Brainstorming sessions can easily be derailed if they’re not planned to some extent, especially in remote environments. Your team members haven’t seen each other in a while, it’s easy to get distracted and to move the conversation in a completely different direction.
Luckily for you, we’ve prepared four handy tips you can use to ensure your next remote brainstorming session is successful, and all that with the help of an online whiteboard tool.
Plan Ahead
When you’re scheduling weekly meetings, or all-hands meetings you always have an agenda, you make presentations, or notes you need to follow, and so on. So, why not do something similar when it comes to brainstorming?
Create the brainstorming agenda, and make it the focal point of your online whiteboard tool. This way, the whole team will have their eyes on the problem at hand, and there will be less chance that the conversation will get derailed.
Utilize All Features of Your Whiteboard
Online whiteboard tools have so many features that can help you turn your next remote brainstorming session into a very successful project. Add images, videos and illustrations to represent your team’s ideas in the best way possible.
You should also use sticky notes, and tags, and find a way to cluster different ideas together. You can do this with different shapes in separate sections of one whiteboard.
If you need to get an approval before going ahead with some of the ideas from the session, just simply export the board to share it, or get a shareable view-only link to provide to your managers.
Connect Your Online Whiteboard With Other Tools
If you’ve chosen your online whiteboard tool wisely, it’s probably the one that can integrate with project management and communication platforms. Use this option as much as you can. It will come in handy when you need to create tasks for everyone on your team once the brainstorming session is done.
Communication app integrations make it easier for your team to stay updated on any changes or comments that happen within the whiteboard. While email integrations, and design tool integrations make it easy to add new workflows or previously prepared designs to your whiteboard.
Think About Implementing Brainwriting
Since brainstorming sessions can be overwhelming for some of your more shy employees, you should consider setting some time aside for a brainwriting session instead. In this case, each employee would access the online whiteboard tool from their own computer and start writing down specific ideas.
It’s a great way to get a lot of ideas before meeting up, discussing the details and choosing the best solutions.
If you’re worried about how to create an organized brainwriting whiteboard, we’re certain that your preferred tool has plenty of templates you can choose from, including some that will be perfect for brainstorming.
Wrapping Up
A successful brainstorming session can be held online thanks to the few tricks we’ve shared. But, the best remote sessions happen when the organizer, or the manager, is fully prepared for the task at hand.
So, make sure you write down the tips we’ve shared, and spend some time researching the online whiteboard tool you’re using to get the most out of its features.
