launch a special visa card to the participants and sponsor for the participants for the event. The event portal will be linked to the bank's payment system to ensure the payment and refund process can be completed smoothly. The sponsors of the participants can also make their donations by the visa card. The visa card would be a dual currencies card which is applicable by both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese residents. It is expected that the event will attract both Hong Kong and mainland residents.

The bank will line up selected retailers providing health and sports related products and services in its network to come up with shopping offers for the participants and their sponsors. E.g. sports goods retailers, health clubs, healthy food and drinks and even travel agent service.

The two sponsoring companies will also invite their business partners to sponsor their companies' staff to form corporate team to participate the event.

Other stakeholders of events

1. Individual / Corporate participants (the cyclists)

2. Sponsors for the participants

3. Other supporting organizations

4. Local government

5. Retailer offering the shopping offers

6. The charities who will receive the donations.

ILLUSTRATION MAP

Collaboration Dimensions

The collaboration in this project can be breakdown into 2 levels:

1. Between the two sponsoring companies
2. Between commercial companies & non-profit organizations.

The Virtual Organization

1. Virtual Encounter (Customer Interaction)

Dynamic customization of product or service

Participants can customize their own bicycles through the web without actually seeing and touching the products. Customers are interacting with companies in a different way.

Customer communities

The event's web site and blogging site form an electronic customer communities. The participants, sponsors and charitable organisations are effectively linked.

The Blogging Site that created for this event serves as a membership program. The site would keep running even after the years’ event is completed. Participants can still update their latest status to their friend and the public.

According to the article “Trust and the Virtual Organization”:

“The concept of membership, when made real, would replace the sense of belonging to a place with a sense of belonging to a community.” 

 “A sense of belonging is something humans need if they are to commit themselves to more than simple selfishness.”

Therefore, the Blogging Site can help participants and sponsors establish a sense of belonging which turns out act as a motivating force for joining the event next year or even better recruiting their friends and family to take part in the event.

2. Virtual Sourcing (Asset Configuration)

Nidas outsourcing the build to order bicycles in the event to a local bicycle company, so the two companies can focus on their core competencies - Nidas on marketing and brand management while local bicycle company on manufacturing. As the event is planned to hold annually, a relationship will be developed among Nidas, local bicycle company (subcontractors) and participants (customers).

Why need to go virtual?

1. The project aims to attract individuals from both Hong Kong and Mainland.
2. The project targets to create a community who continue support and participate in the event.
3. Going virtual can Lower the transaction cost and be more convenience for participants. For example, the customization of bicycles is better served by an online system which can offer many different options and parts. If the participants need assistance, personal assistance can be provided via real-time chatting service. Online payment also solves many operational problems involving multiple parties to multiple parties’ payments.
4. It is intend to create a social media like platform which enables the participants, sponsors, the retailers and the charities to be connected each other.

How is the virtual collaboration enhancing performance of both communities?

Virtual Collaboration – Web Page, Blogging Site & Co-brand Credit Card


With reference to the “Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing”,

"Every company should assess how its products and services can be experienced virtually in the new marketing infrastructure. A Web site is essential. The question is how best to use the Web’s power to create superior linkages with customers.:"

Here, we have the Blogging Site & Co-brand Credit Card to connect the companies and the customers (participants/ donors).

From the angle of the Bank

1. The Blogging Site 

The project would create a web page and a blogging web site, encouraging participants to share information and interesting content regarding this fund raising cycling event to the public. This can: 

Building up relationship with the participants and users

A web page would be created and encourage participants to share information and interesting content regarding this fund raising cycling event to the public. This can build interest of the others, even those who have not taken part in the activities, and project the brand images of the sporting company and bank as an innovative and outstanding idea that encourages participants and users to interact and engage themselves with the activities as well as the brands. 

2. The Web Page

Applicants can submit their enrolment through the web page and the web page would update the latest news and promotion that both the sporting company and the bank offers regularly. Besides, it would also serve an online portal as a platform for participants and sponsors to donate and raise fund. Sponsors will make donations with the Co-brand Credit Card through the online platform. This can: 

Promote Brand image - Customer oriented

As people tend to support a cause that closes to them, therefore instead of picking several popular causes, the project let the donors to choose which charitable institution to support. Making good use of the bank’s payment system, the donations can be directly credited to the accounts of the user’s designated charitable institutions and initiatives without any deductions for administrative expenses. Users can change their charity designated any time through the web site. This provides a convenient means of payment and enrolment process to users. 

