See Jessica’s bio, photo, and Part 1 of this Q&A and Part 2, and Part 3.
Q&A with Jessica Lipnack (continued):
Q: You write about Web 2.0 in your blog: “Virtual teams have always been in the 2.0 world, adding content to their shared online spaces, carrying on conversations after the lights have gone out, trying out new media. But the explosion of 2.0 technologies — and the advent of a generation that knows more about how to work online than their bosses — has altered (and will continue) to alter the virtual team landscape.”
Also, in the article, “The Strange Beauty of Virtual Teams,” you describe the study you did for Harvard Business Review,in which you found “four out of five teams used the very simple ‘killer-app’ combo available to nearly everyone these days: conference calls with screen sharing (via the Web) coupled with shared online workspaces.” You also found that most virtual teams use their meetings to resolve conflict and make decisions.
All of this is a long-winded lead-in to the two-part question: Given that these Web 2.0 technologies can be seen as storytelling vehicles and the generation that most uses them is accustomed to telling stories using these technologies, to what extent do you think storytelling will play a role in the way Web 2.0 continues to “alter the virtual team landscape?”
A: If we compare the work setting today with what was available even ten years ago, we see a world rich in storytelling possibilities. Every medium allows us to tell stories in different ways. As new technologies come online and the people who grew up using the new technologies move into leadership positions, we’ll see them encouraging the use of more diverse media — whether in virtual worlds or via micro-bursts, like Twitter. I think the “story” will spread across more media, which means people’s ability to use these media and acquire the behaviors necessary to collaborate productively will face some pretty steep challenges. The risk we run is that everything will become so fragmented that we need to become detectives to piece our stories together. Every project is its own story and it’s important that we capture it in process so that we can learn and apply our learning very quickly.
Q: Given that meetings of virtual teams, according to your HBR study, cut right to the chase, is there a role for storytelling in a typical VT meeting?
A: I don’t think we said that in the HBR article, “Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?” In fact, we implied the opposite. Several of our findings revolved around conversation — allowing conversations to wander, pairing strangers and those with conflicting points-of-view, using multiple media for communication. All of this contributes to shared understanding, which only comes about through people telling one another their stories.