MakeTeamWork provides UX research, globally. They also activate great culture by coaching leaders, teams, and students on the essential skills they need to build high-performing teams.

They are focused on understanding what makes people tick and then helping teams to design products that check those boxes and to develop processes that empower engagement.

Larissa Menocci, Co-Founder and Head of Learning Design, says, “When companies come to us, it can be out of love or pain.”

“Some leaders come to us with a vision to improve and develop their culture. Others come to us when things aren’t progressing, silos are forming, or alignments aren’t happening. We come in and support them through their journey.”

They’ve helped global giants like IBM break down communication silos and give better feedback. They’ve led masterclasses for Hyper Island. They’ve coached start-ups on agile teamwork.

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What makes them different from other consultants—according to co-Founder Adam Ambrozy—is their unique background.

“We are quirky enough for people to have fun with us, but what makes us different is the fact that we are coming from a background in business, marketing, and qualitative research—not from the Learning or HR space.”

“So when we interview people to explore their pains and opportunities, we look at it from a product and business perspective, while living very much in the right hemisphere—focusing heavily on the participant’s comfort and engagement.”

“We’re helping solve problems that we experienced ourselves.”

Working with clients from the United States to Brazil, to Lithuania, and everything in between, their work is done entirely remotely—so Larissa and Adam spend a lot of time in remote workshop sessions.

According to Larissa, “Butter allows us to be excellent agile facilitators, adapt to change, and lead with high engagement.”

Adam agrees. “The best workshop setup is having everything integrated in Butter. Other video tool integrations don’t deliver an experience that’s as easy as sharing. But Butter does."

Challenge: Tool fatigue 

When Larissa and Adam lead workshops, they don’t tell teams what to do—they provide inspiration and facilitate them through the process.

“Our approach is minimum theory, maximum training and fun. Following the Agile Manifesto, we value individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” said Larissa.

However, Larissa found that even as a human-centered company, they sometimes struggled to live up to the “interactions over tools” philosophy.

Before Butter, MakeTeamWork frequently came across the same three challenges when running their online training sessions:

1. People didn't have the link or access to the right collaboration boards.
2. Participants couldn't see both the content and each other at the same time.
3. Participants were struggling to stay engaged.

Adam thinks people are just generally tired of tools.

“People have non-integration fatigue. Five years ago, most people used four tools at work. Now they’re using 13. They’re actually spending less time with people because of their technology—not more.”

“We’re all tired of this problem, but Butter is solving it for us. Kill the clicks!”

Solution: Enter Butter!

MakeTeamWork’s first big Butter success story was using it for one of their three-day workshops in summer 2021.

“We had 10 students—all very smart people—and they adapted to Butter very quickly. It went great.”

Here’s what made Butter a difference-maker for their workshops.

Simpler integrations

Adam said Butter’s integrations—especially the Miro, MURAL, and Google Docs integrations—are the biggest game-changers.

“When you get people working directly in whiteboards like Miro for the first time, they often get overwhelmed. There are all these people moving their cursors and post-its, and so on.”

“So the Miro integration is absolutely crucial for newcomers. Everybody just enters and we can all work on it together in one place. It’s just amazing.”

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Adam appreciates how Butter’s integrated toolset reduces the load on him during a session. 

“Butter helps our time-to-task—it takes lower energy for people to onboard to new tools when we have everything integrated and everything under control. It cuts down on our need to remember to summon people, or to remember to ask people to follow us on boards.” 

Larissa says MakeTeamWork makes use of almost all of the features and integrations that Butter has to offer.

“We use screensharing for input, Miro and MURAL for collaboration, Google Drive for presentations, polls to check knowledge, the timer for brainstorming, the agenda to keep track of time and adapt on the go, and reactions to show support during presentations!”

These integrations help them prepare for sessions too.

“I used SessionLab a lot, or even Excel to plan my agenda in advance,” said Larissa. “But having it all integrated in one place in Butter is amazing.” 

A more playful, personal energy

Butter’s integrations help them bring the right energy and focus to their workshops. 

“We are ravers of soft skills and anything that improves our energy and our overall product,” said Adam.

“It breaks from the heavy visuals of Zoom. I really like its playfulness. I like the design. I’m able to break the Zoom fatigue, or the Teams fatigue, or the Google Meet fatigue. All in all, it’s just lighter,” said Adam.

“There’s this positive effect of newness,” added Larissa. “I did a few screen recordings and posted them on LinkedIn and people were like, ‘What is this? Something different! Thank God!’”

Larissa especially loves the small human touches that Butter brings. 

“I love the ability to take a selfie when you join a session so that even if you have your camera off, it's clear that your picture isn’t from your LinkedIn profile.”

"Butter is the icing on the cake for a seamless experience."

(Butter is a key ingredient to icing and cake, after all. 😉)

Results: Happy participants!

Butter was a hit with MakeTeamWork’s workshop participants.

“Our client specifically gave credit to Butter, and they’re super smart and typically critical people,” said Adam.

Larissa added, "Participants finished the program smiling and shared it was the best online program they ever participated in. That is to say, I believe we are better together, Butter!”

Here’s a direct quote from one of their participants:

"We had a lot of online training over the past year, and we are all tired of online training, but for me, this was one the best I had. I also really liked Butter; it made it really interactive—definitely one of the best I've had."

Larissa’s top Butter tip: Give a tour at the start of each Butter session! “After we welcome participants, we let them know how to react, how to raise their hand for the Queue, and how to share an emoji or GIF in the chat."

A big thanks to Larissa and Adam for sharing these insights. 🙌

For more insights, you can follow MakeTeamWork on LinkedIn.

To start using Butter’s integrations for your remote workshops, try Butter free for 30 days.