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We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 2 Better Meetings

April 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Take the opportunity to re-engineer meetings and so do them better

The average business professional in the USA attends more than two meetings a day. Nine out of ten participants admit to daydreaming. 73% have brought other work to meetings and 39% say they have dozed off. One firm reported that 80% of top management time was taken up discussing issues that account for less than 20% of the company’s long term value. Psychologists found that the effectiveness of meetings influences the well-being of employees and their attitude towards work. So it seems like a good idea for companies to get better at meetings. The shift to online is a useful opportunity to rethink.

Is a meeting really necessary?

The first question to ask is do we really need a meeting? Do you need people to interact with one another to share opinions and knowledge, and build a shared picture of the issue under discussion? If so then a well-run meeting is ideal. In most cases of sharing information, e-mail or voicemail will probably suffice. Busy people cannot afford to waste time in chit-chat or admiring reports that are to bolster someone’s self-esteem. A productive meeting must have a clear purpose and objective measures of success.

Laundry lists

In her book The Manager’s Guide to Effective Meetings (McGraw-Hill, 2002), Barbara Streibel says:

If I’m organizing a meeting, I want to get beyond “discuss”.  Maybe “discuss and decide.” Or “discuss and build a plan,” or “discuss and identify key barriers to success.” I want an action. I don’t need a laundry list of what’s happened in the last week.

15 practical hints to make meetings more effective, whether or not online:

  1. Break the superstitious habit; meet only for defined purposes
  2. Build a time-sensitive agenda and distribute it in advance
  3. Make sure only the right people attend
  4. Do as much pre-work as you can in advance
  5. Don’t force people to remain if the meeting has moved on to matters that don’t concern them
  6. Don’t tolerate digressions, ego-trips or time-stealers
  7. Gather and share feedback and use it to become better at running or taking part in meetings
  8. Record and distribute minutes for each meeting
  9. Break into small groups for problem-solving
  10. Before meeting, send out relevant information by email
  11. Apply agreed rules to govern how people behave in groups
  12. Use the correct tools and methods for brainstorming, categorising, voting/prioritising, group decision-making, surveys, action plans, meeting documentation.
  13. Start and end meetings on time
  14. Don’t let meetings drag on for too long – break the work into a series of short, virtual meetings
  15. Set a periodic meetings-free day

What next?

Part three of this ten-part series is about selecting the right tools and making best use of what you already have.

We’ll post it in a couple of days time, so do please come back.

We’re hoping you will add your own ideas to these blog items too, so we can create of it something that is representative of the experience of a wide range of  practitioners and helps us all to understand what works and what doesn’t.

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We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 1 Business Case

April 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Be clear about your business case

At the present time, with so much potential for disruption to travel plans, making a business case for online meetings is rather like arguing the ROI of emergency evacuation procedures. Who knows where and when fire will break out; no-one expects it. However Business Continuity Management is not the only game in town.

Meetings are expensive. Gartner suggests they might represent one of the largest costs to enter­prise, second only to labour.

Online meetings cost less. IBM estimates that an in-person meeting costs about US$600 per hour whereas a Web conference is about US$6 per hour. This insight helps them to save over US$4 million in travel expenses per month using Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing.

So even if some emergency has not prevented a face-to-face meeting, there are valuable benefits from meeting online:

  1. You don’t need to book and set up a venue, and so you save the cost of:
  • a venue (even in-house meeting rooms cost money to provide);
  • power (lighting, heating, powering equipment);
  • equipment (video camera, sound-recorder, TV, video player, LCD Projector);
  • consumables (Whiteboard, markers, stationery);
  • meals and refreshments.
  1. You do not have to bring remote people to a venue, so you save the cost of:
  • travel;
  • board and lodging.

You also recover opportunity costs such as loss of productivity due to absence and time spent in travelling. A person can take part in a single day in meetings that might have needed to be in different locations. Online meetings tend to be shorter and more focused since they do not include the same degree of socialising.

