Learn How to use the Canvas
This page gives an overview of the eight building blocks that make the Team Collaboration Canvas.
Further down you’ll find additional information on how to properly prepare and facilitate your next Team Collaboration Workshop.
The building blocks
Block 1: Our goal
The definition of a common goal is the usual starting point – be it either a project goal or a common goal to be achieved together. This is the north star to pivot around for successful collaboration. (Note: If this has been already developed in a separate context like the team canvas that’s fine – it can be recycled here.)
Block 2: Common understanding
This box is all about the common understanding of working independently from location and serves as a joint definition of your work setting. Use it to discuss expectations from different team members and agree on your teams’ definition of the ideal workplace. Agree on if there are specific office days each week, if there’s a minimum/maximum of offsite-days and if there are certain times, that team members need to be available to their coworkers. You can also use this box to agree on how to organize meetings when people work from different locations.
Block 3: Organizing the work
This block defines how the team will organize the setup agreed upon in the previous field. It defines general rules and defines how they work and collaborate when from different locations.
These are the guiding principles and the block can be split in three categories describing (1) different roles within the team, (2) rules of collaboration the team agrees upon and (3) how the team comes to decisions.
Block 4: Communication
Communication is especially important when people work from different places. When being in the same location communication happens automatically “on the fly” which is not the case when parts of the team are remote. Therefore it’s important to clearly define which channels to use and how to setup the communication.
Clearly define where it needs synchronous and asynchronous communication. When working in a hybrid environment asynchronous communication becomes overproportionally important as the recipient has the freedom to answer whenever it fits their personal workday routine.
Also consider a channel for watercooler talks as they don’t happen randomly. And finally define a set of general rules that apply to your communication as a team.
Block 5: Documentation
This block is about maximizing transparency of tasks and work progress for the whole team.
When working in a distributed environment the accesibility of information is crucial and as a result this block is to define how and where information can be found – be it recordings of online meetings, meeting notes or the documentation of a project the team is working on.
This is to ensure that ream members have all relevant information on hand they need for their day-to-day work.
Block 6: Team culture
For succesful collaboration, trust and a bold team culture is crucial – especially when team members work from different locations.
Therefore this block is to define what makes the team a great team – how do they build trust, how do they foster diversity and what are individual superpowers that might help the team to grow
Block 7: Team external relations
Only because the team agrees on a certain setup this doesn’t mean that it will automatically happen that way. It needs the commitment and support from different stakeholders and all other parties involved.
In consequence, a team can’t works from different locations if management expects everyone to be on site at all times for in-person meetings. In this block, for example, it is agreed that a sounding board meeting can also take place virtually and that this is supported by superiors.
Block 8: Tools
There’s a famos quote: “A tool is just a tool and a fool with a tool is still a fool.” Therefore the definition of the right tools is shouldn’t happen early during the definition of the rules but as the final step of the canvas. In result it builds upon everything that has been defined previously.
There are tons of great tools out there but when working in a larger corporate the available options might be given.
Use this block to define a set of rules and to define the selection of tools to use for communication, documentation, project management and task management.
How to Use the canvas
In this section you will learn how to properly prepare and facilitate your Team Collaboration Workshop.
Getting Started
When downloading the canvas as a pdf you’ll find some guiding questions within each box that help to ask the right questions and initiate thoughts and discussions.
To make sure everybody contributes to the workshops equally, it’s recommended – but not necessary – to run the workshop with a facilitator. That helps teams to balance the discussion and find a consent within the given time frame.
Time required
Expect to block about four hours to run the full workshop. Don’t worry – that sounds like a lot but given the fact that this will be the fundament of your future work setup this will be time well invested.
Periodic review Sessions
It is advisable to look back on the collaboration approximately every six months during a retrospective to make necessary corrections or tweaks for the future. But don’t over-engineer – asking oneself “if it’s good enough for now and safe enough to try” makes a great starting-point for the canvas.
Download now!
Download the canvas now and get your team going.
