Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

In March 2020, I had to transition four business classes with over 150 students to a fully online experience, due to COVID-19. Since the class simulates a business environment, I knew I could interact with my students the same way I interact with remote corporate teams, through clear and timely communication. In this post, I’ll go over what worked for me, and give some tips for how you can set your own classes up for success in a remote environment.

As the COVID-19 crisis was escalating in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) found itself in the midst of a crisis. Some 40% of key NHS healthcare workers had been forced to self-isolate with unconfirmed coronavirus symptoms in their homes, leaving a colossal gap in the workforce at a time when they needed to operate at full capacity. And since the virus was unconfirmed, many of those isolations were completely unnecessary – the result of runny noses from allergies or common cold symptoms.

In February of 2020 the world-renowned INSEAD business school introduced its first course in product management, designed and taught by professor Manuel Sosa and lecturer Ayman Jawhar. Unfortunately, the severity of COVID-19 became apparent shortly after the course began. Like countless universities around the world, INSEAD’s Singapore campus shut down and the new class – and its 45 students – were forced to go completely virtual.

In the new normal of remote work, we rely heavily on technology to collaborate more effectively and re-create the connection of being together. Each of the apps we use is like a virtual conference room, providing a digital space to communicate, make decisions, provide feedback to one another, and update each other on the status of projects. But there’s one conference room staple that’s missing from these tools: the whiteboard.

June 22, 2020 Over the past few months we’ve seen the world change before our eyes. Here at Miro, we’ve seen first-hand how collaboration habits have evolved as companies worldwide have shifted to remote work. The differences are evident in how teams are using our product, every day. We’ve been closely observing these developments and identifying ways to respond to them.

Asking good questions is one of the hardest skills to master. Anyone who’s ever given an interview, participated in a panel or webinar, or even gone on a date knows that an uninspired question can really kill the conversation. When it comes to brainstorming, good questions are everything. We’ve all been in brainstorming sessions that started out fine but quickly lost steam, or that never took off at all.

If there was one thing you could improve on your team, what would it be? Most common answers to this question aren’t around ability or leadership. Instead, they tend to focus on a lack of alignment and information. These were difficult areas to get right before the shift to remote work and have only gotten more challenging since. We have experimented with all sorts of approaches for keeping our team aligned and informed at Hugo.

Every day, Miro users are creating and collaborating in ways we’d never dreamed up. It’s only by seeing all these projects in the wild we get a glimpse into the possibilities. And what we’ve seen so far is amazing. Many people have already been sharing their boards on social media and in the Miro online community, but we wanted to find a way to bring all of these incredible examples together in a dedicated place that’s useful and actionable for everyone who uses Miro.

Starting today, all Miro users have access to Grids, a new widget that allows you to organize content within visual tables in a matter of seconds.

Whether you’re running a professional workshop, holding an impromptu brainstorming session, or transitioning your Agile ceremonies online, managing and facilitating online sessions can be challenging. From introducing new technology to keeping everyone on track, there is a lot to consider. Over the last weeks and months we’ve seen a growing need for solutions that enable online, collaborative sessions.