The Magic of Virtual Collaboration Spaces

The Why

A virtual collaboration space is an editable document like a Google doc, a Teams Word doc or an editable white board like a Mural board.

The benefits of virtual collaboration spaces are many:

• Anyone can contribute anything at any time—synchronously in real time or asynchronously whenever they want

• Anyone can be invited as a viewer or editor

• People can comment on each other’s contributions and create endless threads of conversations—like the kind people would do in emails no one can find and that no one later could even have access to

• No one dominates, and so no one disappears—everyone’s contributions have optimal ability to spark different contributions, taking “every voice matters” from lip service to actual practice

• Trust in the group builds because people feel welcome to contribute anything and see everything—everything people think and discover is transparent, building and sustaining an atmosphere of trust

• Seeing everything evolving in one place makes sense-making, convergence-building, decision-making, planning, and coordinating possible (which are not possible in fragmented and exclusionary emails and texts)

• Anyone can enter the process and know exactly what has been and is going on without needing to request old (lost and exclusive) emails, meeting minutes, or inaccessible documents and attachments

• Anything on a doc or board can be linked to any kind of artifacts elsewhere—other documents, boards, files, folders, websites, videos

• Collaboration spaces make it possible for co-create together in ways they could never in their respective silos—people become smarter, faster, and better together

• Learning from experience is shared and ongoing

• When people ask in an email or meeting about anything in an existing doc or folder, all we have to do is send them the link and no one ever has to go through emails again for anything in a virtual collaboration space

When these are useful

We can use boards and docs whenever:

• People are working as a large group in reporting out on anything—in fact, they can do this before, after, and between meetings

• People are working on things in small breakout groups

• People are coordinating action from plans to keep everyone aligned and in sync

• People want to share resources, questions, and ideas in any planning, problem-solving, or decision-making

• People want to post contact information and brief bios for anyone engaged in virtual collaborations

The Shared Doc Benefits

While boards have the advantage of moving anything around on an infinitely expandable space, they do have some learning curves for many people who find technology generally challenging. Docs can be advantageous because:

• Most people know how to type and edit on an editable doc—like Word or Wikis

• Docs can be set up ahead of time to make it easier to engage—which is useful when we have people who would otherwise be intimidated by a blank document

• Docs can be pre-organized or organized along the way into folders for easy access

• Each doc and folder has its own unique link, so we can email links to people who want access to specific docs or folders

• People can comment and have whole conversations on anything that’s posted

• People can post their names or initials next to their contributions and comments so others can see which are whose—or they can use uniquely assigned colors to whatever they add to a doc

• Docs can include images, videos, attachments, and links to anything in the world