Beth’s Blog: While virtual meetings have their challenges—from the temptation to multi-task to being derailed by technical issues, you can still accomplish things at a good meeting that you can’t when you’re sitting by yourself at your computer. Meetings harness the energy of multiple minds around a topic. They nudge people to think more expansively and creatively than any one mind is likely to do.
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This article reminds me of home and how whenever my mother was working at home, I wasn't allowed to go into the room she was in, have friends over, or make a lot of noise. As a child I never understood why I we were under these restrictions, but as I got older I realized my mother was having meetings in our own home instead of the office. Usually these meetings consisted of people from around the world, such as France and Hong Kong. The virtual world definitely allows a convenient source to contact and visually see people who are not in the same location. It doesn't matter if they are 5 miles to 5,000 miles away, they can be a part of the meetings. In my internship, we have our artistic manager in New York working on a broadway show, so we always had to call him in. These tips were used during this time and were also used when my mother was working from home.
I think that the 90 minute rule is best thing to be taken out of this. If a meeting, or class, or any sort of official gathering lasts more than 90 minutes, it becomes difficult to concentrate. People’s brains need breaks to condense and process information. I have difficulty focusing in my three hour lectures because there becomes a point where I stop processing what is happening and information is just being shoved down my throat. Maybe I’ll remember some of it, maybe I won’t. Even a five minute break in the middle of the class would make it more bearable. I think the big problem with long meetings is that because our body is not doing anything and our mind is overworking, the unbalance becomes a hindrance. This is why crew is so much easier; we are constantly moving and working so the hours pass by much more quickly than lecture classes.
Setting rules and guidelines in a meeting are proven to be very effective. In production meetings, for example, there is a specific person who runs the meeting, and allows different people to speak when necessary. Sometimes, depending on the topic, it can be challenging to put a time limit on meetings, however, short concise meetings and tasks in general allow for a more concentrated, focused meeting. It is a matter of exerting energy. People tend to lose interest quickly. By keeping the meeting concise and quickly paced, people exert more energy in a shorter window of time, getting more done. I enjoy the idea of a walking meeting, but this cannot always work. I think that fresh air meetings can also be effective. People will literally be able to breathe easier.
I agree that phone meetings can become difficult. Knowing when to speak and how to interact becomes a problem. Solutions in this article such as delegation, and guidelines help to eliminate possible issues.
I love the idea of a walking meeting because standing up makes all of the ideas come so much faster. I often find myself pacing whenever I’m on to a really good idea and the physical activity helps me work it through so much faster. It is kind of weird that the article talks about how much you can get done in a mile because if you’re walking outside there is so much room for distraction and taking notes on what was happening is a lot harder. Though with tablets and recording capabilities that could be ironed out. The rest of the article is well fleshed out and gives quite a few points that I would have not thought to specifically think of and when I see it written down of course that is something that should be acknowledged. I think the best example of that is factoring different internet speeds and using audio instead of video or just having someone call in. While that cuts down on speed issues, it would be hard to remember everyone that’s on the call, which just points back to how the moderator should have an iron fist in helping everyone to talk.
I think these are some good tips that we talk about a lot here at CMU to have good meetings and it is always a good reminder. However, the one point about having a walking meeting seems a little too informal for my taste. I understand that walking gets us out of the office and gets the ideas flowing but I think it would be weird to have ten people walking in a group trying to meet about something while walking on the sidewalk that won’t get things done but rather make people frustrated. Maybe a standing meeting is okay depending on the people in the room but I still feel that if you have more than three people at the meeting walking would be too much and too informal and standing could work with peers who understand the need to get things done and out of the way.
These are all really good and interesting tips! Over the summer I was working in an office that required communication with people all over the country, so the conference call rooms were very familiar. Before every meeting, we would devise an agenda that outlined every category of discussion we needed to have in order to get things done efficiently. These calls usually went pretty smoothly, except when we called all of the athletes (extreme pogo company) and they would either clearly have walked away from the phone or would interrupt with jokes or cheering the name of someone in the company for saying something they liked. I think in those situations it would have been best to set some kind of rules for those on the call to keep things moving smoothly. I also like the idea of a walking meeting. Though it isn't the most professional option, I think particularly for groups of people who work in an office all day they can be incredibly useful in getting people's creativity flowing. Some of the best planning, I've found, has come from walking to lunch or setting something up outside the office or classroom. People are typically more comfortable expressing their ideas in an active and casual environment.
Meetings are just something that are really hard, and with all of the things going on in today’s crazy world it does not get any easier. The first problem with meetings is that everyone is freaking busy so it is almost impossible to schedule a meeting at a time that works for everyone who needs to attend the meeting. At the end of the day, the best way to get everyone together is to meet with people virtually. This can be video calling someone into the meeting or even having them on the phone via a conference call system, so that they can attend the meeting. This creates its own challenges because they are part of the meeting, but they are physically there are virtually there. So where do you look to talk to them and how do you keep them involved even though they are seeing everything through a screen. That is the challenge.
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