I just spent 10x longer designing a whiteboard session than using it. Why? Because in 2025, this might be your highest leverage skill…

A well-designed digital whiteboard session is like mise en place in a professional kitchen - when everything's prepped right, the team can cook at their highest level. They can maintain that groove for weeks.

But get it wrong? You're just watching talented people's minds turn to mush in real-time, killing momentum. The team might end up cooking entirely different dishes. In today's hybrid work environment, this can be horribly expensive.

Yes, templates are great... until everyone's using the same playbook and wondering why nothing feels fresh anymore. Tools like Miro, Mural and Whimsical are really just empty canvases. The differentiator is the invisible skill of experience design - answering questions like:

• Who needs what from this session?
• Which formats will unlock the right conversations?
• How do we sequence so everything is clear?
• What's the connective tissue between ideas?
• How do we maintain momentum after?

This means dozens, hundreds of small decisions. For my recent 4-person session, this meant 3 hours of design and 3 iterations of refinement.

As work becomes more collaborative and remote-first, these design and facilitation skills are becoming critical.

Most organizations still think a Miro license and a template library is enough. Meanwhile, their teams are burning hundreds of hours in poorly designed sessions.

Digital whiteboard design: one of the most underrated skills for the next 5 years.

P.S. While templates have their place, I'm curious about your creative solutions. We built our last session as a recording studio mixer to gauge interest in different topics. What's worked for your team?