The Accidental Modern Meeting
Take your boardroom with you wherever you go? What a dreadful idea.
Recently, I was having a Skype for Business call with some colleagues to discuss a story on modern meetings. In the middle of our conversation, we all came to realise that we were the story. Though many of us were in the Microsoft UK office, one team member was on her way back from a helping a client in London to set up an internal business social network. Another was about 10 miles into his daily bike ride, because that’s where he did his best planning (and because it was a particularly sunny day). But was the ability to meet anywhere, anytime really the biggest benefit?
Save Time and Money? Yawn.
We all came in to the meeting with our set of ideas on the advantages of flexible working for individuals and organisations, most of which focused on saving time and money. For instance, we cited the Forrester report that each of us can save 28 minutes a day by using Microsoft mobile meeting solutions, and that 78% of workers saw improved productivity. We talked about the £11M+ the average company saves in travel costs, and the 258% return on investment they achieve. We actually debated that point quite a bit, with varying sources saying as little as 240% to over 500% ROI. There was the benefit of being able to achieve a better work/life balance.These were all solid, sensible and tangible benefits that individuals and organisations can achieve, and that anyone reading would “get” instantly. You get it. But do you want to read about it?
The Accidental Meeting
As we talked about the more obvious benefits, we realised that, in the minds of many users, the “mobile meeting experience” was essentially a version of being in a boardroom. Then I said it’s sort of like the film The Accidental Tourist. From the blank expressions in the room, and on the screen, it was clear that this wasn’t an 80s rom-com fan audience. In case you’re not up on the movie’s plot either, in a nutshell, the main character is a travel writer whose books emphasise how to make your experiences, wherever you go, feel as close to your life at home as possible. It’s like you’re not travelling at all.
Then a funny thing happened.
One participant searched for the movie’s IMDB page, and shared it in a OneNote page. Another pasted the link for a video of the movie’s trailer in the chat window. Someone else added a snippet from Wikipedia. We were collaborating in real time.
Modern meetings are about how you meet
The concept started to sink in and another participant drew a picture on screen that essentially showed that it’s not about everyone (all suited and booted) engaging with the meeting in the same lock-step manner. Whereas one participant may be most productive in a liner, agenda-driven meeting, others may process much more creatively and visually. Some may thrive on running through a PowerPoint presentation, while others build out content and concepts on the fly.
The epiphany that occurred during the meeting was that having flexibility in how you meet was just as important as flexibility in where you meet. Having modern meetings fit your working style makes you more productive, and empowers you to achieve more. But there’s an even bigger benefit to the group.
Making your meetings actionable
As our meeting began to wrap-up, it hit that moment that occurs in most meetings: that pause when everyone thinks “Okay, that was interesting – so now what?” Often participants go off with their own interpretation of next steps, sometimes duplicating efforts on an action item or assuming follow-up is being covered by someone else and a next step falls through the cracks. In that moment when our meeting could have become just another interesting conversation that led nowhere, we seamlessly started to turn the ideas into actions using Office 365 Planner. It was a “Wait, what’s that??” moment for me (my first time seeing it). Someone cut and pasted this overview of Planner into the chat:
Office 365 Planner… offers people a simple and highly visual way to organize teamwork. Planner makes it easy for your team to create new plans, organize and assign tasks, share files, chat about what you’re working on, and get updates on progress.
As ours was a fairly simple task of creating a story about meetings, there weren’t a lot of steps involved. A few action items for participants that included sharing their ideas on how they meet most productively, sharing the snippets from OneNote on the meeting and about Planner, and recreating the meeting (again, we didn’t realise until about halfway through that we were the example of modern meetings). But all the steps were captured and actionable, and made our entire group more productive.
Accidental meeting – Intentionally productive
While we were able to make our meeting actionable for our group, there’s an even bigger benefit to the organisation. If the entire organisation is using one platform, Office 365, to record and make their meetings actionable – suddenly you’re able roll the actions of one meeting into larger, ongoing organisational initiatives and strategies. You’re able to benchmark and compare to other meeting outcomes. You’re able to connect up to departmental or organisational CSFs and KPIs, all while allowing for the people driving these initiatives forward to be contribute where and how they’re most productive.
When you’re able to connect and prioritise these actions and initiatives, it makes it easier to determine if an individual even needs to take part in a particular meeting. The machine learning built into Office 365 could determine that two members on the invitation should decline, because there was a conflicting meeting that was more aligned to a more important priority. So in the end, modern meetings are about much more than the ability to meet anywhere. They’re all about empowering us as individuals, and us as the collective of our organisations, to achieve more.
