For many employees, the workplace can feel daunting. As one team ends their workday another one begins theirs in a different time zone. A teammate finishes a task and another initiates the next phase of the project where your role is more ambiguous. Work today requires constant coordination and ad hoc collaboration, and when employees are not located in the same space, communication can feel transactional or disengaged. While employees are networked by their workplace tools and have “partial membership in multiple networks and rely less on permanent memberships in multiple groups” (Rainie and Wellman, 2012), how we communicate at work must evolve to meet networked dynamics in inclusive ways.

Not only has how we communicate shifted, so has what our work focuses on. Studies of the workplace tell us that today’s organizations are more often trying to solve “wicked problems” as a form of business development (Spinuzzi, 2015). Wicked problems involve pollution, hunger, or access to clean water—they are problems that can be characterized by how difficult they are to even define (see Rittel and Webber, 1973; Buchannan, 1992). Since so many multinational organizations are developing experiences for people, market factors require organizations to move quickly to be competitive on the marketplace. The need to move fast can also make people feel left behind. Also, moving so quickly can make building relationships difficult to do.