Meetings That Should Have Been Emails

Monday Morning, 9 AM, I dial into the Company Weekly.

The call starts with something somebody thought would be cheerful. I don’t want to be cheerful. This is a semi-mandatory meeting and I have stuff to do. If I want jokes, I chat with my colleagues or watch some memes. Still, I don’t want to be the party-pooper, so I have to play along.

What comes next are some official announcements and status updates. Sometimes teams present their achievements, occasionally this is actually interesting. If 5% are relevant for me or my job, it was a good session.

Another meeting that should have been an email.

Fortunately most companies record these calls, so I can just skip the event, watch the recording on 1.5 speed and skip to the relevant parts. With an agenda and time codes, that becomes even easier. From time to time, internal comms are unhappy about attendance and realize a lot of people do what I do. And stop making the recordings available. Oh boy! But I digress.

As far as I am aware, the above scenario is pretty common in companies across the board. I observed it in at least four different organizations.

Almost all companies perceive the need to have some kind of regular company meeting, and it almost always is not effective.

Typically, the needs such a company meeting is trying to address are a combination of these:

• Inform the staff about information deemed relevant
• Create alignment between increasingly independent teams and departments
• Maintain a sense of community and cohesion.

These are all relevant needs. Just ill addressed.

So what’s the problem?

Jack of all trades, master of none

The first issue is the lack of focus. As stated, all listed needs are relevant. But mixing them is not necessarily a good idea. If I want to be informed, I appreciate a focus on clear, well-prepared, well-delivered content. Any fluff, that gets in the way, eats away at my already low attention.

Social interaction and cohesion are vital for the functioning of a company. I know some formats which can help on that side, but status updates are not on the list. For example, one of the best Christmas parties ever was done remotely. We chose to meet and played silly drawing games. In the end, the offspring of several participants joined in, and it was a total, exhilarating mess.

Do you think I’m stupid?

In a lot of companies, these kinds of meetings are organized by internal communications teams. These teams are typically comprised of communications professionals who are trained to deliver well crafted messages in accordance with the brand strategies and communications guidelines. They aim to create predetermined experiences.

Open and unguided human to human interaction is not something communications professionals are at ease with.

Most people I know are like me and well aware if they are goaded in a direction. And I tend to not appreciate it. Even if I manage to not assume bad intentions, the attempt still feels as an insult to my intellect. Assuming that I would take something like a scripted experience at face value insults us both.

Do I wish to hear what you are trying to tell me?

That someone wishes me to know something doesn’t mean I care. Too often, company meetings are optimized for the needs of the sending party, not the receiving side. In the end, this serves no one.

Real-time isn’t always right

Meetings are a form of communication which is called synchronous. In plain words, sending and receiving happen in real time, ally involved parties need to be present. The opposite is asynchronous communication, where sending and receiving happen at different points in time (like e-mail or recorded video).

The power of synchronous communication lies in the possibility of immediate feedback. Listeners can share what they understood, ask questions, provide other kinds of feedback or engage in a bidirectional communication.

Yet, most company meetings are very one-sided. First, the purpose is regularly to share information, not conversation. Second, in remote meetings with dozens or hundreds of participants, conversation with multiple participants is very hard to say the least.

Long story short, for pure information dissemination company meetings are not the right format, neither for large group conversation.

And listening to a scripted stream of updates probably doesn’t help with cohesion and community building either.

Not doing it, doesn’t solve the problem

You might think now that I am advocating for abolishing regular company meetings. I have to confess, this crossed my mind. But it’s not a solution. Not having company meetings takes away the main of a misaligned tool, but leaves the underlying needs unattended.

So, what do I recommend?

Relevancy, relevancy, relevancy

If I want my message to be heard, it needs to be relevant. In the end, I cannot decide what’s relevant to my audience, the audience decides.

So, listening to the audience might be a good idea. Any this means, sometimes meetings are not the right format.

Pull principle

A big part of the digital revolution is that it put the audience in control. Do you remember the days of programmed television, when you had to watch whatever some program director decided? Me neither. Today, consumers can consume whatever content they want, when they want and where they want.

Meeting on demand

So why do not apply this principle to internal comms as well? Provide the content and let your employees decide what they are interested in. Tracking access might actually provide you with great data to understand what your employees need.

Agenda on demand

Another way to implement pull is to let the audience create the agenda. Let your employees put the topics on the agenda and let them vote what is of the highest interest. It’s not nice if your must-have topics always lose, but probably the most valuable data you can have, since it allows you to ask yourself why that is the case.

Self-selection

Modern video conferencing offers to create break-out rooms, which are essentially temporary chat rooms spawned from the main session.

Such a feature allows you to create topic based break-outs, e.g. financials, ask me anything, update on project x, or similar. Participants join the sessions they are interested in. If a session remains unattended, you again have valuable feedback that this topic isn’t seen as relevant.

Ease of consumption

If you care about your employees getting important info, you should make it as easy for them to get it as possible. So, instead of fighting people who prefer the recorded version, embrace it.

A simple, yet powerful aid is to provide an agenda with accurate time codes. With this table of contents, viewers can jump to the relevant sections and skip what they do not care about.

Even fancier are jump marks in the video itself, but they need a bit more effort. Having an agenda and sticking to the timetable is of value in itself.

Why not talk with each other?

This might sound radical: How about you open the stage for everyone? Whoever wants to say something can, as long as it is respectful.

You may need a little bit of facilitation magic to make this work. One option is the aforementioned agenda by popular demand. Everyone can place a topic and get time of enough people vote for it.

Another very useful tool for facilitation of open conversation in large groups is the fishbowl. The rules are simple, three to four people are allowed to speak at any given moment. If someone wants to say something, they switch places with one of the current “talkers”. In remote settings, using the “raise hand” feature usually works well to signal the intention to join. And typically, someone willingly offers their spot for someone raising their hand. And if not, a moderator can take care.

It makes sense to apply a bit of timeboxing as to avoid the first topic to take all the time. Just set the clock to 10 mins and let the participants decide to remain on that topic or jump to the next one when the time is up.

Meetings like these, with open and pull based agendas and an open stage, tend to be vastly more interactive and engaging. It might be hard to place the topics you want, but they are certainly very effective when it comes to cohesion and community.

Summary

Many companies have regular company meetings, often remote. Frequently, these meetings suck. Simply stopping to have them addresses the symptoms, but does not solve the underlying problems, since there are communication needs that shouldn’t be ignored.

The key to success is to focus on the needs of the audience. Sometimes this means not having a meeting at all, or at least making it easy to digest meeting recordings.

If a meeting is the right answer, avoid scripted experiences and fun for the sake of it. Trust your audience and invite them to co-create the conversation with you.

Doing so is actually very easy. Facilitation techniques like agenda on demand, fishbowl and timeboxing will do the job.

Happy to hear of your experiences!