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July 15th, 2009 | Posted in Uncategorized 13 Comments »
After a recent conference call I had for an STC chapter meeting, we needed an online mechanism to keep the discussion going. Doc Guy set up a Google Groups discussion site (which includes a threaded forum and wiki) to facilitate the online discussion, and we started a few threads, but soon the discussion focused , unfortunately, only on scheduling dates for in-person meetings.
In a world of virtual tools—blogs, wikis, feeds, forums, listservs, e-mail, IM, chat, Twitter, social networks—one would think that the traditional sit-down, face-to-face meetings had been relegated to a place in a historical museum among other old, discarded traditions (like wearing cravats). But even in the 21st century, many people still believe that if you want to accomplish serious planning and discussion, you need an in-person meeting.
Benefits of In-Person Meetings
One argument for in-person meetings is the benefit of idea building that sometimes takes place. When you get multiple people talking together, one person begins an idea, another adds to it, and another sees another dimension to it, which triggers an unexpected thought from another, and soon a handful of people create a collective intelligence that yields more than the sum of what each individuals could come up with alone. Many feel that this dynamic idea building, which takes on a life of its own in a lively meeting, is rarely matched in the isolated, typed out threads online.
In reality, part of the reason people feel in-person meetings are productive in generating ideas is that meetings are the only time people set aside to brainstorm a topic. Most participants don’t do anything before a meeting. The meeting is the time blocked out for them to actually think and discuss a topic. Until the meeting happens, they fill their time with other tasks and obligations. The meeting is nothing more than a deadline, a period set aside for exploring a topic.
Because meetings are the dedicated time for thinking, it’s no wonder so many people should conclude that meetings are the only way to do any real planning. Instead of going this route, however, try merely setting aside time in your own schedule to sit down and think out problems, brainstorm, and explore ideas for a prolonged period of time. Then share those ideas with others online. You’ll find the same dynamic idea building can take place in virtual environments.
Double-edges of Time Independence
The reason people often neglect individual preparation and contribution in virtual environments is because online discussions are not time dependent, so they never get done. Being outside time and location is of course the advantage of online discussions, but it’s also the downfall.
Without a hard and fast deadline for contributions, the online discussion is often put aside, procrastinated, and ignored until the threads are so anemic they famish. One person responds one day, another responds the day after next, and little by little, contributions sort of trickle in, but you never see the rushing river of thought that happens when a group exchanges in real-time.
This trend of increasing attrition is unfortunate, because online discussions don’t have to be divorced from timelines and boundaries. You can set deadlines for discussions and schedule blocks for virtual chats. If you let people know expectations of participation by specific times, the procrastination minimizes. As more people contribute, the interactions increase, and you soon approach the dynamic idea building of face-to-face meetings. But this activity requires a meeting organizer and champion, someone to stoke the discussion, set expectations, prod the silent participants, and keep it all going.
Dealing with Silence
With online discussions, lack of contributions is often interpreted as non-participation. Because Sally, Jim, and Karl aren’t chiming in to the discussion, the assumption is that they’re busy, offline, or not engaged by the ideas on the table. Seeing the lack of participation, leaders often conclude that the online format isn’t working and so they need to “get everybody together” for an in-person meeting. (The phrase “get everybody together,” by the way, always makes me cringe.)
However, what happens at these in-person meetings is a similar to what happens online: several people dominate the discussion, and a handful of people quietly observe. Sally, Jim, and Karl can be just as non-participatory in the face-to-face meetings as they are online. And when you confront them for their opinion, it usually turns out that they’re apathetic or in agreement with what’s already being said.
Advantages in Online Environments
Although some people in meetings are quiet because they agree or have little to add, another category of people are quiet for another reason: they’re shy. Here virtual environments have the upper hand, because virtual environments can give shy participants a new voice. The shy meeting participants no longer have to fight to get a word in, or stand up against a meeting tyrant to reject a prevailing idea, or bumble their ideas with an inarticulate tongue. Expression comes easier with your hands on a keyboard in a comfortable chair. Quiet mice are suddenly roaring lions.
Summary
With all the virtual tools are our disposal, we shouldn’t be hampered with long, burdensome meetings in distant locations that drag out over an entire afternoon, which people arrive at without having done any preparation or individual brainstorming, and which are assumed to be the only vehicle for thought and discussion among groups. The same productive output is possible through the myriad of online tools available, but it requires participants to take responsibility for engaging and exploring topics on their own.
Tags: chats, forums, meetings, STC, time, What I'm Reading, Wikis
I think that one reason many people prefer face-to-face meetings is that they can see that Sally, Jim and Karl are there and paying attention. With virtual meetings, they could be working on something else, or playing Minesweeper.