3. The Co-brand Credit Card

The bank and the sporting company would launch a special co-brand dual currencies credit card and issue the card to the participants and sponsors of the event. Year round discounts would be offered and 3% of purchases would be donated to designated charitable institutions. This can:

Increased Sales & Enlarged Client Basis 

Same as other credit cards, this co-brand credit card offers some exclusive privileges like providing year round discount at merchant outlets that sponsor the fundraising cycling event. This allows both companies utilize their network and sources in Hong Kong and China to recruit and invite other merchants to be the sponsors of the event. The issuance of credit card also enlarged the banks client basis. 

Moreover, when users purchase with the Co-brand Credit Card, 3% of purchases are donated to a charity of their choice. The sporting company and the bank would give the donation jointly which means the public can make donation even after the cycling event of the year is completed. These all make the user more willing to spend with the Co-brand Credit Card.

From the angle of the Sporting Companies

This project is a mutual beneficial program. Here we briefly list the Sporting Company’s benefits as follows:

1. Building Relationship with the participants and users through the Blogging Site 

The participants could share their experience of using the bicycle and the company can win a word of mouth. Also the sporting company can get feedback from end users in order to provide better services and products that meet market trends.

2. Explore a new sales channel & Boost up sales through the Web Page

Participants are requested to ride the designated brand of bicycle and they are allowed to customize their own bicycle with the parts they want. This gives a chance the public to learn the products and services of the sporting company and resulting in an increasing in sales.

3. Promote Brand image through the Blogging Site, Web Page & Credit Card

The corporate displays a sense of socially responsible and a focus on eco-issue. This can win favorable response from customers. If a customer likes the company, he or she will buy more products or services and will be less willing to change to another brand. 

How is the project benefit both communities?


1. Build Up Corporate Reputation

The project helps the public have a better understanding towards the products and services that the company and the bank provides through various promotional activities. It is a way for companies to benefit themselves while also benefiting the society and the participating companies can build up their corporate reputation by:

Raise Brand Awareness

It serves as a platform for both the sporting company and the bank to establish a positive brand by displaying advertising boards and banners at the venues, printing advertisements in program booklets, airing advertisements on TV, participating in promotional activities etc.

Promoting Care of Environment

Care of the environment is becoming a prominent issue for many decision makers, including consumers and businesses. This project promotes the idea of conserving earth's natural resources, avoid pollution and minimize global warming. Car emission. Companies can gain frame when seen as a pioneer in these areas.

2. Raise Awareness About Public Health

Not getting enough exercise is one of the top listed items of health concern. This project brings out the messages of adopting a healthier lifestyle and the importance of exercising. Encourage the public to do more exercise, checkups and health screenings. Both participating companies can use this project to engage with customers in new ways.

3. Enhance Employee engagement

New young recruits are looking for more than financial remuneration. Many want to be associated with organizations that are seen to be socially responsible. Employee would feel a sense of pride when they are talking about the company they work for. Consequently, this charity program can help in attracting, recruiting and retaining the best talent.

Something More.......

Interaction Between Charities & Donors

In this project, like the general practice, the decision on how to disburse the funds is left to the discretion of the charities but the public is now more concern how their donation helps. 

Normally, when people donate, they wants to know how their donations spent as well as the Financial Health, Accountability and Transparency of the charitable organizations. Since this project would work as a matchup for the donors and the charitable organizations, the charitable institutions would need to post their annual financial highlights together with some specific information like how many individual were served in the past year in the event’s web page and to individual donors through email as feedback. In this case, the donors can get the charities’ expenses break down and ensure the money they donate is helping in the way they intend rather than lining on fundraising and administration costs. This also gives the charitable organizations a message that the donors would determine which charities best deserve their money so to encourage financial integrity. 

