Virtual collaboration: not just for remote teams anymore
By: Melody White
Tags: Meetings, Teamwork, Productivity, Collaboration

Virtual collaboration is an excellent alternative to time-sucking in-person meetings, but few people recognize it as a viable option. That’s a shame — because people love to hate meetings.

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” — Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” — Thomas Sowell, American writer and economist “A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted.” Captain James T. Kirk, USS Enterprise

No one wants to sit in meetings all day, especially if they don’t feel productive. Studies found around half the meetings we attend are considered a waste of time, and that workers spend about 31 hours in unproductive meetings a month.

Good news is, we don’t always need to meet to get things done. We live in a virtual age, and virtual collaboration tools are here to help us connect and get the most out of our time at work.

Here are a few ideas for alternative forms of meetings and virtual collaboration tactics to help you boost productivity and stop wasting time.

Using virtual collaboration instead of meetings

Knowing why you’re having a meeting can help inform how you might move it into the digital space.

If the purpose of the meeting is to share turning it into an email, internal blog post or even an update in a chat room. Information sessions often get detailed, people zone out, and not everyone needs every bit of information. Presenting the information in written form allows people to skim what they need and make comments where applicable.

Additionally, people are more likely to read updates because they know it’s useful info and won’t be covered in a meeting. Taking all the valuable information and putting it in a place people can search, revisit and add comments, frees everyone up to get work done and encourages a culture of actually reading updates.

Solving problems

Studies show when people problem solve in larger groups they put in less effort, than when they work individually. It’s a psychological phenomenon known as social loafing.

So, instead of a , consider a blog post or even a Trello board outlining the problem and ask individuals to contribute thoughts.

Consider putting a deadline on feedback — “Please review this draft by Tuesday at 3 p.m.” This helps folks prioritize your request and allows them to work on it when they feel most inspired and fresh. Collaborating in an asynchronous manner enables people to build their own daily agendas, avoids disrupting creative workflows, counters social loafing, and helps introverts feel more comfortable sharing ideas.

Taking action

When you’re using virtual collaboration, consider having explicit to-do lists in your shared workspaces or project management programs. Start building a culture of accountability around task assignments and deadlines. If no one mentions when a deadline is missed people think it’s acceptable and projects can get off track.

Sometimes asynchronous collaboration can get messy and actually cost time. That’s when a team chat room or even video chat comes in handy.

Pro Tip: Look for ways to flag decisions and action items in your chat tool so the whole team has a shared understanding. (Hint: Stride offers this natively.)

Collaboration tools can make meetings more effective. More importantly, they cut down on the need for meetings in the first place.

Chat tool: Ideally, choose one with different rooms for specific tasks and projects and a video chat option. Being able to reach your team at any time in any place is hugely valuable for getting stuff done and essential for virtual collaboration. Chat tools can also help with decision making and task assigning.

Ideally, choose one with different rooms for specific tasks and projects and a video chat option. Being able to reach your team at any time in any place is hugely valuable for getting stuff done and essential for virtual collaboration. Chat tools can also help with decision making and task assigning. Internal blogging/document sharing/content management system: Every organization produces a crazy amount of documentation, and once you starting collaborating virtually having information accessible, searchable, and organized becomes critical. You need to be able to jump into a draft and make changes on the fly or move dates around on a calendar.

Every organization produces a crazy amount of documentation, and once you starting collaborating virtually having information accessible, searchable, and organized becomes critical. You need to be able to jump into a draft and make changes on the fly or move dates around on a calendar. Project management software: Having a way to define and assign tasks to your team, share files and images, and track workflows is crucial to successful virtual collaboration. You can’t reach your goal if you don’t know where you’re going or where you’ve been. A project management tool helps you see your path and brings everyone along the journey together.

Whether your team is distributed across the globe or all sitting at the same large table, putting everything in a collaboration tool (instead of siloed in locked docs and inboxes), lets everyone stay informed without having to call a meeting.