The Art of Communication in a Post Pandemic World

Accelerated by COVID 19 and the confine of computer screens, communication tools are changing fast and so are the ways of getting work done. What have we learned from this? What tools or approaches should we keep as we move forward? The large amounts of options available to us can make it challenging to sort through, yet ignoring the current shifts has its share of drawbacks. Playing in the sandbox of old paradigms leads to solutions that address the problems of the past rather than that of the future.

Some tools have surfaced that are now fundamental to the new forms of work we are embracing. Here we explore a few of my favorites game changers as they align with emerging trends. As a disclaimer, my views are influenced by my experience as an executive working with academic partners, supporting adult learners, and connecting with employers.

TREND 1: The emergence of Data Science and Machine Learning is but one trend that is fueling a new generation of communication tools. According to Cathie Wood, Chief Executive Officer of Ark Invest, artificial intelligence training costs are declining 68% per year and their efficiency is doubling every 16 months (May 2021). As a result, tools like Otter.ai, a voice recognition software, are rapidly gaining ground and becoming more effective. Translators are also available that are gradually growing in levels of accuracy.

OTTER.AI: A cloud-based “speech to text” app that provides transcription, allowing you to search, edit, play, and organize the text.

Why adopt it? +Tap in different learning and working styles +Ease of use +Quality live captioning +Save time +Support collaboration +Free basic tier.

• To make it easier to organize communication by taking rich notes while offering playback controls.

• To support collaborative communication: The software serves to create, save, share, and edit your virtual meeting notes. It assigns different IDs to different speakers and thus transcripts are easy to edit. Everyone receives full audio, video, and transcripts of the meeting, keeping team members stays on the same page.

• Because the basic plan is free. It comprises several features, such as timestamps, keyword summaries, and word clouds that make future topic-based searches easier. It also saves a record of all previous meetings with a complete breakdown of topics already covered so that you don’t have to waste time going over it again in future meetings.

• There are advanced plans: The Pro plan is for people needing more control. More extensive plans include two-factors authentications, user management, and other controls. The Enterprise plan, for larger institutions, includes full deployment services and advanced features.

• It connects flawlessly, integrating with tools such as ZOOM and GOOGLE Meet, thereby making adoption more accessible.

• It is extremely accurate.

TREND 2: Virtual meetings skyrocketed with the onset of social distancing and the concept of teams gathering in a room is becoming obsolete for many. Professor Bailenson, director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, worked with a team to develop the Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale to measure fatigue from virtual meetings. To make meetings fresher, tools are being adopted that support more interactive, participants focused sessions. The breakout rooms in Zoom, for example, can serve to lead small group discussions. Visualization tools can serve to support quick creative collaboration, a key to success in this ever-changing world.

MIRO: An online mind-mapping whiteboard tool to generate energy and creativity when collaborating. It provides tools that support ideation and brainstorming.

Why adopt it? +Tap in diverse learning and working styles + Support collaboration and workflow agility +Cross platform integration +Free basic tier

• To save time, foster effectiveness, and support creativity. To support the kinesthetic and visual workers and those that are hyperactive.

• To support collaborative communication: Avatars allow you to see when others join in and to see what actions they take in real-time. To make decisions, you can use the voting feature and invest in ideas that the bulk of your team believes in. You can support in person and remote members simultaneously (e.g.; you can take a picture of a paper sticky note and mechanically convert it to a digital Miro sticker).

• It provides tools that allow teams to tap into different parts of their brains, such as free-hand writing and sketching, diagramming, or sticky notes that can be moved around online. There are a timer, video chat, and presentation mode options.

• It connects with a variety of software, especially since opening its platform to developers. You can share your board and invite people from Slack or Gmail or you can send a link out. It connects with Microsoft and Google systems, as well as iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, or Linux devices. Some documents, like Google Docs, can be updated in Miro or the initial creation area, and they will be automatically synced.

• For the support tools such as the wonderful pre-built Miro templates, that get rave reviews by users, and Miro’s growing list of add-ons for collaboration, visualization, and planning (e.g.; you can @mention someone on an uploaded image to send an immediate notification).

• The basic free plan provides access to editable boards and numerous features for any number of team members. When you are ready to have unlimited editable boards, control over boards “share settings”, and take advantage of premium features, you can choose to move on and pay for the Teams, Business, Consultant, or Enterprise plans. Each plan unlocks a different group of tools and features.

TREND 3: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job openings in the U.S. continues to rise (May 2021). Businesses struggle to succeed due to a lack of workforce, and we need to automate is gaining importance. There are effective automation tools out there, and one of my favorites is Zapier. Other tools can grow efficiency, such as Forest, showing a virtual tree that grows if you stay on task, or Sane Box, which keeps you focused with email automation.

ZAPIER: You use it to automate away tedious, time-consuming tasks, with links between multiple apps. It makes your workday easier, more pleasant, and more productive, and it rhymes with happier.

It is an easy way to create automatic triggers across apps such as:

1. A privacy request linked to delete user data from your various systems.

2. Automation that sends a thank you note to a customer for a purchase, alerts the fulfillment team, and logs the customer data in your databases.

3. Automatic creation and assignments of action items linked to meeting transcripts, GMAIL or Slack, and linked to your project management software (e.g.; Asana, GitHub, Basecamp).

4. Automatic aggregations of Mailchimp responses into Google sheet.

5. Automation organizing student posts in Google sheet or sending copies of email attachments to Dropbox. Automation of test administration and grading

Why adopt it? +Easy to customize +Support workflow effectiveness +Hooks up with over 1000 apps +Strengthen records tracking +Free basic tier

• To save time and get happier. You automate and remove tedious tasks from your list, freeing you for more rewarding tasks.

• Because it is easy to use and tailor. You automate tasks with just a few clicks to meet your specific needs and requirements.

• It offers built-in apps with each of your tools like email or message box, call app, reminders, calendars, purchasing and receipt apps, to create automated data entry along or powerful and systematic workflows, hooking up with a wide variety of other apps.

• It provides a large knowledge base and good customer support for users.

• It can serve to systematically track records from actionable items to time on tasks, to supplies and purchases and receipts, to customers’ and contractors’ data, to assignment submissions and grades, to complex survey and usage or views data.

• It supports communication with systematic follow-up with customers. It can flag and communicate Tweet or Facebook posts and mentions of success. It can send out and rack progress on actionable item assignments.

• It provides a free basic tier that allows you to perform up to 100 tasks per month, but you can only have five “Zaps” active at a time. It remains beefy enough for individual use and to get you started. The other tiers gradually provide more flexibility and include Premium Apps such as Evernote Business, MySQL, PayPal, QuickBooks, Salesforce, and many others.

In Conclusion… The pandemic accelerated disruptions across the board, from business and technologies, to education and governments. More of our activities continue to be online, and more are taking place across time zones and devices. It is more vital than ever for us to use the right remote working tools and follow best practices. We need streamlined systems to keep everyone on the same page and fully engaged. The beauty of it that with the right tools, we can embrace this new era. We can free ourselves from tedious tasks whilst embracing more creative and rewarding efforts. We must now pivot towards developing talent that can make the most of it.