Value propositions

1. Every participant in the event will gain. The two sponsoring companies will be able to improve their brand image and awareness, i.e. soft selling vs the traditional hard selling approach. More importantly, they will gain in-depth knowledge of some potential clients group. They will access to data such as demographics, shopping preferences and patterns. With this information, the company will better to tailor its products / services.
2. The participant will make donation to charities in exchange they will develop more awareness to the importance to health and sports.
3. The participants’ sponsors e.g. their colleagues and friends will have chance to make donations and supporting their friends. And they can have control over the designated charities.
4. The retailers will have chance to introduce their product/service to a new group of customers. More likely they will match their products/service targeting customers targeting segments. Lowering the transaction costs and the marketing costs.
5. The charities will have chance to showcase their service and their organizations to the potential sponsors.
6. For the local government, if the event is successful, it might also attract tourists from overseas to participate in the event which will generate tourism related income to the local cities.
7. The sponsoring companies will just utilize their existing skills and resources such as their business relationship, ability to market to clients and the payment system infrastructure. The commercial sector is best at raising fund, not directly serving the poor and the needed. The charities are best at serving the poor and the needed, not at raising fund. With this project, each party can focus on what they do best.

Why the Bank cannot be substituted?

Like the article “Trust and the Virtual Organization” suggests: “Trust is tough”, “Trust needs touch”. Trust is very important in a virtual organization. The public knows the two companies in this project. They may not be familiar with the sporting company but people normally do have a faith in the Banks. That is one of the reasons why this project could work.

Why Nidas cannot be substituted?

Nidas is a global sporting company with competencies in research, design and marketing. It has a network that links to sporting equipments manufacturers, mass media & sports lovers. 


Conclusion

A Win-Win Situation

• Sporting Goods Company – save promotion expenses and gain brand awareness


• NGO – gain for fund


• Bank – increase sales and profits


• Retailers – increase sales


• Participants – improve health and raising fund for charity

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Why choose CYCLING?

1. Benefits the particpants health

It is good to have more sports activity after work. It can help to reduce the stress and breathe more fresh air. The participants can spend time with their family and friends.

2. Cycling Information Centre (CIC)

Hong Kong Government is encouraged the public to have more exercises. They constructed some bicycle lanes in New Territories. Besides, they established a platform for the public where are the locations of existing cycling tracks,  parking sites and infomation on major on-going cycle projects and temporary closure of cycling tracks etc. So it is conventient for the cylclists to know the information before hand.

http://www.td.gov.hk/mini_site/cic/en/index.htm


3. Environmental friendly short distance travelling alternatives

Besides the cyclists to take more exercises, it can be friendly to the earth. We can try to cycle more in short distance travelling if it possibles. It can help to reduce the toxic substances exhausted air from the car and improve the air pollution.

4.  Raising fuel Cost

Due to the fluctration for the price of the fuel, the drive may have risk to pay high fuel cost for their car. So if you cycle to everywhere, it can save a lot from the fuel cost.

Link to our personal self-reflection blog

Samuel Sim
Miranda
Samantha
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Reference:

1. N. Venkatraman and John C. Henderson, (1998). Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing, Sloan Management Review., pp.33-48
2. Henry W. Chesbrough and David J. Teece, (2002). Organizing for Innovation: When Is Virtual Virtuous?. Harvard Business Review. , pp.127-135
3. Golnaz Sadri and John Condia, (2012). Managing the virtual world. Industrial Management., pp.21-25
4. Jeffrey F. Rayport and John J. Sviokla, (1995). Exploiting the Virtual Value Chain. Harvard Business Review. , pp.75-85
5. Charles Handy, (1995). Trust and the Virtual Organization. Harvard Business Review., pp. 40-50
6. 2011/2012 Oxfam Annual Report
7. http://www.cnbc.com/id/40592354
8. http://www.thefundraisingfunnel.com.au/fundraising/how-does-your-organisation-measure-up.htm
9. http://www.npengage.com/online-fundraising/19-proven-fundraising-ideas-from-nonprofit-experts/

Self - Refection: Virtual Collaboration - Miranda's (52795601)

 

Introduction



Thirteen weeks of learning journey finally ended. During these weeks, my brain is really over used! Actually, I am poor in creative thinking. I need a lot of time to digest all the ideas from other people.  This is an interesting learning process.

