Technology presents humongous opportunities for having more ridiculously bad meetings. This is great news for those of us who live to see—and secretly bet on—the likelihood that the next meeting will exceed the life-sucking uselessness of the last one!
Meetings are—or should be—the beating heart of collaboration, and cross-border collaboration is what separates the arguably successful Homo sapiens from the defunct Neanderthals. According to one theory, the Neanderthals didn’t make the grade (even though they had larger brains) because they lived insular lives in small groups; apparently little learning took place across the groups. Could human cultural evolution be down to more frequent and better cross-border meetings? Unfortunately, our meetings seem to have peaked all those years ago.
Here is an interesting survey finding:
Sixty-seven percent of employees report that more than half of the meetings they attend are of no value (Collaboration 2.0: The death of the web conferences (as we know it), Ovum, 2014).
Let me say, “That’s pathetic!” We’ve cured many diseases, but not one for the common meeting!
What other tidbits did the same survey uncover?
- More than 50 percent of employees report that the number of meetings they have is increasing. Executives in highly collaborative industries such as financial services, technology, and media report on average 17 meetings per week.
- Thirty-two percent of meetings are virtual. This increases to 38 percent for workers ages 26 to 35.
- Nearly half of all meetings are one-on-one, and more than a third are spontaneous rather than planned. This may increase as companies seek to promote greater agility.
- Late start times are a key reason meetings are perceived poorly. Sixty-eight percent of workers say that 95 percent of meetings start late. This costs executives nearly three hours a week or 5×24-hour days and 19 hours per year (an enormous cost when aggregated across the executive population).
- Meetings of all types are increasing, but traditional Webconferencing tools (integrating voice and collaboration tools in a single platform) have been designed for use by large groups, not hyper-connected and mobile employees who primarily engage in one-on-one collaboration.
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) now is being supplemented with BYOA (Bring Your Own App). Sixty-five percent of workers are self-sourcing, i.e., have another tool to use instead of the company-procured one.
- The line between physical and virtual meetings is becoming fuzzy as 73 percent of employees take multiple devices such as tablets, laptops, and smartphones into meeting rooms. Fifty-five percent are using these devices to share documents and visuals with others in the meeting (as an alternative to a projector or monitor). E-mail is still the most common means for sharing documents for meetings, but screen sharing that avoids many file, synchronized navigation, and speed challenges is second.
Meeting metrics are needed, but they must be metrics that get at attitudes and behaviors and not just attendance, agenda coverage, or time spent. We also need ways to display data in real time so participants can improve during meetings.
Incentives for Meeting Improvements
With these thoughts in mind, and feeling a little giddy, what with spring finally arriving, I recently submitted a patent for a Meeting Enforcement Sensor System (MESS for short). Meeting participants wear a sensor helmet, and depending on their readings, a variety of “inducements” for improvement are delivered. Drones, ejector seats, electronic brain probes, computer viruses, and pop-up laptop or tablet tasers are used for the more serious inducements. Some behaviors that trigger these inducements are:
- Missing in action: You’re late or don’t show up at all for a virtual meeting. Others don’t know whether to get started or not. No one has heard from you, and attendees are concerned that if you do show up, they will have to start again. Someone takes the time to phone or message you to find out what’s happening. MESS sensors will detect your lateness and lack of pre-warning, and a drone will be deployed.
- On a road to nowhere: There should always be a point to any work meeting. Even spontaneous meetings should be purposeful. Do you want to network, develop trust, brainstorm, exchange information, or complete a task? Is there something you want to learn or decide on? No clear purpose results in the delivery of a three-month blocking virus to your movie streaming service.
- Keeping on keeping on: How many of us have sat in physical or virtual meetings long after we’ve known there is no value to anyone? We might fear causing offense or embarrassment if we speak up, or feel terrified that something of “tremendous” importance will be revealed at the last second. There seems to be an unwritten law that a meeting scheduled on Outlook for an hour must fill an hour. When your sensor helmet dashboard shows an unexpressed, “Get me out of here!” reading, expect a pop-up taser visit.
- On another planet: You’re mildly engaged in the meeting, but it’s boring and largely irrelevant and so you decide to multi-task, surf the Web, plan a barbecue, or make a faux tan appointment. Have you ever said, “Oh, sorry, could you repeat that?” Not because of technical issues, but because you’re not really there. When your dashboard flashes, “Lost in space,” both you and the meeting host will experience the meeting ejector seat. Nothing fatal will ensue, but it’s not going to be particularly pleasant.
- Endless wandering: You might lose forward momentum by going off on tangents or by circling around the same territory. In virtual space with reduced communication cues, you might feel you have to keep repeating yourself so others will “get it!” (Surprise! They did 10 minutes ago!) If you are verbally off-target, expect a helmet probe to paralyze your vocal chords for the remainder of the meeting.
I know cultures have their own views on appropriate meeting norms and outcomes, but MESS will take away all that messiness and bring us all into line. I joke about my MESS, of course, but you know that someone somewhere is feverishly creating a prototype.
Terence Brake is the director of Learning & Innovation, TMA World (http://www.tmaworld.com/training-solutions/), which provides blended learning solutions for developing talent with borderless working capabilities. Brake specializes in the globalization process and organizational design, cross-cultural management, global leadership, transnational teamwork, and the borderless workplace. He has designed, developed, and delivered training programs for numerous Fortune 500 clients in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Brake is the author of six books on international management, including “Where in the World Is My Team?” (Wiley, 2009) and e-book “The Borderless Workplace.”
