Partner Article

Don’t walk before you can run meetings

Wired is the publication that coined the phrase ‘crowdsourcing’, which describes the process of obtaining services or ideas by soliciting contributions from an online community – a prime example of technology facilitating collaborative endeavor

Such a title is perhaps not where one might expect to find an article on the dangers of technology ‘disconnecting’ rather than ‘connecting’ us, which is why I was surprised to see this very point argued in a recent article by Nilofer Merchant on how to stage effective meetings.

Merchant posits that the “absence of a device” is what creates the ability to create an environment in which meeting attendees are able to give their “full attention” to discussions and keep their “relationship bank balance high”.

In fact, Merchant doesn’t just believe technology is getting in the way of effective meetings – she believes the fact that they’re all too often held in meeting rooms is actually one of the major problems. She prefers “walking meetings”, in which participants walk side-by-side and discuss ideas.

It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not entirely convinced that a meeting will always be more productive because of the absence of technology or the fact that the participants are walking.

Instead, I feel the more valuable point to take away from the article is that a one-size-fits-all approach to meetings is unlikely to result in optimum productivity.

There are of course some fairly general truths about meeting formats – the ability to concentrate on the issue at hand, free from distractions, will nearly always be important – but that doesn’t mean that one meeting format can meet all requirements.

On the matter of technology, I’m a strong believer in its ability to connect us, while recognising that it doesn’t always achieve this.

Indeed, in some circumstances, technology is enabling more personable collaboration than would otherwise be practical, such as in the instance of geographically dispersed freelancers discussing a project via video conferencing.

There’s also research that underlines the added value offered by video conferencing, which has been shown to improve concentration – participants remain focused on the discussion in hand for an average of 35 minutes, compared to only 23 minutes on a telephone call.

A combination of a suitable meeting format and intelligently deployed technology is the key to engaging and productive meetings – effective collaboration will be a walk in the park.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Saul .