The lack of visual communication cues like body language eye contact, and head-nodding also unnerves some folks, especially out-going extroverted types who are good at reading those cues. Video conferencing hasn’t really caught on, so that’s a real pain point for online communications.
Good points, Mark. Nice to hear from you, by the way. I take it you’re still in Massachusetts? Reading body language is an art, one that’s pretty much impossible online. I’m not sure if the time sink nature of meetings is worth the benefits of reading body language, though. I guess it depends on the meeting and discussion.
I completely disagree with you. I disagree 100 percent. Although many meetings digress into a useless and muddled mess, a well organized vision or planning session can yield remarkable results for a group, team, or organization.
I personally have facilitated many strategic vision/planning sessions; I have done this for both organizations that I have led and projects that I have managed. These always served as the impetus for tremendous group, team, and organizational growth. And this event has always contributed significantly to future success.
Alternatively, I have never seen the same success come out of even the best asynchronous learning or collaborative online environments.
So I think the real discussion here may not necessarily be about In-person Meeting vs. Online Discussion. I think the real concern may be Poorly Facilitated In-person Meeting vs. Online Discussion. If that is the discussion, then maybe you have a point.
But even if we move the discussion here, I’m not sure I buy it. For every “roaring lion” that finds themselves in the online world, you probably lose two or three people who consider this forum as nothing more than noise. And noise… it’s just ignored.
And it’s unfair to say meetings serve only as “focused though-time.” I disagree. A professional will spend the time to ponder, formulate, and prepare their ideas. So a good meeting serves merely as a collaborative focal point for those individuals. It becomes a time and place where they can hammer out their ideas with the group to refine them. Furthermore, these interpersonal discussions can often spark powerful ideas in other team members… a type of synergy-think that you find less frequently in an online discussion.
… I’m not totally happy with the way I’m articulating my idea, so let me share a story. A few months back, I spent some time looking at the new text-to-speech (TTS) feature in Captivate 4. To be honest, I was told about the new feature a month before I got Captivate 4, and I was pretty geeked-up about it.
So, I got Captivate 4 installed… and when straight to testing TTS. Wow, what a disappointment. Sure, TTS has come a long way. But speech as a whole is about a lot more than just the spoken words.
I would bet that in verbal, in-person conversation, the actual spoken words probably account for maybe 25 percent of the communication. The way the words are articulated, the facial expressions (or emotion), and the body language… they make up the other 75 percent.
In simple audio-only conversation, I would still place the words themselves at only 40-50 percent of the communication, with emotion and other non-word verbal queues filling making up the difference.
That’s the key problem with written words? My experience has always been that people become lazy with written words. They become lazy because of the labor and time involved in articulating their passion, their emotion, and their body language. Also, people are far less likely to diverge on the background schema that brought them to their conclusions (whatever the conclusion may be). And it is this background schema that is often so critical in understanding a persons point.
Even looking at this post I wish that I could get back the 30 minutes I’ve spent on it. In person, I could have shared these ideas with you in 2-3 minutes. You could have processed the ideas and responded. And within 5-10 minutes we would have both grown significantly more. But I’ve digressed; let me get back to my final concern.
When you abandon the in-person collaborative environment, you may also destroy the valuable interpersonal dynamics or relationships that brought a person into the group to begin with. And once the interpersonal dynamic is lost, you typically lose the person.
Hello Joe,
You made your case well. I agree with you: I still prefer in-person meetings when they are feasible. I especially appreciate your last two sentences, and agree with you.
Thanks for taking the (extended) time to make your case on this subject!
Ann
Ann, thanks for joining in to the discussion.
Joe, thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciated reading your articulate response. I agree with part of what you say. Here’s what I agree with: most meetings are poorly orchestrated. In fact, at the time you commented, I was in a meeting that lasted 2 hours. The first half hour, we looked around for an open room because the scheduled room was occupied. Then one of the people talked about a car he was planning to buy. Other people talked about cars as well. After about a half hour, the PM projected a roadmap and wandered through it a bit. Discussions wandered all over the place. Some parts were relevant to me, others not so much. The meeting ran 30 min. over, and when I left (b/c my wife phoned me three times in a row), they were talking about golf clubs.
I’m not against the social benefits of meetings. I look forward to our weekly team meeting precisely because of the social elements. But despite what you say about planning a productive meeting, it seems that at least half the meetings I attend are too loosely structured, irrelevant, and drone on too long. A 2 hour meeting (including the travel to and from the meeting) can easily drain the better part of an afternoon.
