The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams: A Toolkit for Collaborating Across Boundaries

Chapter 18. Correcting Chronic Decision-Making Problems Through Effective Collaboration

Mehran Ferdowsian

The intent or endgoal of effective collaboration is to do something together, cohesively (united purpose, vision, and action). Whether done face-to-face or in a virtual way, effective collaboration inevitably results in making a good decision, addressing a complex problem, creating something new, or planning and executing a highly distributed and virtual task or project—all good results. In essence, virtual collaboration and effective decision making and problem solving are inherently linked and require good planning, execution, and wholehearted individual commitment and responsibility for it to succeed (Neilson & Pasternack, 2005). What people ...