AI and blockchain technologies empower organizations to manage distributed teams

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened the way for remote work and distributed teams. This hybrid work model transformed how people can add value to a company wherever they are in the world. But as we face the challenges of a looming economic downturn—from the mass layoff to the waves of layoffs and hiring freezes hitting the tech industry—the current business climate requires companies to quickly adapt to more fluid work models that can drastically improve management and administration. team, as well as increasing work efficiency and productivity.

From large companies to startups, the US tech industry has suffered a series of layoffs throughout 2022, as the current economic slowdown is fueled by fears of an impending recession. But this is why companies need to be more agile to survive. Outdated systems such as traditional hiring, team management strategies and the 9-to-5, 40-hour work week are not enough to keep up with the ever-evolving work demands

But it is not just about telling employees that they can work from home. Organizational changes are needed to effectively assemble and manage distributed teams to make the most of the new opportunities they present.

Resilient companies must continually improve in the face of economic downturns

Businesses and organizations globally, even those previously resistant to change, have no choice but to evolve and continue to grow amid the post-COVID challenges. By adopting the distributed team model, they can go beyond the current talent shortage by finding different types of talent and skills around the world. Businesses can leverage the value that freelancers and home workers can offer to come up with superior and innovative products, services and solutions for their businesses.

However, there are management challenges when your distributed teams become more complex and when managers have less visibility into their team members. Our firm partnered with Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley to study “discursive diversity” between team members, which points to their differences and how these different points of view can help shape ideas, plans and strategies for the success of a project. This is just one of dozens of factors that can contribute to the success or failure of a team or project.

Indeed, distributed teams are complex and it is very difficult to manage teams when you do not see them, especially with traditional firms. But there is a way to effectively manage and monitor distributed teams.

Drive innovation with AI: Measure hard and soft skills, align teams and track, and manage projects

Measuring team members’ hard and soft skills, assigning them to their respective teams, and managing and aligning those teams requires processes and dozens of data points. Managers can no longer stick their heads into a cubicle to check team fit, but they can use artificial intelligence (AI) to bring all these factors into harmony.

Within our organization, we have teams of talent in different parts of the world who work very well together, have met deadlines and have higher productivity levels and success rates in the projects they take on. Using a project management platform powered by AI, we can track data on all our freelancers and hundreds of decision points across the project roadmap. AI tracks the entire project, processes data and alerts the project managers accordingly.

For example, we track the presence of discursive diversity in distributed teams at each stage of the project. AI helps assemble freelancers into teams based on the discursive diversity data points processed, thereby optimizing project alignment and team chemistry. It then tracks the level of alignment or divergence at each stage – allowing project managers to increase divergent thinking during ideation stages and support better alignment during project planning and execution stages.

Depending on the goals of the project, teams now have a better chance of completing the project on time and under budget. Project managers can effectively manage freelancers and teams, helping to prevent problems before they occur and impact the timeline or budget.

Web3 and Organizations: How Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can help improve the way we work

Another flexible work model that can be adapted is the decentralized autonomous organization or DAO. The DAO is a blockchain-based democratized organizational structure where people come together and work towards a common goal with a shared financial account. It is compared to a digital cooperative, but with all members having voting rights and equal management.

DAOs use blockchain technology and smart contracts to create rules that can be automatically enforced when conditions are met. Businesses can leverage the value of a DAO as it can support asynchronous and elastic work and empower teams wherever they are in the world.

We see the biggest areas of success using models called “hybrid DAOs” that take the best parts of traditional management and augment them with the functions of a DAO.

DAOs do not need to replace traditional companies. They can be adapted as an organizational structure for a company’s dedicated team of like-minded people working on the same project or goal. The structure can be time-limited and dissolve when the project is finished and complete. This creates something like a mini-company within a company, which increases the speed at which a project is carried out. Each member of the DAO has an ownership stake in the project, has the same voting rights and weighted responsibilities as all other members, and can then exit the project once it is complete.

This idea completely contradicts the traditional belief that employees must work with a company for decades to provide real value. Instead, the DAO model can attract freelance and contract workers who are interested in contributing to the specific project and then move on. This is a perfect example of the value distributed teams can offer and how they can attract project-specific talent.

As we move forward in an uncertain global economic climate, companies need to be quick on their feet and explore more fluid working models that can meet their business demands and ensure organizational longevity. Adapting innovative models of work, and using new technologies to execute these models properly, will help any business stay afloat even in dark times like recessions.

Cory Hymel is director of blockchain at Gigs.