But What About the White Board? - Part 1

Over the past few weeks I've felt a heightened sense of milestones and anniversaries on the brain. It's a safe bet that we've all been thinking a bit more about the last time we did certain things given that it's now a year into pandemic life and working remotely is the norm for many still.

For me, it's surprisingly been an even balance of things I remember nostalgically along side moments of astonishment in seeing how well my coworkers have continuously leaned into their strengths to adapt and adopt new ways to be collaborative and productive. And of course there are a few things I celebrate not having to deal with, like microwaved fish leftovers permeating through an entire office. But don't worry, this won't be a post where I make you read through all of the things I haven't experienced since I was last in an office setting.

It's too early to tell where on the scale of Nostradamus to Chicken Little the recent NY Times article about "remote work being here to stay, and Manhattan potentially never being the same" actually sits, but regardless of where things pan out there is one thing I consistently miss and I hope it's not amongst the list of things prophesied to never return. I'm talking about those meetings that walk the line between a very tight agenda and a free-form open forum. Yes, the white board meeting.

There's the obvious benefits like community and collaboration that come with meetings centered around a good ol' white board session, but one could make the argument that there is a plethora of digital tools in use that have successfully maintained community and collaboration for working remotely so I won't spend much time there.

The less obvious benefit — the one that took me longer to realize I valued most, and the one that I've yet to find a digital equivalent for — is that these meetings allow almost everyone to show up on equal footing with little to no expectation of needing to do homework in order to effectively participate or learn.

Regardless of discipline, seniority, or skill-set level, all that's needed to get a multi-functional group going is a dry erase marker and they're on their way to articulating a rudimentary gantt chart timeline, a cursory user flow chart, system architecture, priority list, questions to come back to, you name it. If you don't fully understand something that was explained you can literally point to where the gap is that needs further explanation. If you're lucky you even have a couple different color markers to choose from and some post it notes to let others jot ideas and questions down and group them.

Even in scenarios of distributed teams I've found success when one or more people can attempt to draw or write down what they are thinking, while making quick and real time edits based on questions and feedback from others. Sometimes that means two to three groups in multiple shared spaces connecting over video conference, sometimes it's one large group in a shared space with a handful of individuals joining separately over video.

Yes, there was always the leg work to take photos and synthesize whatever was on the board after the fact, but I'm now finding that more leg work now goes into setting up these collaboration meetings. Not just in preparing for running or hosting the meeting, but for preparing others to participate effectively. Recently I was on a call where someone mentioned they do onboarding for their digital collaboration meetings a week in advance so that people know how to use their preferred tools. I have no doubt that those sessions were great after the initial onboarding, but meetings about the meeting is more work than the average person has time to plan for.

Sure, maybe working from my living room for the past year has me waxing poetically about dry erase boards and post-it notes, but until someone shares a more consistently reliable way of herding a group of designers, developers, project managers and stakeholders together (planned or impromptu) to brainstorm and walk away with the same level of accomplishment, I'm keeping "White Boarding" on my list of things I hope come back. I'm still willing to bring the pizza too!

If you've read this far you're probably wondering about the Part 1 in the title and are asking yourself "what more needs to be said to warrant a part 2 on the subject?" Well, there's no time to sit around waiting for 2019 office life to return, so in part 2 I'll go into some specific things I've tried to remotely replicate the white board experience. Some things have worked a little bit, others not so much. Of course I'm open to suggestions too, so please share anything you think I should be testing out to include in part 2.