Suddenly Hybrid

Chapter 4New Insights: A Recalibration of Video Use

Our soapbox was relatively short in stature, maybe an inch and half when resting flat but growing to over nine inches when standing on end. Still, we hoped the message delivered in our book Suddenly Virtual: Making Remote Meetings Work would penetrate the collective psyche of the corporate world. In Chapter 7 of the book, we even put it in bold print just in case:

The Case for Making Every Virtual Meeting a Video Meeting

Presumably it did have impact; at least it caught the attention of folks at prestigious places like McKinsey & Company, who featured it on their best‐selling business books list and even talked to Karin about the importance of effectively using a webcam during a virtual meeting (McKinsey & Company 2021). So the title of this chapter might seem very confusing to you. What do we mean by “A Recalibration of Video Use”? Wasn't the data presented in Suddenly Virtual all about how video is as good as face‐to‐face and better than telephone? Wasn't that what we were evangelizing about even before the pandemic? While we recognize and understand your disorientation, we also have to acknowledge and explain how our original advice was applied within the context of our “suddenly virtual” world. When we strongly asserted the need for using video in addition to audio alone in virtual meetings, we had no idea that we were about to experience an explosion of meetings. Who knew that in addition to being suddenly virtual, ...