Now, I realize you’re arguing that an effective meeting (the opposite type of meeting I just described) can be powerful and more productive than online exchanges. Sure, I will grant that. But a productive online exchange can also be powerful. Online discussions often fail for the same reason meetings fail: poor planning, lack of preparation, no leader, etc. If people put the energy into the online contribution, like you’re doing here, the exchange can be more powerful. In fact, your ability to articulate your opinion at a time convenient to you, and my response at a time convenient to me, producing an exchange of ideas that is somewhat fruitful, kind of negates your argument about the ineffectualness of online exchanges.
Additionally, online exchanges have another advantage. Unlike in-person exchanges (which don’t always allow people time to think and compose their thoughts, and which often include an emotional charge), with online discussions you can carefully dissect logic, think at your leisure, and respond with as many edits as you want before you hit reply.
I see that I’ve upset a few people in our chapter with my post. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to offend. I should have probably used a different meeting as an example. Now we’re putting a lot of burden on our August 1 meeting, aren’t we? I’m really looking forward to it. I know it will be brilliant.
It’s a good discussion and a good post, Tom. Thanks for startting it.
I, too, prefer meetings in person; however, I know the value of online communication. We’ve done it in STC Houston when the Admin Council had to discuss and vote on a topic between in-person meetings.
Where I work now, one of the reasons face-to-face meetings are required is to communicate safety information. Our trainers here have a class devoted to teaching people to organize effective meetings. (I’m actually going to ask one of co-workers to present the topic to my Girl Scouts!)
I think both types of meetings can be and are valuable. But getting them organized and executed effectively is the key!
Cindy, I’m glad you point out the value of both types of meetings. I guess with blog posts, taking an extreme position on one side is somewhat of an incendiary tactic. I don’t talk much about the benefits of in-person meetings, though I agree that in many cases they’re appropriate, such as when you’re located near the people, the topic requires discussion, or as Joe pointed out, you need to refine your ideas. Unfortunately, in-person meetings have become the default mode for collaboration because people are often too lazy to engage online. Sometimes the only way to draw people out is through a face-to-face discussion.
Tom: Thanks for the insightful post comparing some of the key elements that make meetings work. I have used talented graphic facilitators to add visual value in F2F meetings and have now organized a new service bringing the talents of these outstanding visual interpreters to the virtual meeting.
Given what you have said in this blog post and how you position the complementary values of F2F and Online meetings, I would like to give you an online demonstration of Virtual Visuals for the purposes of extending your “myriad of online tools” for organizing and curating meetings that work and getting your feedback and new input on how this service ( still in stealth mode) might help online meeting conveners and participants.
This post and its comments bring up a lot of valuable points. I conclude that regardless of which type of meeting you hold – online/virtual or face-to-face, discipline is the real key to success. I mean the discipline to focus and discuss, as well as the discipline to prepare in advance (if required at the meeting.)
One angle that is not mentioned – situations where you cannot meet face-to-face due to geographical (and perhaps financial) constraints. When you can only meet online, discipline and structure for meetings is vital. I struggle with this as a SIG leader and as the SIG Advocate in STC because all my meetings and communication are virtual. I live in Denmark where I also know people online, but where I have opportunities to meet with many of them casually or at official gatherings. I do feel a sense of relief at these gatherings. Conversation is much different.
It’s all a matter of making the best of both situations. That sounds like common sense, but like much that is common sense, we often forget it.
Thanks for the reminders here, Tom.
[...] Johnson asks “is this meeting really necessary?” In many cases, it [...]
The argument often appears to be online versus offline however just maybe there’s a place for both to co-exist by playing to the benefits of each.
Take brainstorming meetings.
Usually the person who called the meeting starts by explaining the rules of braisntorming . . . 1) there’s no such thing as a bad idea and 2) everyone has an equal voice. Both rules quickly go out of the window as the most dominant players in the room dominate proceedings and 3 hours later a weary tribe leaves the meeting room with copious sheets of paper with ideas to type up having made little progress.
How about splitting the process into the collation of ideas (online) and the exploitation of those ideas (offline) ?
Here’s what I mean – conduct the brainstorming online using one of any number of available tools (e.g. http://www.matchpeg.com), each participanst types in their ideas live and spark off each other as they see other peoples ideas pop-up. It’s like instant messaging on steroids and avoids the tendency to discuss each idea at length and then head off down blind alleys all the time.
This should take no longer than 10 minutes rather than an hour or more. Then everyone assigns a score to all the ideas and they get ranked – again online – and you’ve now got a complete list of ideas, ranked and documented in less than 15 minutes without anyone meeting face to face.
The reality is that the reports this type of activity can produce about team dynamics are fascinating – i.e. a narcissism rating, who voted for their bosses ideas and shunned certain colleagues !!
Now if you do want to discuss the ideas that everyone has already agreed are the best, then by all means hold a meeting but chances are you’ll need less time and less people and everyone will be more focused.