How Agencies & Firms Can Benefit from a Whiteboard Wall

Who doesn’t love writing and drawing on a large whiteboard wall? It makes the experience of holding a meeting more engaging, collaborative, and unrestricted. Most industrious team members will take any opportunity to get creative with a dry-erase marker. The possibilities for using top-quality whiteboard-painted walls in agencies and firms are endless and only limited by the imaginations of management and staff. Here are some of the many ways in which your business can benefit and ultimately improve its bottom line by using whiteboard walls in day-to-day operations.

Brainstorming and Collaboration can be Greatly Improved

Unlike other writing and drawing tools on the market, such as traditional whiteboards, digital whiteboards, and collaborative whiteboards, whiteboard-painted walls offer in-person collaboration with multiple team members that’s dynamic, tactile, and virtually unlimited in terms of available writing space. For this reason, whiteboard walls have a number of benefits over these other communication channels.

Multiple Users can Easily Work Together on a Whiteboard Wall

For one thing, due to their large surface areas, whiteboard walls allow for multiple users to work together in person on brainstorming and other work-related tasks without having to cope with the restricted writing spaces of conventional whiteboards. Also, their live-action, tactile quality makes whiteboard walls superior to electronic devices like digital and collaborative whiteboards. Finally, the physical nature of team interactions with whiteboard walls tends to generate creative ideas more powerfully than is possible with electronic devices since human-to-human communication is always more effective than remote contact.

In-person Interaction is Superior to Electronic Communication

Research shows that despite its handiness, electronic communication has significant downsides when matched up against real-world interaction like that experienced with a whiteboard-painted wall. In many instances, digital communication is simply inadequate for dealing with an issue in depth, discussing a sensitive topic, or coming up with many creative ideas for projects, so face-to-face meetings become necessary. Physical presence is indispensable for driving home a point or defending a point of view and is also preferable for brainstorming, developing project plans, and many other job-related tasks.

Collaboration is More Effective on a Whiteboard Wall than on Small Traditional Whiteboards

You may say, “Well, people can collaborate and brainstorm on a regular whiteboard, too,” and you would be correct. But logically speaking, how many users can come together around a traditional whiteboard and write or draw at the same time? Two or perhaps three at the most can do so. In contrast, with a whiteboard wall, many team members are able to work simultaneously on its huge open-ended canvas. A whole group of people can brainstorm, post ideas, sketch diagrams, and make notes on a whiteboard wall in real time, as well as provide suggestions and feedback, thus creating a highly productive workflow.

Size Limitations Should not Restrict the Free flow of Ideas

Functioning together as a group should not be limited by available writing and drawing space. Instead, team collaboration and brainstorming ought to occur, with all participants feeling free to present their ideas on a large surface in an unrestricted environment. And this is precisely what happens when teams use whiteboard walls as tools for both group communication and individual expression. We’re all kids at heart, so it’s fun to be innovative and put our ideas up on the wall. In addition, we all have an inner desire to be team players, and we all want our ideas to be heard.

After Brainstorming, it’s Time to Outline the Results on Your Wall

Once your team has brainstormed and you feel you have enough ideas generated and posted on your whiteboard wall, it’s time to begin summarizing the results and have someone assume the role of discussion architect. He or she shouldn’t be shy about circling the key points, numbering the items #1, #2, #3, etc., keeping up the pace, and driving the conversation until a consensus or synthesis is reached. At this point, the key is to not just present the data but to create an outline and drive the session to a productive conclusion. As always, it’s essential to structure the data generated and put it into easily understood units to facilitate subsequent decision-making for you and your team. In this process, the whiteboard wall becomes similar to the meeting’s recorder of notes. Writing the team’s results down on the wall makes them seem more permanent. Once the session’s results are posted, there’s an implicit understanding that your team agrees with what’s been decided. This functions as a form of meeting minutes and makes the brainstorming results more concrete and actionable in the future. Every meeting room needs a whiteboard wall for efficient brainstorming and the flexibility to orient group discussions so as to reach a productive outcome. In such meetings, your whiteboard wall can help you to be both prepared and flexible, to be both logical and sympathetic to your team members’ ideas and feelings.

Visualizing Processes or Ideas Makes Comprehension More Efficient

Besides its value for collaboration and brainstorming, a whiteboard wall is also an outstanding visualization tool that can be used to create graphs, flowcharts, and other visuals essential for documenting work processes, mapping the progress of ongoing activities, sharing network diagrams, and other functions. The value of using visualization with a whiteboard wall in meetings is significant. Visualizing a process or idea together with team members during an in-person or virtual meeting allows attendees to see the progression, interdependencies, order of operations, and grouping of the elements involved.

Creating Visuals also Enhances Memory

As a diagram begins to take shape at a meeting, the visual cortex of attendees’ brains is activated. Thus, a diagram or chart makes comprehension more efficient because it eliminates the need for attendees to map out a process mentally and then remember it individually as they would with a purely verbal presentation. So, for example, instead of having to think about what’s being sad, the visual depiction does that work on a collective level. This is a significant benefit at meetings because the human brain’s ability to process images is immensely more remarkable than its capacity to process words. For this reason, including visuals in your presentations allows for more meaningful and engaged team discussions and enhanced memory of the facts. Addressing meeting attendees’ visual capacity through physical pictures on a whiteboard wall not only makes more efficient use of team members’ time but also leads to deeper dialogue within the group. Our brains are wired to efficiently process visual stimuli on a daily basis, so it makes sense to engage that skill with your team. You just might find that using pictures on your whiteboard wall is worth a thousand meetings!

Client Consultations can be More Easily Kept on Track

No matter how much you prepare and think about the deliverables during a client consultation, the chance always exists that the client will suddenly go “off-script.” In such a case, you have to be prepared to reset and restart the conversation. When the client takes the talk away from the main subject, a whiteboard wall represents a neutral place that offers a refuge where you can organize your thoughts and slow down the pace of the discussion. Although it’s important to acknowledge what’s being said by clients in such cases, you should avoid being the kind of consultant who says yes to appease the client, then forgets everything he or she said. A famous consulting maxim states, “Reiterate what the client says, and they’ll think you’re a genius.” There’s much truth in this adage. So, to keep things moving in the right direction, simply write down what the client tells you on your whiteboard wall, then redirect the conversation toward the main topic at hand.