The 25 Minute Meeting

CHAPTER 7 Get virtual

Whenever I mention meetings to my management training groups, there is always a bit of a groan. When I layer in virtual meetings, or meetings via distance, the groan gets decidedly louder.

In this day and age, I can’t imagine anyone saying that they never have to conduct meetings over distance. Whether it is a one-to-one phone call, group dial-up or videoconference, most of us are experiencing both the benefits and difficulties of working with people and teams that are not co-located.

Remember when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer famously said, ‘To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices’.

At the time, there was a lot of discussion around the value of distance teams, and some organisations started to pull back on ‘working from home’ policies. Many of us thought it might reverse the ‘anywhere anytime’ trend.

That hasn’t happened. In fact, more and more we are finding ourselves having to work in virtual teams, with members located all over the country or world.

In my experience, doing anything by distance takes twice the time and is half as good, which makes using the 25-minute meeting principles even more important if you have a virtual or global team.

We have to navigate time zone differences, language barriers and technological inconsistencies — not to mention we are expected to run effective meetings.

The ...