We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 10 Follow Up

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

Part 10 Follow up after the meeting

In part nine of this series we began to think about the mechanics of recording online meetings. What else can you do to keep people informed, engaged and feeling positive about their next online meeting?

Of course the greatest motivation is to reach a measurable accomplishment that has personal as well as organisational value. This is true of all meetings, and not just those that happen online. Running the meeting online has advantages. The recording of plans can be inescapably right under the noses of participants. Expressed openly in words that all can see, it is hard to avoid a commitment on the grounds that you were ignorant or unsure. If a meeting has been recorded, stored and is free to review, then one cannot ask to be excused on the grounds that they forgot what was intended.

Ultimately it is the quality of the outcomes of a meeting that make the biggest difference. At the end of a well-run face-to-face meeting, it is normal to list the tasks to be accomplished and to assign people to those tasks. This action plan is then sent to all participants in the form of minutes along with a list of key decisions made and important information recorded at the meeting.

The process of action planning is simple; some people find the discipline to be difficult.

1. Step 1: Associate actions with a long term strategic goal.
2. Step 2: Describe outcomes – what will change, for whom and by how much?
3. Step 3: How you will know it’s been accomplished – what can you see, hear or read to measure each outcome?
4. Step 4: WHTBD (What Has To Be Done) to achieve each outcome? Describe specific actions, methods, processes or events.
5. Step 5: What will you need? List the resources needed to perform each activity.
6. Step 6: What will you produce? Describe the tangible outputs of each activity (how much, how often, over what period?)
7. Step 7: Sanity check – will the proposed activities result in the expected outcomes? Do those outcomes contribute to the goal and long term plan?

A typical written plan might look like this:

Such a plan in an online meeting may be built upon a whiteboard, using a prepared table as the background. Even more effective, but more time-consuming, is to have each individual type his or her own actions in their own words.

There is a symbiotic relationship between things you do live online and things you do in people’s own time (the synchronous and asynchronous). It may work well for some of the follow-up to a meeting to be done through discussion forums or by posting to a web-page some links for further information or access to metrics which show the impact of initiatives.

Surveys are usefully done in this way too, to collect information about the process itself and how to improve it. Working online may well be a new experience for some or all of the participants in a meeting. It is healthy to allow them to say how they felt about the experience. Was it at the right pace for them? Did any technical or other problems hinder them? Were they confortable with the locus of control and management of the meeting? Did they have enough opportunity to convey their own beliefs and feelings?

This is the final part of the series about online meetings. We do not pretend to know all the answers. We’re hoping you will review our contributions and add your own ideas to the blog.

It is our intention to revisit all ten parts. We’ll review and tweak and improve them, before publishing them as our third free eBook. Our readers’ views and experiences will enrich the end result. If we can create together something that is representative of the experience of a wide range of practitioners, it will help us all to understand what works and what doesn’t when meeting online.

Thank you all for joining us.

About Phil Green

Phil Green has written 72 post in this blog.

Phil identifies himself as a perfomance consultant and teacher who helps people and organisations to do the best they can at work. He has strong skills in designing learning materials and workflow support, and draws from a wide spectrum of methods and technology. Co-designer of a certificated qualification in blended learning, he has trained hundreds of others from many industry sectors in how to create effective learning solutions, both online and offline.

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Related posts:

1. We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 4 Set up your Meeting
2. We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 6 Design Your Meeting
3. We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 2 Better Meetings
4. We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 1 Business Case
5. We can’t go on meeting like this – Part 9 Record Meetings