Making the most of remote meetings:
Focus, discipline and brevity

-By Nancy Settle-Murphy

More and more organizations are going global, flattening the barriers that once separated geographic regions, functions and disciplines. Meaningful connections must be forged across time and space, often among those who have never met. Many who once relied on face-to-face meetings to get work done now have to find new ways to enable the conversations so necessary for successful collaboration.

This edition of Communiqué maps out a few basic principles to help organizations plan and run remote meetings that can achieve real results within a short period of time. While there is no sure-fire approach that works equally well in all situations, there are certain factors that will always need to be considered when planning agendas for remote working sessions. (For more tips and tools, please join us for our Bridging the Distance webinar on January 24, "Planning and Running Effective Remote Meetings."

• Be realistic about your objectives. You can't expect to cram an agenda meant for a three-day face-to-face meeting into a few remote conversations. Consider which objectives require real-time conversations and which can be achieved in other ways, such as via email or chat forums. Also think through the type of conversations that are needed. For example, are healthy debates required to reach a decision? Do people need to spend time brainstorming a solution? Some conversations take longer than others. Make sure you aren't trying to accomplish too much.
  
• Work with the time you really have. How soon do you need to deliver results? Is it possible to generate some quick hits over a series of working sessions? How much time are participants willing to give? Think about how you can divide objectives into manageable chunks so that you keep each remote meeting to two hours or less. Even a skilled facilitator can't expect to keep people focused when email, instant messages and to-do lists beckon.
  
• Select participants based on their ability to help achieve each objective. In general, the fewer the participants, the richer the conversation. Not all participants must join every meeting. For example, some may provide input via email or web postings, while those who need to evaluate data and make decisions are required for the conversation. Also consider time zones, native language, and relationship to other team members when determining who should be involved in which conversation. In many cases, conversations among a subgroup can be an effective way to make rapid progress.
  
• Insist on planning and prework from all participants. Especially when objectives are ambitious and the sense or urgency is great, participants will need to invest time preparing for a productive conversation. What can be sent ahead of time for review and comment? How can you poll the group for input in advance? What homework can you assign to sharpen the focus? Think about how you can create a level playing field in advance, enabling participants to launch right into a great conversation. Consider enlisting the aid of a senior executive if you suspect prework might be a tough sell.
  
• Use meeting technology when it can accelerate and improve results. In some cases, an audioconference alone might be sufficient, especially where the key objective involves relaying information to others. However, if you must solicit multiple opinions, generate new ideas or make complex decisions, using a web collaboration technology in conjunction with simultaneous audio can produce dramatic results. In general, the more you can design your session to take advantage of the right technology, the less time you'll need.
  
• Enforce ground rules to keep people focused and on track. Once people start to tune out, the meeting can quickly degrade into a chorus of half-hearted monosyllabic responses. Much better to establish ground rules right up front, preferably at least a few days prior to the meeting, so people can commit to being fully present during the whole session. As a result, you're far more likely to drive to a successful conclusion within the allotted time.
  
• Don't leave meeting facilitation to chance. If you have serious work to do within a short period of time, consider asking someone outside of the group to facilitate the session. This is especially important if the meeting leader also needs to actively participate in the conversation. A skilled facilitator can help engage participants who wander and can coax people to articulate their ideas. The use of instant messaging between facilitator and meeting leader can replace the physical gestures that often give vital cues in face-to-face sessions.
  
• Keep the momentum going with the rapid turnaround of meeting highlights. Make sure someone is responsible for capturing meeting notes, including actions, decisions, outstanding issues and next steps. It's especially easy for virtual teams to lose their steam when they don't have tangible evidence of their progress. When creating your agendas, think about how the output from one session can help jumpstart the next.

Making well-informed decisions, generating innovative solutions to vexing problems and creating a shared strategy for future business success all work best when the right people come together for a focused conversation. Setting the stage for such conversations is particularly challenging when the participants all work from a distance, given that the margin of error is so small, and it's so easy to lose control once people tune out. For each key objective, consider what kind of conversation is called for, how long it might take, what preparation is needed, and who needs to be involved—and then plan accordingly.

©2010 Guided Insights, All rights reserved. We invite you to use content from our Communiqué, as long as you give attribution to Guided Insights, including a live link to our website: www.guidedinsights.com. We'd appreciate knowing where and when the content will appear.

The attribution should read: "By Nancy Settle-Murphy of Guided Insights. Please visit her web site at http://www.guidedinsights.com for related articles and tips."