Learning to Collaborate . . .Virtually

At the recent Systems Thinking Conference in Seattle, Washington, I facilitated a concurrent session.  This was a unique blend of physical and virtual interaction.  Forty-two live conference participants engaged with Radical Inclusion(RI) colleagues beamed in from another continent using Adobe Connect.

The theme of this year’s conference was about Courageous Organizations.  It had participants wondering, “What does it mean to be a courageous organization? How does our courage show up in organizations?” Peter Senge, author of  The Fifth Discipline and founder of the Society for Organizational Learning reminded us in his keynote that change begins with individuals, rather than  a disembodied project or group . . . out there somewhere.  He also reminded us that what allows the life of any group or organization to continue can be found in what we choose conserve.

This got me thinking about the tremendous changes being brought about by new virtual media and its potential for change.  Most of the conference participants are experienced leaders of change, functioning as managers or consultants.  So when discussing the issues and possibilities of virtual collaboration, it was interesting to note how many people mentioned that they felt confused and overwhelmed by the number of technology choices as well as issues such as organizational silos, information hoarding and security.  If we are take full advantage of the potential of virtual collaboration we have to learn that the way most of us conduct ourselves on video and telephone conferences falls far short of collaboration.

In our session,  I posed the question:

If the virtual world is here to stay and fraught with possibilities and perils, What do we want to conserve? What do we want to let go of?

The responses from our conversations (below) are both insightful and full of wisdom, because virtual collaboration goes well beyond the choice of technology. It is something much more human.  It is about how we behave toward one another and  how we engage to create and complete work that matters most to us and our organizations.

What do we want to conserve:

• An understanding that personal mastery is ongoing
• The richness of spontaneous leadership
• Taking time to develop quality relationships and communication
• The awareness to ask others, “what do you need?”
• Personal accountability and measures of progress
• Trust and courage to extend ourselves to others

What do we want to let go of:

• The belief that face-to-face is the only way to truly collaborate well
• That change is not the ‘new normal’
• The belief that “knowledge is power”
• That every person is the same and that there is just one right way to collaborate

What is true is that we can all learn how to collaborate more effectively in the real world and the virtual world.  It is also worth noting that the challenges in each domain are not the same.  The lesson is to be open to the opportunity to create something new that can transcend  the limits of physical space, time and even some forms of human interaction. Virtual collaboration won’t replace human interaction but it does call for different ways and methods of interacting that will continue to evolve.  The question becomes, what are you going to do about it?

Twitter notes for the entire Senge keynote are posted on Twitter:  hashtag #st09senge.