When does the whiteboard effect work?
Summary
The “whiteboard effect” refers to a deep work phenomenon that occurs when two or more people problem solve together in spells of intense focus. The presence of this effect doesn’t mean, however, that we must always be in whiteboard mode.
We must remember the sobering truth that group brainstorming is almost always a waste of time.
Though group interactions can be enjoyable, “interesting” conversations aren’t the same thing as productive interactions.
To make the whiteboard effect shine, three conditions must be true.
People should be able to state their individual positions about the problem they’re solving. This needs prior, solo thinking.
Each participant must bring a unique perspective, and skills relevant to the problem. This means that you must curate the list of attendees at such sessions.
The group must have aggregation mechanisms to make sense of the diverse perspectives everyone brings. This is the facilitator’s responsibility.
If you follow this website, you’ll know that I admire Cal Newport and his ideas. He’s just a shade younger than me, but I feel that when I grow up, I’d like to be like him - living what he calls “the deep life”. Cal owns the phrase “deep work”, having written the book on the topic. Deep work, as you know, is one benefit of working asynchronously.
The “whiteboard effect” is amongst Newport’s many theories and philosophies about deep work. It’s a familiar idea - about being around, and working with, other, interesting people. In his book, Cal says,
“For some types of problems, working with someone else at the proverbial shared whiteboard can push you deeper than if you were working alone. The presence of the other party waiting for your next insight—be it someone physically in the same room or collaborating with you virtually—can short-circuit the natural instinct to avoid depth.”
Cal expanded on this idea in episode 262 of his podcast. He mentioned how the whiteboard effect can expose you to information, ideas and techniques that others have. You extend the amount of “neuronal real-estate”, in service of whatever problem you’re solving. Cal also says that you focus harder in such settings, because you don’t want to lose social capital. Getting distracted makes you look bad! He even quotes the Dagstuhl seminar in rural Germany, which many participants have praised as a highly productive, academic event, as an example of the success of the whiteboard effect. Cal notes that between interesting conversations, unlimited coffee and great beer, the seminars have inspired at least six academic papers that he knows of.
So does this mean that we should all gather around whiteboards at the first available opportunity, hoping to strike inspiration or focus better? Doesn’t this explain why many leaders advocate a return to the office? Isn’t this a vote for more “synchronous” collaboration and brainstorming? Well yes, and no! As with most things, this is a topic that deserves nuance.
Group brainstorming is a mostly ineffective exercise
I’ve addressed “brainstorming” several times before on this blog (see here and here). So I apologise if what I’ll say feels like posthumous equine flagellation.
Group brainstorming is “almost always” a waste of time.
While brainstorming feels like an integral, almost religious part of most corporate cultures, it has little scientific backing. Popularised by Alex Osborn in the 1950s, the concept was to start a mile wide and an inch deep with loads of ideas. And the hope has always been, that by combining and refining these ideas you’ll come up with something novel.
There are plenty of problems with brainstorming though. For one, individuals working by themselves often generate more ideas than brainstorming groups. So there goes the notion of quantity and throughput! Brainstorming also suffers from some fundamental problems.
Production blocking. In settings where people have to take turns to share their ideas, the group can only listen to one idea at a time. This turn-taking creates a bottleneck for the production of ideas. Articulating an idea in a group has its cognitive costs, which everyone pays for when brainstorming in a group. This is one reason many facilitators adopt the hack of asking people to brainstorm by themselves, by writing all the ideas that come to their mind, on sticky notes.
Social loafing. While Cal says that the whiteboard effect focusses participants, in larger groups it can also be an excuse to slack off. When a few others are debating an idea furiously at a physical whiteboard or in a Zoom call; especially one that you have little interest in; it’s easy to be a passive observer. This is when people turn off their cameras, go on mute and check email on the side. Even with classic brainstorming, no one keeps track of how many ideas each individual comes up with. So some people can have little or no contribution to such sessions.
Barriers to inclusion. In a country like India, where all of us have different exposures to English, you’ll often notice that confident English speakers often get more airtime than others. Language isn’t the only inhibiting factor. People’s personalities, experience levels and perceptions of safety all come into play when expressing themselves (or not), in brainstorming sessions.
No wonder Sheena Iyengar recommends starting alone before you share ideas in a group. Async-first. Sync-next.
“Interesting” isn’t always useful
I often hear people defending the idea of bringing a bunch of people together, because they spark “interesting” discussions. When I quiz them further about the said discussions and ask them what the “interesting” takeaways were, they can usually summarise them in 30 seconds. I then ask them if the insights were so novel as to need many people together in one place. This is when some people have an aha moment and realise that the cost of getting people together is disproportionate to the trivial insight they generated; however “interesting” the conversation may have seemed.
