Getting the best out of virtual meetings

Around the world, we are witnessing the cancellation of large scale events like the Geneva International Motor Show, ITB Berlin, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or Hannover Messe to name but a few. Likewise, companies cancel international and national meetings at any scale to avoid the risks of Covid-19. There is an urgent need to still maintain connectivity and productivity under these conditions. Being experienced workshop designers and facilitators, our BXT and The Difference teams realize this need with our firm and clients now more than ever.

Let’s reframe this situation into an opportunity: How might we finally make the best use of technology to drive local and global collaboration that should (a) improve productivity, (b) increase employee experience and (c) reduce our travel footprint to a healthier level? If we then invested half of the travel savings into carbon offset, we’d be in a much better place. 

So, how could you do that? Of course you can hire a professional collaboration team like our The Difference team. Or you can book that glossy video conference equipment, though those rooms are likely booked out already. In this post, I’d like to focus on the large number of everyday important meeting and suggest a DIY toolkit to bring those to the next level. Here are my personal tips from years of experimentation: 

A. It’s all in planning

"If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution."

Albert Einstein

First of all, 90% of the answer lies in excellent preparation. How much time do you usually invest for preparing this physical full day meeting with 20 people? Doing it in a remote setup requires as much diligence in preparation to reach the same impact. 

1. Define the objectives and deliverables: Be 100% clear why you need to bring people together at this point in time. It’s a chance to challenge the regular rhythm you have had for years. Based on this, what are the tangible outputs (e.g. roadmap, job profile, budget, …) and the intangible outputs (e.g. what do you want people to know, feel and do) you want to create? Write down those objectives and deliverables on one page and align them with the key stakeholders.
2. Derive the required inputs and their formats: Based on this, what do you really need as inputs? What of this really needs to be presented? What can be shared as pre-reading instead? What is the most engaging form to do that? While an offline audience is at least physically captive in a meeting room, your remote participants are not. Assume that people will tune out after 90 seconds and get a coffee if the interaction is not engaging.
3. Challenge your participant list: Once you know the outputs and inputs, double check your list of participants. Is everyone needed? Who is missing? Who might be some unusual suspects to make this inspirational and a success? If it is remote anyway, you might have a chance to loop in this Australian colleague or get a live voice from a customer and turn the issue into an opportunity.

B. A prepared environment

"Education is natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment."

Maria Montessori

Second, the environment we create for participants defines a huge part of the experience in any interaction. It is something we too often ignore as we gather around that boardroom table. In remote meetings, especially if participants go through multiple each day or week, this environment should therefore get twice the care. 

1. Define the ideal and feasible setup: Is there any value in gathering small groups of people in local office hubs? This would allow you to design breakouts in which teams can work on smaller tasks decentrally and then reconvene in the virtual plenary to share. Or do you need to work with most people being alone in their location? This would require more thought into how to drive collaboration.
2. Get good, pragmatic technology prepared: Remote meetings of course depend on excellent quality of collaboration platform, sound and video tools. No magic required, but good preparation.

• Collaboration platform: Select your virtual “whiteboard”. A large part of the magic will result from collaborating in the same document online simultaneously, with as much freedom and creativity as possible (using tables, text, pictures, virtual post its, links, …). You likely already have a platform available that everyone can access. Now is the time to start exploring its full potential (Microsoft 360, Google Suite, and many others). For work planning, think how you can use your agile project management and collaboration tools (Jira, Trello, Asana, Smartsheet, Slack, ...). Checking your required inputs and outputs, prepare simple templates people can collaborate in - in plenary and in breakouts. 
• Sound: Make sure that those parts with multiple people in one room have good loudspeakers but more importantly excellent microphones in every relevant corner. Those small comments and the tone of voice need to be understood. Good personal Bluetooth speakers may do the trick if you are not in a well-equipped conference room and with less than 10 people. Mobile microphones may be helpful if you want the team in larger rooms to move around. For single participants, encourage them upfront to invest in and use a good speaker and microphone external to their PC or a good headset (wireless so they can move when needed).
• Video: Prepare everything for video use via a platform available to you (Skype, Zoom, Hangout, …) since this is better than a voice conversation only. Make use of chat and polling functions of your video platform. Encourage people to have two screens available - one for video, one for content - you do not want to be constantly swapping. I personally love a third one (e.g. an iPad on the side) for video, presentation, and collaboration in parallel. Make sure you have a dedicated person managing technology and content in the back. 

