Alignment By Storytelling And The New iPhone
08. Jun, 2010 
5 Comments
How do you keep your virtual team together? Or your project team?
The goal of your project or organization is a powerful mechanism for alignment. Everyone is working towards the same result. But, it must be something worthwhile. It must be something exciting and fresh. And it must be something people can relate to.
I want to suggest we combine two things to achieve this: storytelling and the new iPhone.
Every team member must be involved. This means basically that everyone gets together and is involved in the “creation” of, in this case, the goal. If people are involved you get acceptance and engagement, multiple point of views, and alignment.
I don’t think redefining your organizations goals are feasible, but that’s fine. Important is to create a common understanding, a common view of these goals. One story. Preferably a visual one. Because pictures still say more than something else. Or video says more. I am not sure.
And that’s were the new iPhone comes in. It has two camera’s, video editing software, recording things, upload stuff, and all. Shiny.
Or use technology from last year, if you really need to.
With all those gadgets, and low tech solutions, your team will create a multi-media representation of what in their opinion is the company, project or department story. They can use their mobile phones to take picture or record short movies, use magazines to create a visual collage or interview their coworkers and write a short story. Discuss the results with the group and create a collective story.
It will be fun. And very useful.
And you’ll have an excuse to buy a new, shiny gadget.
Image by lululemonathletica.
Not you too!
Yes. Apple fan boy
I threw the iPhone in this post just because I could. Not because it was relevant.
There are several ways I use to keep my team together (i work mostly with virtual teams, spread all over the world):
- mind maps to share objectives, deliverables, outcomes we must achieve during the projectl
- virtual collaboration tools such as LiveMeeting, MeetMe, etc;
- project Wikipedia’s (such as SharePoints);
- i use Facebook actively with all the team members who use it. Actually, I have an interesting article about it:
http://corporategeek.info/5-reasons-why-project-managers-should-use-facebook