Here’s the thing. If you get a bunch of intelligent people together, and if they get along with each other, it’s most likely that they’ll have an enjoyable conversation. Most of us enjoy such stimulation. Our enjoyment however deceives us into thinking that we did something “productive” with our time. Most often, we don’t achieve far less than what we’d have achieved if we were thinking deeply about the topic; by ourselves.
Not that enjoyable conversations aren’t a worthwhile activity. But for those, you needn’t organise a whiteboard exercise a brainstorm, or an anodyne corporate workshop! We can all do without all of that productivity theatre. Instead, meet those smart people in social settings - such as a coffee, lunch or even a one-on-one meeting. Have those stimulating conversations by all means, without the contrivance of work.
Making the whiteboard effect work
So does everything I’ve written so far mean that I disagree with Cal Newport? Well, no! This is the fun part of following a true intellectual. Cal often expresses nuanced ideas that you must engage with, deeply. For example, it’s easy to take Cal’s book, “A World Without Email” as an indictment of asynchronous communication. But when you examine his argument deeply, you’ll notice that it’s more an indictment of shallow, back-and-forth seemingly asynchronous conversations on chat and email. Indeed, these are the kinds of interactions that we say are as bad as, or even worse than, all-day meetings.
In a similar vein, you must examine Newport’s idea about the whiteboard effect, with some nuance. He clarifies his advice in his book, Deep Work. Cal recommends working in a hub and spoke model. You retreat to your spoke to work independently, while you seek a hub when you want to expose yourself to new ideas. While Cal says that the whiteboard effect can take place in a spoke - an example being pair programming - he also cautions against overdoing it.
“Don’t lionise this quest for interaction and positive randomness to the point where it crowds out the unbroken concentration ultimately required to wring something useful out of the swirl of ideas all around us.”
So Cal’s position about the whiteboard effect is unambiguous. You’ll need it, but not all the time. And you must be conscious and selective about when you seek it out.
Besides what Cal says, we must turn to another scholar to understand how to leverage the whiteboard effect. That scholar is diversity expert, Scott Page. Professor Page has authored two books on the topic of diversity, where he explores; amongst other topics; how diverse perspectives and heuristics can help us find novel solutions to complex problems. Let me paraphrase my understanding of Page’s writing to explain when “people at a whiteboard” are most likely to be effective together.
Independence. When two or more people are working together on a problem, they must be able to exercise independence in their thinking and decision-making, without heavy influence from others. This often happens when each person has thought about the problem, by themselves. If the first time they encounter a problem is at the whiteboard, then they are susceptible to shallow thinking. Regardless of their experience, they may not bring a valuable perspective to the problem, because they’ve not been able to wrap their minds around it.
Diversity in relevant skills. As Cal says, the value of the whiteboard effect is in exposing yourself to diverse ideas, techniques and perspectives. However, these perspectives and heuristics must apply to the problem at hand. This is where finding the right group of people to be at the whiteboard is crucial. Too often, in corporate settings, everyone on a team gets an invitation to a problem-solving workshop. I argue you must carefully curate the list of participants at such events. Everyone at the proverbial whiteboard must have some unique skills that relate to the problem. Any more than eight people are too many. Less than six is ideal.
Aggregation mechanisms. It’s one thing to have a diverse group. It’s quite another to use their diverse inputs in a solution. Scott Page states diverse groups need aggregation mechanisms to make sense of the varied insights and perspectives they generate. Powerful aggregation mechanisms can help you engage even large groups of diverse people, like how prediction markets do. In corporate meetings though, it’s the facilitator’s responsibility to find the right aggregation mechanism for a group exercise. It’s a deep task. Certain repeatable patterns for aggregation already exist on agile teams. Pair programming, with its ball and board, driver-navigator and ping-pong patterns provides mature patterns for two programmers to work together and leverage the whiteboard effect. It’s a perfect aggregation strategy to solve daily coding problems.
You’ll have realised by now that the whiteboard effect needs to satisfy more pre-conditions than just getting people to a notional whiteboard. Few things annoy me more than people rushing to organise or attend brainstorming sessions about topics no one has given any deep thought to. I wish we accounted for the time and cognitive space we waste in such meetings.
As a knowledge worker, I hope your job affords you the freedom to decline such sessions. Advocate for an async-first approach instead. If you’re a leader, I urge you to design these sessions better. Pick the right participants, encourage everyone to prepare and aggregate everyone’s inputs effectively. You’ll then notice that the “interesting discussions” will also be productive!