My first full-scale immersion into google productivity tools just about blew my mind. After more than a decade working with in a decidedly earthbound Microsoft Office environment, I joined a tech startup with its head — and every file imaginable — in the cloud.
Once I got over the initial disorientation (who knew so many documents even existed in a single organization?), I was smitten. Gone were clumsy email attachments. Never again would I need to “save as” or question if I had the most up-to-date file. And best of all I could work at the speed of light! Every possible resource was close as my Drive, and collaboration was instant and seamless.
I was in love. But like any crush, this one had me feeling a little off-balance. The lighting-quick, hyper-efficient essence of the google suite permeated the culture of my new workplace. Some of our richest conversations happened via comments inside docs, and when we did meet face-to-face, we did so over the tops of our computers, eyes glued to the screen, fingers flying.
I found myself in an orgy of collaboration, dipping in and out of documents with abandon, unencumbered by the rules of ownership and version control that had previously defined the day-to-day pace and collaborative habits of my working life. It was intoxicating stuff… but was it healthy?
Once I was settled enough to catch my breath, I started to question whether all this fancy digital file sharing might come at the expense of ordinary human idea sharing. As I worked to nurture fledgling relationships with my team, I hungered for the mutual vulnerability of eye contact and the gentle, comforting cadence of the spoken word. I decided to try closing my computer more often, and made pen and paper my constant companions.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like a live conversation. The body language, word choice and inflection of spontaneous, natural dialogue carries meaning all its own. And while great feats can be accomplished through online collaboration, something undeniably is lost. A comment in a document can convey what you think, how you question, where you might like to explore. But compared to conversation, it is a poor tool indeed for expressing how you feel.
What aspect of a project thrills you? Where are your greatest points of frustration? What’s really important here and what’s just a distraction? In public shared comments, these nuanced points of view can be difficult – or even damaging – to convey. Yet connecting and aligning around such subtleties can mean the difference between average, get-it-done teamwork and brilliant, game-changing collaboration.
Here’s another thing I like about old-school conversation: when executed with trust, respect and a sprinkling of leadership, a face-to-face meeting is the best tool around for driving concrete decisions. And I’d argue that a shared google doc is one of the worst. Yes, it’s terrific to have such a convenient forum for communal input. But once a document is strewn with dozens of comments and counter-comments, what happens next? To whom does it fall to sort it all out? Although these seem like elementary questions, in practice, the answers are often not at all clear. The tools that facilitate our collaboration cannot tell us when our thought-work is actually complete, or guide us in how to resolve differences. And they certainly can’t tell us whether the work we’ve done is any good.
When applied without the balancing influence of live debate, leadership and consensus-building, the google suite and similar tools risk eroding precisely the values they seek to support. When opinions circulate instantly, and everybody has one, it’s easy to mistake simple contribution for meaningful collaboration. When our tools allow us to tackle an unlimited number of topics at warp speed, we risk replacing the deep work of achieving shared insight with the fast work of completing shared activity.
I still love the efficiency of the google tools. Really, I do. But my initial infatuation has matured to something more like a marriage. I value google deeply, but I’ve learned that finding true fulfillment together takes mindfulness and work. Because while these tools enable a blissfully easy path to collaboration, they also facilitate complacency. And if we’re not careful, we might wake up one day with years of frenetic activity behind us… and question what it all really means.
Even as we embrace and enjoy the technological marvels that empower our work each day, let’s not forget the one shared resource that actually holds the power to create something extraordinary: each other.