3. Prepare participants: There’s nothing worse than participants taking a bit too much remote freedom and joining only for parts of a session, being on the road and not having access to video or collaboration tools, distracted by noise and many other things such as parallel emails or a quick "secret" coffee break. Prepare your participants with the invite (and additional reminders) on the importance and ideal setup of your session. Specifically, ask them to be in a quiet room with a closed door, active video set-up and sound equipment etc. tested, as well as a second screen available. Comfortable setup with all the coffee and drinks they need. Maybe a sign on the door that they are in a meeting. And really bold: email program switched off. When launching the meeting, plan in a few minutes for everyone to get set up, remind them of the ideal setup, explain how you plan to interact with regard to breakout sessions, individual collaboration and breaks. 

C. Engaging remote facilitation

“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.”

Galileo Galilei

You are finally running this session. It’s a four hour online meeting replacing a meeting that was scheduled for two days in person. Resist the first impulse to cut a bit of content and stuff the remaining content into that lengthy presentation in which people present 40 slides in 20 mins and eat up the planned Q&A time. You will still miss topics for time reasons and you will encounter disengaged participants whose backs hurt, eyes burn, stomachs rumble and are not engaged (yet, their emails are done, lucky them!). In remote meetings, best and worst practices of physical meetings get amplified. Think about how to best capture their attention instead. Design a session in which people explore and collaborate in spite of physical distance, and maybe even use the benefits of it, e.g. what worked in rotating teams across time zones, which remote participants can now join, can we have video access to relevant remote locations etc.? 

1. Invest in relationship building: More than 50% of any meeting’s value is usually in just bringing people together and allowing time for personal exchange and building relationships. Avoid the urge to skip that part in an important online meeting. Making a role call across 30 people will not work of course. Could you instead ask people a question like “What motivates you about today’s topic?”? They could fill in their answer in 3 mins of quiet work in a joint online spreadsheet. Then call out a handful that look interesting to explore: “George, would you be so kind to share, that looks highly interesting?” rather than “Who’d like to share?” You can repeat this simple method several times across the session to reflect and share personal stories.
2. Keep the impulses short: Can you do that impulse in 5-10 mins rather than 30? Can you share the details before or after the session? Or could you give participants the chance to read up details for 10 mins after your impulse and then jointly reflect on it? Engage the audience every few minutes. Call up people to get their real questions as you cannot read the room that easily.
3. Allow time for joint development: Assume you want to organize a meeting in order to develop a joint roadmap to achieve a new goal. The roadmap is roughly sketched out into four workstreams, but needs much more detail. I would recommend to share some inspiration and overview in a plenary impulse, then move into group work. Four small groups of 3-5 people could switch from the main conference line to a prepared breakout conference line and prepare a template to detail their workstream. 3-5 people can get a lot done this way, everyone is engaged and collaborates. You could go as far as rotating teams and build on prior inputs if you are already familiar with this concept in an offline world. Get people together after 30 mins to report back and reflect on interconnections and any other learnings. Use your "digital whiteboard" (can be as simple as a shared text document) to integrate and align. This of course takes careful preparation time and likely requires a tech and content person to secure everything works out.
4. Manage the energy: Be highly empathetic and be the “Chief Experience Officer” for your remote participants. How do you imagine they feel at this point of the session - physically and emotionally? Is it time for a break? Take regular ones, ask them to open windows, get coffee and stretch. Do you have a small creative energizer up your sleeve that could work remotely (e.g.show an image of the 9 dots problem and ask them to solve it)?

D. After the game ...

“After the game is before the game”

Sepp Herberger

… you have invested time and energy to reach a certain objective, to create tangible outputs and reach some intangible outcomes. This process does not stop when you hang up. 

1. Document the team’s results - quickly: Keep the momentum and integrate the teams’ results quickly. Integrate them in the tools that you want to continue working with (e.g. online project management tools, shared drives, …) and keep email attachments to the absolute minimum. Is there a chat group you can continue discussions in? Think about any ways to make the documentation memorable.
2. Collect feedback and have fun with it: Make sure to learn. Collect feedback online and in 1:1 dialogues. Have fun innovating the formats. You can only solve a problem if you can have fun with it. And participants will experience the benefit and adhere to your recommendations a bit more with every new session. 

What works for you and what doesn’t? Under which conditions? What hardware and software do you use? Where do you come close to a physical experience? Where can you even exceed it?

Let me know if these tips are helpful for you and what experience you made with virtual meetings!