Collaboration: arguably, the single most important and under-appreciated thing in business since the Ark of the Covenant was used as a filing cabinet. No matter how challenging the project or important the deadline, people only think of their part - they assume the “communication” thing will happen automatically because people talk all the time. But as anyone who’s been held hostage by a LOST conversation will confirm, it’s possible for people to talk forever and exchange no useful information at all.

As online project manager it’s your job to make sure that your virtual employees are really working, not just keeping busy. Modern web-based communication tools allow everyone to talk more than was imaginable throughout most of history, but you have to keep them on-track and on-deadline - and those same tools are working against productivity, as their cousins and chatbots ask them “Hey, what do you think of this crazy YouTube clip?”