It is not a easy project and it is quite difficult to work with the morning class. We are not working together in face to face and only through Internet. It is really a challenging. Through the advanced technology nowadays, we can pull the distance become closer to perform high collaboration. At the beginning, I have worried about whether the morning class understood or not only through communication in the Internet. But now we are success!


How do I communicate with my teammates?

“Three legged race” members are not always walking along together because we are very busy for our daily work. We see each other during class only. Different kinds of communication give us convenient. We usually use Skype, Whatapps, and E-mail to communicate with each other.

WhatsApps

WhatsApps is the most convenient communication tools nowadays. Wherever you have an idea, I can switch on my smartphone's WIFI or 3G and write out my ideas  and my teammates can read the message immediately. It doesn’t have any limitation on words. It can invite people to chat in group or we can chat in individual. I can send pictures and record my voice and send to them. It is very convenient. Our conversation in WhatApps is not only project; sometimes we can have chatting with each other. It is very effective and convenient.  However, one thing that WhatsApps that cannot do is sent documentation files to my teammates. 

Email

When I cannot send files on WhatsApps or other people cannot available on the Skype. I will use email to send to them. I can write out all the things that I want to say and attached the files. As the technology becomes more advanced, we can send an email through smartphone. So I can follow up our project even I are at work. Therefore, I do not have any time and place limitations to communicate with my teammates.

 

Skype

When we have meeting together, we will use Skype to discuss together. Skype has function with group chat but we can only have voice chat instead of video chat. Video group chat we need to pay for it.   But still it is effective and save a lot of money from the phone calls. Sometimes writing email may also lead misunderstanding. Although we cannot see each other, we can know different members ideas for the project and we can make decision immediately. 

Skype also have problem!! If we do not have good connection for the Internet, we hardly listen to other people talking. For example, one of the members in morning class is not living in China. It is difficult to use Skype to talk to her with poor connection. We need her teammates to inform her about what we have discussed in  Skype.

Technology helps us a lot! I can't imagined if we returned to the days that without WhatsApps and Skype. What do our life now? I think I still torture by spending a lot of time to write emails every night. I can guarantee that our work progress wouldn’t be so fast.

 

 

How can we work as a high performance team?

1. Make good use of everyone’s strengths

I believe team collaboration helps us to know our classmates more such as their personality and thinking. We need to work in the daytime and attend class in the evening. Through the collaborations, we can know our member’s strength and weakness. Samuel is good at creative thinking, Samantha is good at searching information and I good at artwork. So we made good use of everyone strength to work on the project. We divided the work into 3 pieces. i.e ideas thinking, research and making PowerPoint for presentation. I think working in specialization can make the team work more efficiently. Everyone can involve on the project and we will not duplicate to do the work.

 

2.     Time management

We should have a good time management. First of all we need to finish our parts before every virtual meeting.  It is easily to explain to the moring class and the information is organized. It can let people to understand. Afterwards, we will schedule the next meeting date again and what should we need to submit. Making a work plan can help us to know whether the work has behind or not. We hope to have construction meeting everytime.

We have good management for our team. We can submit the work on time. But morning class is a little bit poor in this point. They always finish at the last minutes. If there is any mistake, it is quite difficult for them to mend it. We always keep on tracing them whether they can finish the work or not.


3.     Compromise

As I mentioned above that we have divided the work. This comes out a distance problem. We are not sitting and working together at the same time. I do not know what my teammates searching for the project and what do they think need to input into the project. When we finished our own parts and combine the work together with my teammates, we found there are differences. For example, the contents maybe different with the conclusion.

In order to let the work becomes consistency and give respect on people’s work. We need to discuss to find a compromise which part should amend or omit it. Hence, compromise can help the group to work harmony and high productivity. 


Obstacles in Collaboration

 1.     Conflicts

Conflict A

When we introduce our idea to our morning team, it is a hard work. We spend a lot of time to communicate with them to let them understand. I know the process of the fund raise is a little bit complicated and the morning class is not so familiar about the commercial sector works in Hong Kong. They think that using marathon it doesn’t have something new and it seems like Standard Chartered Bank Marathon. They want to change the bank operated in China because they know the operation of the bank in China. But it will give us problem on the ideas.  As we know, bank operated in China will have limited because there are a lot of complicated transactions and costing would appear and it is not worth for the charities.

