Brainstorming over Zoom

I’ve been in back to back meetings for the last week. It’s been a long week of long Zoom calls meeting with leadership and various teams on planning for the 2nd half of the year. I’ve also put a lot of emphasis on getting feedback from as many teams as possible to revamp some of our processes during H2.

Ideally, we would all be in person and work through it in a conference room. Unfortunately, we’ve had to resort to Zoom and it’s been exhausting, but fulfilling. I’ve learned a lot about working on Zoom, especially in the group context and have come a long ways from April 2020.

Here’s some of my favorite tips and hacks when it comes to group brainstorms over Zoom:

• Lower you expectations when it comes to Zoom. Video conferencing has severe limitations and everyone knows it. Some people expect it to completely replace in-person meetings and by doing so, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Know it’s limitations.

• Have one moderator that keeps things on track and ensures that everyone has a voice. You can’t talk over people on Zoom and it’s often hard to see the people that are less assertive trying to speak up. One person needs to be watching the group and ensuring that everyone can speak.

• Keep everyone on track by asking each other a lot of questions. It’s really easy to get distracted on Zoom and multi-task. People get bored easily and Zoom makes things much worse. Make sure that you are keeping each other honest and challenging each other at all times.

It’s not perfect, but Zoom gets the job done. With a few minor tweaks, life is a lot better over Zoom.