Of course online meetings are not cost-free, but many of the costs, such as connection to The Internet, depreciation of computers, electricity and phone are already included in “business as usual”. Licences to use web-conferencing, VoIP or Instant Messaging software vary from nil to perhaps £5 per seat per month in a large enterprise.

Compared with face-to-face, online meetings often add extra value:

  • Automatic tracking of time and levels of participation
  • You can go online “at the drop of a hat”
  • You use records of meetings store and share ideas and decisions and how they were reached
  • Most conferencing tools are adaptable for very large or very small group meetings

Very few wish to be an early adopter, so it may be reassuring to review some of the headlines emerging from research in 2009:

  • Planners intend to make greater use of alternative meeting methods in the months ahead, including Webinars (54 percent), teleconferencing (48 percent), and videoconferencing (30 percent)”.
  • A survey of nearly 1000 people in the UK showed 70% of corporate organisers and 64% of intermediary agencies predict a growth in virtual conferences and a reduction in live events in the coming year.
  • 56% of corporate buyers and 59% of intermediary agencies forecast fewer live events.
  • Only 7% of corporates predicted an increase in live events in 2010.
  • ABM and Forrester (April 2009): “75% of business decision-makers attended three or more Web-based events during the past 12 months”.

And finally (travel agents look away now):

  • February 2009 Gartner – high-definition based video meetings to replace 2.1 million airline seats annually by 2012, saving US$3.5 billion in travel and hospitality.
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We can’t go on meeting like this

April 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Ten ways in which meeting online might save you from going out of business.

Business Continuity Management is about how to stay in business when disaster strikes. Most organisations do it by choice; some are compelled to do it by law.

Since the beginning of 2009, Europe has endured a severe winter, a flu pandemic, the threat of industrial action and the vomiting of fine ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

It makes a massive impact upon an organisation’s prosperity when people can no longer come together to communicate as normal.

Wherever you choose to look, the evidence shows that face-to-face meetings are a fact of life, no matter if yours is a one-person business or a plc. You must connect with customers, suppliers, colleagues and managers.

In the USA it would common for a person in business to take part in 3 meetings every day and make 4 or 5 business trips by plane each month. Cost is a good indicator too. Speaking in 2008, a prominent strategic meetings management firm calculated the annual spend on meetings to be €350 billion globally.

So let us bring together four ideas:

1) Companies are not going to stop holding meetings

2) The risk of disruption to travel is ever-present

3) Every business has to have a contingency plan to allow meetings to happen when it is not possible to bring people together

4) If companies are to use online conferencing, then they need to plan it, and do it properly

Over the next few weeks, with recent disruptions in mind we are going to offer ten X factors that may make the difference between mere survival and gaining a competitive edge. They may even show how you might both reduce the cost and at the same time raise the effectiveness of meetings. If that became a reality, you might be tempted to let your Plan B become your Plan A!

Here are the topics to look out for:

1) Be clear about your business case

2) Re-engineer meetings and so do them better

3) Select the right tools, making best use of what you already have

4) Set up your meeting

5) Manage the change, manage expectations and up-skill users

6) Design your meeting, using the right combination of media

7) Run your meeting mastering the available forms of interaction

8) Manage group dynamics online, keeping everyone involved and on-track

9) Keep a record of the meeting and its outputs

10) Follow up after the meeting

We hope you will contribute your own ideas too. An active discussion, fed by your own views and experiences, will be far more useful than a monologue from us.

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Straight and Crooked Thinking-”Why online trainings (sic) are not so successful?”

April 26, 2010 By 4 Comments

In the Learning, Education and Training Professionals Group on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), an argument still smoulders. It is headed “Why online trainings are not so successful?”

After several hundred postings and a number of weeks, it is astonishing to see how many unsupportable conclusions have been reached. The latest was, “I think most of us agree that Online doesn’t compete with Onsite from a results perspective.” You may think it, but that does not mean it is true! I’d refer all readers of online discussions that would like to tell you what we all believe  back to the 1930′s book, “Straight and Crooked Thinking”, by Robert H. Thouless.