We compromised with the morning class that the marathon changes into cycling which is fresh in Hong Kong but the bank should be operated in Hong Kong. Otherwise, we cannot bring out the message that cycling can help the social vulnerable groups in Hong Kong The bank and the sporting company cannot get the good marketing strategy. Finally, two parties agree and then we start to make our blog.

      

Conflicts B

We forgot to think of what should be the company for the bank until the morning class reminded us. We decided to be “Bank of Warmhearted”. I feel a little bit “goose bumps” also!! But it is related to our topics. It is funny that when we told the morning class about the bank name. They think why  should we put a “of” in the middle. “Warmhearted Bank” is easy to remember. I was really laughed so hard when I read this message on the WhatsApps. Because I was wondering why they are so concerning about the grammar instead of concerning how to make the presentation better? I told them they should be concentrate on the topic how it works and not the company name.     

 

 

Conflicts C

The morning class informed us the feedback from professor said our bank is not the unique channel to raise the fund and why not the other commercial sector. They ask us whether it is necessary to change the topic. I was shocked! It is already mid of April. It is impossible for us to change the idea already. I discuss with my teammates about the problem and found out that their PowerPoint is lead misunderstanding for the audiences. They should give out the main points of the ideas and not only why we hold this activity. I told them which are the main points put into the blog. They should explain more about how the bank and sports company works.

2.     Differences in Culture and Background

 

I learnt from that three conflicts and found out we have cultural problem. I realized that they feel difficult to understand because they are not familiar with charity. They feel curious because they seldom hear about raising fund for charities in China. It is difficult for them to understand how do those parties connected to raise fund for the charities. Morning class teammates are quite 'green'. Some basic business concepts they are not so clear of how it works. Therefore, it really gave us difficulty to explain in verbal. Finally, we drew a flow of the idea for them and write all the explanation to let the morning class to understand easier.

3.     Disorientation

We have worried about the morning class whether they can understand the idea and can finish the work at last. We kept on asking them how is there progress. The morning class replied they understand. But three days later they reply they do not understand.   We are really shocked!

At that moment, we felt frustration and disorientation. The morning class really threw us to confusion. We have to think any new idea it is easier for them to understand and fit for the project. But we found "cycling for charities" is the best because it is the easiest and more practical. We decided to continue to use it and we tried to give more patients to explain to the morning team again and again.

4.  Personal Attitude

Sometimes, I feel the morning class teammates are quite stubborn. We keep on negotiate to find a possible solution for both parties to agree the idea of the project. When we agreed all the things before hand, but they changed the discussion items back to the beginning afterwards!! I really faint because of their attitude. If they don't agree on the meeting, they can tell us instead of changing the items again without informing us. I think they should give us respect also.


Three “R”

We do not have any commitments or any promise at all in our group.  But three of us consists “united”. We didn’t have any disagreement in the working process. Everyone is helpful in the group. We just hope to do the work in best! I believe everyone should consist three “R” when they are working in team. They are “Respect”, “Responsible” and “Reliable”.

 

• Respect – Respect different people’s ideas. No matter they are work or not, we shouldn’t have any criticize on their ideas.
• Responsible – Be responsible as a team member. When the other people are hard working on their work, I should also be hard working also. Otherwise it will spoil the whole project and affect our friendship.
• Reliable – If someone gave you a task to work on, you should submit the work on time because other team member may rely on your work so he or she can continue their parts. If there is any delay for the work, it will spoil the schedule.

 

 

Conclusion

Working in team may give inconvenient that we need to organize all the teammates to work. We make good use on people’s strength; we also accommodate people’s weakness. Although virtual meeting helps us a lot, I still prefer face to face meeting. I can talk with the people face to face and I can see whether they are understood what I am saying through their eyes. For giving a message, virtual meeting is fine. But when we need to explain something, it is not a good way.

Anyway, it is good chance for us to learn to work in team. The background of morning class and evening class is different. We are from different places and we can share our experiences. It is a precious time and I have learnt several things.

