Bringing people together for face-to-face meetings can be costly. Travel and food expenses continue to spiral out of control, while travel time takes a bigger toll on organizations trying to do more with fewer people. If your organization is one of the many calling a halt to most face-to-face meetings these days, you’re probably wondering how you can achieve your goals in different ways.
Some may insist that there’s no acceptable substitute for eye-to-eye contact with people in the same room, especially if a key goal is to build new relationships or mend broken fences. And while that may be true in some cases, we believe that there are in fact many viable options that can replace face-to-face meetings, both temporarily and permanently.
This articleexplores a few of the options your organization can consider when meeting face-to-face simply is not possible or practical especially in light of today’s increasingly tough economic times.
Break down your objectives into manageable bites.
Most meetings have multiple objectives. Say, for example, you had planned a three-day project team kick off meeting intended to build new relationships among participants, reach agreement on the project scope, clarify roles and responsibilities, create a shared team communications plan, brainstorm the top issues facing your division, agree on priorities, and map out an action plan. Each of these objectives can probably be met in ways that do not require any face-to-face meetings by all (or most) team members. Create a three-column table with objectives down the left side, one per row. Next to each objective, list participants who need to be involved in the middle column, signifying the nature of their involvement (e.g. provider of input, decision-maker, idea-generator, approver, etc.). Finally, list possible ways to achieve each objective on the right. Compartmentalization of meeting objectives is the first step to designing workable virtual options.
Consider who really needs to be involved and in what way.
Does the entire team really need to be involved in every single activity? Or is it possible for a subset of people to tackle some of these objectives, such as brainstorming solutions to top issues or mapping out a section of the overall action plan? Ask yourself who needs to provide input or feedback before or after a meeting, and who really needs to be involved in the actual conversation at the same time. By paring down the number of people involved in a synchronous (same-time) conversation, more people can be engaged more fully and productively when meeting remotely. Team calls with 10 or more so people on the line simply don’t allow people to participate in surfacing and addressing complex challenges in ways that small-group conversations can.
Make it easy for people to participate at a time and place convenient for them.
One of the great benefits of meeting virtually is that more people can participate with relatively little effort and at practically no cost. Consider how you can use asynchronous means, such as setting up a virtual conference room with electronic flipcharts, to hear input from those who won’t be participating via con call, given time zone differences, language barriers, or role. You’ll save precious phone time by coming to the virtual table with top issues or proposed solutions in hand for discussion. You can use the same virtual conference room later on by inviting feedback, posting minutes or other meeting documents, or asking people to build on ideas generated during the call. Use the same web meeting tool for the actual meeting as you do for any asynch work, so people have had a chance to try it on their own before the call.
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