Teams at the moment are extra distributed than ever, which underscores the significance of visible collaboration. Visual collaboration instruments, like digital whiteboards, enable distant groups to ideate and brainstorm just about. In this text, Angela Bunner, VP of options at ClickUp, outlines how digital whiteboards can revamp how groups work for max effectivity.
Who can overlook the “whiteboard murals”?
Your workforce simply spent two hours brainstorming concepts for a brand new advertising and marketing marketing campaign. The group mentioned content material advertising and marketing, partnerships, accounts, viewers, and price range — and the inexperienced packing containers, black arrows, and multi-colored sticky notes on the dry-erase whiteboard captured the highlights. Then, one in all your teammates printed “DO NOT ERASE” in all caps above the visible masterpiece. Another individual snapped an image of the whiteboard with their telephone. There have been imprecise plans to share, transcribe, and “act” on all of the concepts that got here out of this brainstorm. Instead, the whiteboard picture sat untouched — together with all these nice concepts — on somebody’s telephone digicam roll.
Fast ahead to 2020 and the start of the pandemic, when most of us discovered ourselves working from house. In truth, in 2020, 71% of employees have been doing their job from house all or more often than not. Because of this, teammates have not often been in a position to meet in a room and hash out an issue collectively — however they nonetheless want to collaborate. Today’s distant and hybrid workforce has underscored the significance of visible collaboration. After all, we are able to’t underestimate the facility of visuals — particularly when it comes to collaboration. When folks hear data, they keep in mind solely 10% of what they heard three days later. However, if an image is paired with that very same data, folks will retain 65% three days later.
That in-person advertising and marketing brainstorm with the dry-erase board has shifted on-line. Enter the digital whiteboard, a web-based model of the whiteboard workplace employees beloved. With the digital whiteboard, customers can ideate, brainstorm, and create course of move diagrams — they only do it just about. This expertise’s anytime-anywhere accessibility might make you marvel when and the way to reap the benefits of this software finest.
Best Practices for Visual Collaboration Tools
Let’s take a look at how digital whiteboards may help revamp the best way your workforce works and share some finest practices for making the most of this kind of software — even when you’ve got the chance to return to in-person brainstorms.
1. Map the medium to the assembly
What conferences are finest fitted to digital whiteboarding?
Basically, any assembly that entails brainstorming, discussing, and/or mapping out concepts, initiatives, and ideas (or grouping concepts into totally different classes) is a wonderful excuse to leverage a whiteboard. These might embrace situations the place you’re creating content material like:
Process diagrams and workflows: Map out a begin level, steps, selections, actions, and finish level of your undertaking. This course of move diagram might define a particular undertaking, its related duties, and the duty sequence.
Mind mapping: Write the subject of the thoughts map in the midst of the drawing. Brainstorm 3-5 predominant concepts in a round formation round the primary matter. Draw a line from the thoughts map matter to every predominant thought.
Pros and cons: Outline the benefits and downsides of a specific resolution.
SWOT evaluation: Identify strengths, weaknesses, alternatives, and threats associated to a undertaking, scenario, or competitor.
Daily standup: Cover the standing of your workforce’s initiatives throughout a fast check-in.
Keep in thoughts that the knowledge contained inside varied packing containers, labels, and arrows in your digital whiteboard may be moved round. That mentioned, not each situation is reduce out for whiteboarding. Avoid a whiteboard session if you’re working with heavy knowledge and structured, detailed undertaking plans. Those may be higher fitted to a Gantt chart, which illustrates a undertaking schedule permitting you to drill down into hyperlinks, tabs, and paperwork and consider varied dependencies and relationships between and amongst actions and stakeholders.
See More: Beyond Virtual Meetings: 6 Popular Collaboration Tools to Boost Productivity
2. Agree on a purpose, course of, and stage of element
Your whiteboard-centric assembly may be formal or casual. An advert hoc brainstorm might not require an agenda, but when your workforce outlines a extra complete undertaking or course of, think about setting a session agenda. What is the aim of the assembly? What downside are you attempting to clear up? What purpose are you attempting to attain? What data would you like to seize? How will you add concepts?
If you’re holding a brainstorm a few dash for an upcoming product function, you’ll be able to create 4 packing containers: “dangers,” “challenges,” “actions,” and “priorities.” Be clear on the extent of element you employ inside the packing containers, stickies, and shapes. Your whiteboarding vocabulary ought to be constant (quick phrases and descriptors work finest). What you need to keep away from is an excessive amount of or too little data. Too few particulars, abbreviations, or cryptic phrases might confuse folks, whereas an excessive amount of knowledge can overwhelm them. Also, you need to be sure that folks can learn and perceive the digital whiteboard after they entry it days or even weeks after your session.
3. Encourage energetic participation to join your workforce
In a typical brainstorming session, it’s not unusual for one or two folks to dominate the dialog. Research signifies that two folks do greater than 60 % of the speaking in a typical six-person assembly. As the scale of the assembly will increase, the issue worsens.
Digital whiteboards enable everybody to have a voice and be a scribe. Those who aren’t comfy talking throughout conferences can nonetheless be “heard.” Every participant has an opportunity to contribute, share, and scribble in actual time. The real-time interactivity connects and focuses everybody so that each one contributors have a voice. There is an implicit expectation that each cursor shall be transferring. Everyone ought to be actively engaged, coloring and including shapes and pictures.
4. Convert your whiteboarding session to actionable duties
Whiteboarding permits groups to join ideation with work and execute this work. You can convert a whiteboard session into actionable duties, a undertaking plan, or a doc — and your whiteboard serves as a everlasting, accessible, and updateable document of your workforce’s thought course of.
If I would like to perceive the standing of a undertaking, I can click on on a whiteboard hyperlink, see the method move, and consider the most recent data on varied duties. This saves me the time and problem of scheduling and conducting a gathering. Whiteboarding and visible collaboration assist groups handle in our self-service world, eliminating silos and aligning folks rapidly. If I’ve gross sales engineering and buyer enablement groups scattered worldwide, they will create a whiteboard to observe the standing of assorted initiatives. Everyone can see the transferring elements and the way every maps again to the bigger purpose. The real-time, always-on, accessible digital whiteboard quickens innovation, as everybody can refer to the whiteboard when finishing their work.
5. Remember that digital whiteboards aren’t restricted to digital use solely
Virtual whiteboarding doesn’t have to cease on-line. It can be used at these necessary in-person gatherings, eradicating the “take an image of the whiteboard together with your telephone” and “don’t erase” rigmarole and providing clear motion objects post-meeting. Virtual whiteboarding is each an artwork and a science that may assist your workforce map targets to a profitable consequence. It brings collectively groups for a typical objective, captures everybody’s voice, and generates concepts that transfer the needle.
As extra groups embrace visible collaboration, corporations’ creativity, productiveness, and innovation will enhance — these are issues you’ll be able to’t erase!
How are you profiting from whiteboards and different digital collaboration instruments? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love to know all about it!
MORE ON WHITEBOARDS:
https://www.spiceworks.com/collaboration/online-whiteboards/guest-article/do-not-erase-how-to-whiteboard-your-way-to-more-productivity/
