3 Tips For Managing A Virtual Work Force | Fast Company

Here is some good, pragmatic advice from Carrie Sommers about how to address some of the unique challenges of virtual team management.

Managing a virtual workforce has its own set of challenges. It can be hard to keep track of what everyone’s working on. Similarly, without the ability to stop by someone’s office, it can be hard to keep a constant finger on the pulse of employee morale. Here are a few ways to manage these issues and get the most out of working with a virtual team:

3 Tips For Managing A Virtual Work Force | Fast Company.

What Makes a Great Remote Team?

Wayne Turmell breaks down one of the key ideas in Darlene Derosa’s Book ‘Virtual Team Success’ in this article from Management Issues.

In her very good book, “Virtual Team Success”, Darleen Derosa has a lot to say, but one of the most helpful is her “5 Differentiators for Top Virtual Teams”. It’s based on lots of research but has the added value of being true on a gut level as well.

Here are the five ways great remote teams are probably operating at a higher level than yours and mine:

5 Tips for Motivating Virtual Teams

This article gives some real world advice specifically about how to motivate employees and recognize accomplishments in virtual teams

“As more companies expand globally, telecommuting is becoming a common work arrangement for many employees,” said Dr. Paul Eccher, author and co-founder of The Vaya Group. “However, just because these workers are out of sight does not mean they should be kept out of the loop. Leaders must learn how to effectively manage virtual teams in order to improve the bottom line and sustain talent over time.”

“Through our research and work within Fortune 500 companies, we’ve discovered that only 21 percent of leaders excel at motivating their teams,” Eccher’s partner Dave Ross said, “With these simple tips, leaders can build camaraderie, create a more positive work environment and encourage stronger business performance, regardless of distance.”

The Vaya Group recommends the following tips for motivating virtual teams:

Virtual Team Building: 5 Tips for Motivating Virtual Teams – pymnts.com.

How to Prevent Google from Tracking You

I always get a bit of a creepy feeling when I am on a website I have never visited before and they serve me an advertisement for some completely unrelated product or service I was researching days earlier.

When it continued happening to me AFTER I opt-ed out of Google’s customized advertising I went to, where else, Google to understand why. That is when I found this great article about some methods and tools for protecting your privacy online.

I love this article about methods to protect your privacy online using Network Advertising Initiatives opt-out program. This advice by Dennis O’Reilly is especially useful if, like me, you are a person who uses a lot of Google services.

According the the entropy theory explained by Peter Eckersley on the EFF’s DeepLinks blog, 33 bits of entropy are sufficient to identify a person. According to Eckersley, knowing a person’s birth date and month (not year) and ZIP code gives you 32 bits of entropy. Also knowing the person’s gender (50/50, so one bit of entropy) gets you to the identifiable threshold of 33 bits.

While people are rightly concerned about who is watching and recording their Web activities, at least Google makes it possible to use the company’s services without being too forthcoming with your personal information. ISPs and other Web services do as much tracking as Google–or more–but garner far fewer headlines. 

After all, the true threat to privacy is from the trackers we don’t know about, and who aren’t household names.

via How to prevent Google from tracking you by Dennis O’Reilly for C|net