Teams for tomorrow (groupware)

Teams for tomorrow sounds like the title of a soap opera and this is intentional. Soap operas are a pop form of myth building and reinforcement. Soap operas give people a vicarious experience of their beliefs, their fears, and their fantasies. We need to create some 'soap operas' about business teams, soap operas that real people can believe in. We need to encourage new myths about the way teams are now, but especially about the way teams could be in the future. The author documents a story-telling session about the future of business teams. These stories are first drafts of new mythologies about what teams can become. Electronic groupware tools are opening the doors to new worlds for business teams to work within, but these new worlds are just being created. The author offers a set of six brief scenarios describing future teams that he expects to see within the next ten years (1991-2001). Scenarios are, in fact, a form of mythic story telling. These scenarios are intended as future stories, the kind of stories that could be expanded upon, told and retold, and eventually turned into future mythologies regarding business teams. They are narrative accounts of futures that could happen; each of them has specific tracks back to realities that have already been seen in advanced teams. He presents some stimulators that used to create these six scenarios. An unfinished agenda to link future options with groupware capabilities of today is also presented.<>