1. Give Respect on other’s ideas 

Through this project, we know that there are a lot of cultural and background differences between Hong Kong and China’s student. Hong Kong has a great connection in business with China nowadays. We can gain experience to collaborate with the China’s clients in future. This is a great exercise for us to work with them. Although we have some conflicts on the cultural differences, we have tried to find a good solution to overcome the problem. We learnt to respect to different ideas. When people give out their ideas we should listen and do not criticize them. We can be open mind to accept all the ideas. Sometimes it may value added into the original ides. 

2. Technology 

The effective communication is make good use in technology. Through Internet it can shorten the distance for us. Especially the mobile phone nowadays, it can send email and using Skype and WhatsApps. It can let us connect to everyone in every minute. It gives us efficiency so that we don’t need to always to have face to face meeting. It can increase our team cohesion and easily for us to follow up the work by using the technology.

3. Learn to be creative 

 

From this project, I realized that improve creative thinking should need to:

1. Tap ideas from all ranks
2. Encourage and enable collaboration
3. Open the organization to diverse perspective

 

At first I feel it is complicated to understand our project ideas also. I usually work alone at work so I seldom listen to other people ideas. It really narrowed my thinking. When people ask me to think creative, I feel it is a torture. I realize work in group can share experience from others. I can learn their experience from them. Nowadays, a company's most important is creative thinking. I need to enhance my creative thinking it can easily for my job in future.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Albert Einstein

 

 

Finally, I would like to take a chance to say “Thank you” to my teammates Samuel and Samantha. They are really good teammates!

 

 

Reference:

1. Amabile,T. & Khaire, M.(2008). Creativity and the Role of the Leader. Harvard Business Review, 86(10)
2. Florida, R. & Goodnight, J. (2005). Managing for Creativity. Harvard Business Review, 83(7/8)

 

Self-reflection of the learning journal of collaboration

Self-reflection of the learning journal of collaboration

by Samantha Lau (52982086)

My Learning Journey

First of all, I need to say this is no an easy project. It is difficult because we are dealing with the people that we do not know, people that have different background with different stand. I would say this project is composed of negotiation and compromise. I cannot say this is a very pleasant experience but to be honest through this project, I realize something new and important. Besides, it also reaffirms some of my thought.

The final project of the class High Performance Collaboration is about creating a virtual collaboration between two virtual teams. When I first hear about the topic, it sounds so vague and it is somehow over my head. Moreover, the project demands some creative ideas. That really is not my strength. I am to have two teammates to have my back.

The cooperation in Three Legged Race

Our team, three-legged-race, is from the evening session. I do think our team cooperates well in this project. I have not worked together with my other two teammates before but it is a pleasure to work with them. Samuel often brings up with some interesting as well as out of the box ideas and Miranda is having a good sense of artwork. These are something that I am lack of. We have different strengths and respect each other. I know well that creativity is not my strength but I tried to input my ideas by suggesting what can be added or what changes that can be made to the ideas they have so to get a what I think is a better outcome.

1. The traditional face-to-face meeting cannot be replaced

We teammates all engaged to our daytime job and cannot meet all the time to discuss the project. We only meet base on needs but I do consider that we work quite effectively. Our communication means are face-to-face discussion, emails, Whatsapp and Skype. When we worked on the fundamentals like brainstorming ideas and positioning our stand in the project, we did it in a face-to-face conversation. After this project, I realized that a direct dialogue could never be replaced by other form of meeting. If the time and environment allow, it is the best form of communication means. You can get instant responses, you can observe the other’s reaction and changes of emotion. With that information, you would know what your next step would be. It is best for clarifying complicated issues. When we encounter some difficulties or came across issues that need to talk about, we would arrange a meeting time in Whatsapp and held a conference call in Skype. This kind of collaboration really works for us.

2. In a collaboration, it is trust and respect that matters

As mentioned, we are not meeting a lot. Our process can be breakdown into several steps: brainstorming for ideas, defining responsibilities, getting your own part done, reviewing the output together and refining the project. We trust the other teammates can play their role fairly and complete the tasks assigned in a timely manner. And we did not fail each other. We give feedback promptly to teammates. The communication and working process between us are very smooth and productive. This gives a strong feeling that we work as a team.

