Nice to (virtually) meet you
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by Elizabeth Harrin
A blog that looks at all aspects of project and program finances from budgets, estimating and accounting to getting a pay rise and managing contracts.
Written by Elizabeth Harrin from RebelsGuideToPM.com.
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Date
I was at the PMI Global Congress EMEA in Dublin earlier this week and I attended a presentation by Dr Penny Pullan (@pennypullan on Twitter) about making the best of virtual meetings.
Meeting virtually means conference calls, webinars, video calls, and any type of discussion where you are not in the same room as the person or people you are talking to.
Travelling to meet someone face-to-face normally incurs a cost. In several of my previous companies we have had multiple buildings in the same town and the ability to walk between them – but even that takes time. And time is money.
A few years ago, there perhaps wasn’t the driver to cut down on travel, but now there are many reasons why project teams would choose to meet virtually.
Penny listed some drivers for virtual meetings from her research:
- Off-shoring: working with India, China or cross-continent
- Outsourcing
- Saving time
- Cuts in travel and expense budgets
- Flexible working policies and legislation that have meant more people have the choice to work from home
- General cost reduction across the board
- Natural disaster e.g. the ash cloud which stopped many people travelling in Europe last year, and had a major impact on attendees to the London Book Fair (including to my publisher)
- Technology improvements mean that it is possible now at quality that is good enough
- Companies making collaborative products like webinar or project management tools who have to be seen using their own products
- The desire for hiring managers to recruit people with the best skills, not necessarily those who live locally to the office
- Organisations run with volunteer staff finding it necessary to fit meetings around the availability of the people involved
-
She summarised that more people are working virtually for a number of different reasons. So why do we all still fall asleep on conference calls?
Penny went on to describe the frustrations that project teams had raised with her when asked to attend a virtual meeting. They said:
- There is no clear purpose or agenda for the meeting.
- There are no breaks: we meet for over an hour without stopping.
- The project team members from the USA are alert because it’s morning for them but in Europe we’ve already worked a full day: the energy states of the people on the call are not matched.
- When I ask a question no one answers.
- We always start late because someone has forgotten the code or got the wrong code or the technology isn’t working.
- I can’t hear because there is too much background noise.
- Nothing happens afterwards: we never follow up on any actions.
- There are too many people on the call.
- I get distracted by emails or other project work.
- I don’t know why I’m there.
- Our project conference calls are boring.
- There is no level playing field: I’m on the phone while everyone else is meeting face-to-face.
- Humour backfires without the context.
- People never ‘get’ it: there are lots of misunderstandings.
- There is nothing to look at.
- I can’t get a word in.
With all those issues plaguing project conference calls and virtual meetings, it is a wonder that we get anything done on the phone or via video conference at all. Penny had some suggestions for how to improve virtual project meetings, and I’ll talk about them next time. In the meantime, what other reasons for conference calls or frustrations with virtual meetings do you have to add to these lists?
Posted on: May 14, 2011 05:39 AM |
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Comments (4)
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Russell Geake
Project Management Consultant| Deciduous Partners Ltd
Lostwithiel, Cornwall, United Kingdom
I think this is a real topic for today - thanks Elizabeth - I think with the way things are going, we all need to be learning how to make these tools work. I started my PM career back in 1998 piecing together the UK broadband network for a large telecoms company, with the personal aim of making it possible for people to travel less and do more (it was an early attempt to save the planet), I got frustrated that at times it was still better to jump on a plane for an hour and half to attend an meeting for an hour at the other end of the country and jump back on the plane again (sometimes getting on the same one). I had really high hopes for video conferencing (we also did TV).
One of my biggest frustrations has been cluttering the desktop with various applications - sharepoint, livemeeting, webex, skype and such...(wait for google to create their offering)...so there is the multiple applications. People not knowing how to get the best out of them (myself included - but I can change that).
The next gripe is that documents that are to be discussed on the call are only available at the last minute, so there is no time to read them and prepare - so much of the call is just listening to someone reading through a report that the other parties may not even have a copy of yet.
So, a report has been written (20-30 mins),
the right call details have been located and logged into the call (n x 5mins)
the other n-participants say "hi" (n x 30s)
the call starts (n x 5mins)
a couple of people join the call late - intro''s> "hi"> "excuse" >"banter" (n x 45s)
recap (2mins)
someone asks a question (20s)
no-one speaks because they are too polite (nx 10s)
three or four people speak because they have waited the polite amount of time (5s)
apologies for interrupting.(7s)
the next call starts (together with some of the people from the previous call)
Someone writes up the notes from the call (40mins)
A few people glance at the notes (n x 5mins)
life continues...
sorry....got to go , I''m on another call at 11:30...(only kidding)
but you get the idea - lots of people lots of time..you only need 7 people on an hour-long call to have lost probably a day and half of potentially productive time (there CAN BE positive outcomes from calls)
What meetings need is a really clued-up leader. I''d like to see a space where the conversation is held at one level, with speakers directed by the chair...questions are raised by instant messaging and then introduced by the chair. It can be a very slick way of working. With advancing speech recognition it may soon be possible to watch the words appearing on the screen as people are speaking - that way interruptions are reduced. BUT the big one still has to be, what is the purpose of the call?
Rs
Russell, the right leader is absolutely key to making a difference to the type of tedious meeting you describe. What do you think about starting the meeting on time even though a couple of people haven't turned up yet? I know it isn't just a technique for virtual meetings as you can do that in a face-to-face meeting too. Do you make people wait or just press on?
Russell Geake
Project Management Consultant| Deciduous Partners Ltd
Lostwithiel, Cornwall, United Kingdom
obviously the description is an extreme example, rather than the norm (isn't it?) so I don't have a problem with starting on time (especially if I'm in the room at the time it's meant to start ;)) in fact it is much better because most of the time (as described) depending on the chair, meetings never get going properly in the first couple of minutes. If you are using Scrum and everyone knows the format then there is much more of an expectation that something worthwhile is about to be missed, so there is less tardiness. Operating an n-1 rule, if the majority of expected participants are there on time, get going.
I've recently implemented a rolling scrum master, that way everyone understands just how it is meant to be run and develops a greater respect for eachother and the difficulties that make the meetings over-run and ramble.
In my experience virtual meetings start late with about the same frequency as face-to-face meetings. We need to get better at chairing! Setting expectations like you say also means that people know what to expect and are less likely to turn up late, so that's a good tip - thanks.
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