News

ZOIS:
We’re very happy to have you on board doing some scientific research for zero outage. Could you please introduce yourself and tell us more about your connection to the University of Vienna?

Thomas Spielhofer:
My background is in computer science and economics and I’ve worked as a software developer in different industries and in different management positions. I’ve also been running my own business as a systemic organisational consultant for the past 11 years. I use both these skills in university research that I’m doing with my supervisor Renate Motschnig and my colleague David Haselberger. Our goal is to find out what online communication can do for us, particularly, what are the constructive patterns in online communication. This is really what I thrive on, what fascinates me and what I think is an important topic at times like these.

ZOIS:
Thank you. We did some very good work together with Renate so I’m pretty sure we’ll get some brilliant results here too. Can you tell us what the research topic is?

Thomas Spielhofer:
The overarching research question is, what are constructive patterns of online communication? The research is concerned with what we as teams consider helpful when we are stuck in zoom calls and what things annoy us, or are not helpful in reaching good decisions. The research also looks into ways of having constructive conflicts and avoiding unconstructive conflicts. This is really what it’s about.

ZOIS:
Thank you very much. What is your relationship with the Zero Outage Association and how did you get in touch with us?

Thomas Spielhofer:
The connection was first established through my supervisor, Professor Renate Motschnig and then you and I had the chance to work together with the training sessions, where we combined some of the stuff we did with the ZOIS training initiatives. We were able to support a couple of concrete cases that ZOIS members had in these sessions and we asked ourselves, how can we take it further and combine the technology we are developing to take the next step?

ZOIS:
How could this be applicable for Zero Outage in terms of reducing outages?

Thomas Spielhofer:
Assuming that an outage is often caused by hiccups in communication, it’s interesting to look at what kind of patterns lead to increasing the chance of such an event and what communication patterns help to prevent them. If communication plays a role, then it’s interesting to analyse this communication. We see the tool we’re developing as a kind of sonar to look into the organisation and research some critical communication lines in change management, problem management or incident management. We can then ask ourselves, what in these communication lines work really well and what isn’t. We should also ask ourselves what typically happens when something goes wrong.

ZOIS:
What are the next steps and the outlook regarding your thesis?

Thomas Spielhofer:
We already have a working tool and ZOIS members using it, as well as other companies participating in this research. Both sides benefit from it as we improve our tool and we’re learning all the time. Therefore I think the next step would be that others try out this new technology for free and learn about their own communication whilst simultaneously helping us to drive forward this research and improve the tool iteratively.

ZOIS:
Thank you very much for your time and input.

Thomas Spielhofer:
Thank you.