The cooperation with Morning Session

We have trust between evening session team members but I need to admit that the collaboration with the morning session is a total different story. Not only trust has not been with the morning group, I somehow still having doubt that if they fully understand the role of different stakeholders in the project.

Importance to choose the right means of communication

In this virtual collaboration project, we use Skype, Whatsapp and email to communicate with the morning session. We decided to communicate with the morning group through Skype. That really is a good choice of communicating tool. Though you have never met the people, you can hear the voice of the one that you are dealing with and can get immediate responses. That is curial because with the voice and responses, you can sketch the character and personality of the team members from the other group and get acquainted. Voices have temperature, you can tell if the other side are convinced or disapproved. It helps to get knowing whom you are working with.

I have always noticed that a face-to-face discussion and telephone conversation are more effective way for communication especially when the topic of concern involving many different aspects. My thought is strengthened after this project.

Using email and Whatsapp to exchange ideas is convenient but they also have shortcomings. I would say it is time-consuming to put all your ideas into words. Plus you may get a delayed reaction. In this sense, I think Whatsapp is good for the situation that you want to say or ask something simple, less important and low priority. Team members are free to response when available. On the other hand, Email is good for exchanges documents. We use email to send the PowerPoint and project plan details to teammates and the morning group. That is why I truly think that it is important to pick the correct means for communication and do it the right way. Thanks to the technology, we can use Skype to communicate with each other.

Though we have a good means of communication, we still face some difficulties in cooperating with the morning session and have conflicts over the event subject along with the name of the bank.

1. Conceptual differences

There are difficulties in cooperating with someone that you barely know. Not to mention collaborate with someone with different cultures and background.

As this project needs us to come up with a creative project plan, brainstorming is a vital part to start with. Aiming to be more effective, our side has scheduled meetings to brainstorm the project ideas so to get a creative yet workable idea and sell that idea to the morning group.

Making the morning group to understand our project plan and persuading them to take it is one of the hardest parts of the project. Since they did not carry any idea when we first chatted, we let them study our idea and raised questions towards it. See if they will have a go with our project plan. In order to communicate more effectively, one of our teammates was chatting in Skype with them to answer to their queries and help them to have a better understanding to our project.

Conflict 1 – Reshape the project plan

The morning group students are come from mainland and they have no working experience. Sometimes they came up with ideas over my comprehension. We truly have different value on the subjects in project. This leads to the main problem that we come across – conceptual differences. They have difficulties in understanding the role of the bank in the project and the environment in Hong Kong for such event so they try to reshape the plan with their comprehension.

2. Negotiation & Compromise

Conflict 2 –Marathon VS Cycling

I would say we had a negotiation here. We first suggested having a marathon for charity and having the event be hold in Hong Kong so the sporting company can increase its brand recognition and sponsor the clothing and sports products for the event. The morning group that representing the sport company requested to change the subject of the event from marathon to cycling and advise to move the venue of the event to China. It took tremendous effort to align our differences and the virtual communication makes things even harder. Through the hardship of negotiation, we finally found our common ground and reached an agreement – a cycling event first held in Hong Kong and relocates the event into China if it is successful. We both had a step back and compromise.

Conflict 3 - Bank of Warmhearted VS Warmhearted Bank

The interesting thing in this project is even we get on the same project, we see the event and interpret the collaboration in a quite a different way and that can be illustrated by our PowerPoint for the presentation. They care about the details of the cycling route and something that we evening session think is less important like the use of word walkathon and the name of the bank (details as attached).

3. How well do they comprehend our project idea?

“How well do they comprehend our project idea?” is the question I often cross my head. If they really comprehend the idea, they would realize that the bank could not easily be replaced by any other commercial companies since it has a large network and client basis. Furthermore, the bank’s well-established payment system would also be an asset to the project. But right after their presentation, they claimed our bank is substitutable. 

Conclusion

Although I do not think the virtual means of communication works well between the two teams, the virtual collaboration with morning session is a valuable experience. Virtual communication is not something new but to work out a project with virtual collaboration is a whole new thing. It make me realize that the importance of knowing your counterparty and the limitation in virtual communications. Trust is hard to be built up in these situations. I believe we have trust with the morning session, the whole thing could be smoother. After all, the fundamental problem – differences in valuation is not easy to work out.