It’s all there:

  • Begging the question – as in that discussion, where the proposition which requires proof (“online trainings are not so successful”) is assumed without proof.
  • Appeal to authority - where something is accepted as correct without challenge because it is originated or endorsed by a person or a source that is commonly regarded as reliable. (So many experts in a Forum, it makes your head spin).
  • The bandwagon fallacy – which usually begins with “Everybody knows…” (“Most of us agree…” is a case in point)
  • Proof by example – “I’ve taken part in a very successful online project so it must work.” An attractive argument for the supporters of online learning, but logically flawed, all the same.
  • The continuum fallacy – which insists that if something is not 100% compliant or 100% accurate then it cannot be acceptable.
  • False dilemma and black and white thinking where an argument considers two alternatives, when in fact there are many other options.
  • Argument to moderation – taking the extreme position at either end of an argument is always wrong, and so a “blend” is always the right solution (not if you apply logic, it isn’t!).
  • Special pleading – where a generally accepted rule or principle has been broken, but without justifying the exemption. For example, “Even though I am an enthusiastic supporter of online learning, I still do most of my work face-to-face”.
  • Appeal to consequences – “…if you trainers are happy to look for another job, all you have to do is endorse online learning.”
  • Appeal to motive (The Mandy Rice-Davies argument) – “Have you noticed how the best arguments for online learning come from the people who supply it? They have a vested interest therefore their evidence must be unreliable.”
  • Irrelevant conclusion – this is a deliberate attempt to muddle by changing the subject.

Aristotle must be turning in his grave!

FOOTNOTE First published in 1932, the book was required reading for British soldiers to help them to defuse enemy propaganda.I’ve picked out only a few but Thouless describes 38 dishonest tricks that are commonly used in arguments and shows you how to recognise and refute them. If you can get a copy, do! Straight and crooked Thinking, by Robert H. Thouless, First published Simon and Schuster, 1932, ISBN 0-330-24127-3

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When do you speak for free?

April 23, 2010 By 3 Comments

As a consultant who spends a great deal of time delivering presentations, both online and face-to-face, I am faced with the tricky decision of knowing whether or not to accept invitations to speak for free. If you are an academic, or an employee of an organisation that’s happy to sponsor you speaking externally, then the issue doesn’t arise; but for someone who is self-employed, the time required to prepare for, travel to and then deliver a presentation for free is all unpaid – you may not even get your expenses paid.

In time, I have developed my own personal guidelines:

  • If the event is run by a vendor or is in-company, then I expect a fee. If there is a requirement for me to develop a customised presentation, then I expect an even bigger fee.
  • If the event is open to the public but there is likely to be only a small audience or an audience to whom I am unlikely to be able to offer consulting services, then I expect a fee. If not, then the event must be in an exotic location (so no good for webinars) and all expenses must be paid!
  • If the event is public and there will be a good-sized audience of reasonable prospects, then I will speak for nothing in order to obtain the exposure. However, I will decide what I present and generally this will be a presentation I’ve delivered several times before.

So those are my rules, but everyone has to think this through for themselves. If you need some help in this, you could do no better than to get hold of Lee Salz’s book Stop Speaking for Free. He’s got a short video introducing his ideas on YouTube.

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WebEx on your new iPad

April 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Cisco has announced a version of Webex that runs on the new iPad. I know Apple’s new toy hasn’t reached all parts of the world yet (including here in the UK), but if you were looking for a further excuse to shell out your hard-earned cash (because I doubt you’ll get your employer to pay) on the gadget which everyone covets yet no-one can really justify, then Webex has provided one. Yes, you can now participate in Webex meetings without your laptop. For audio you’ll need to use your mobile or a VOIP headset, but you’d need those with your laptop too.

Information from Webex can be found in Using Webex on your iPad.

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