Tag: meetings

Overbooked? Reducing Your Online Meeting Volume

Posted on by richardbingham

Although I am an advocate of using Online Meeting tools like Zoom or Skype to ensure engagement remains rich and interactive, with this explosion in homeworking I have noticed some lack of thought to it’s selective use. I see peoples calendars filled with so many online meetings that they have little time to accomplish anything else. Here are some tips to restore balance:

Be Brief – Keep meeting slots as short as possible. Skip the introduction and background, perhaps sharing pre-reading beforehand or ensure the Agenda covers the topic and goals. Consider the one hour default size as only for deep-dives. I’ve noticed that people get to the point quickly when the meeting slot is only 15minutes.

Stay On Topic – Keep to the goals in the agenda, try not to get sidetracked and go off-topic. It is very costly to hold-up a load of people who might not care about what is being discussed. Quickly take things offline when the topic deviates.

Use Other Channels – One way information can be shared via email, document, wiki page or others. You do not need a meeting to share information, update people and to get non-urgent feedback or comments. It can be simply laziness to just setup a call to brain-dump, rather than spend 15minutes writing your thoughts down and sharing that as a collaborative document. There are so many ways to collaborate online now … use them.

Sync Your Calendar and To Do List – plan your time carefully and if needed block-out periods in your calendar for getting your own work done. This prevents others from stealing your time by booking in meetings.

Reduce Attendees – keep meetings to only those who are really likely to participate. For others, who might just be interested (e.g. managers) share the outcomes and minutes. Again depending on participants and topics consider using other channels that could cover your needs – like an online chat tool, collaboration tools like Slack or Teams, or even just picking up the phone.

0

Peripherals for Online Meetings

Posted on by richardbingham

After moving from Windows to Mac recently, I wanted to reuse some of my peripherals that I use for online meetings. I thought I would share my setup, as I would have found this helpful so it’s possible others would too.

The challenge here is the MacBook has only two USB-C ports on it, and they’re already used for the following basics:

  • Power input (yes, no separate power input!)
  • Ethernet for faster internet than WiFi
  • HDMI for separate monitor

Seems Apple expects users to leverage Bluetooth for peripherals. Unfortunately my windows machine had a webcam and headset with regular USB cables, and I have no budget to replace them.

After a few combinations (and false starts) I found success with:

  • USB Webcam plugged into the USB port in an Apple USB-C Multiport (as the webcam requires power too). This ensures all important visuals for much richer interactions with my colleagues. The webcam is also setup to be the main microphone input – a job it is more than capable of. As a home worker background noise is not a problem.
  • The Macbook sound output/speakers is set to “system” (ie the built in speakers). Reason being – as a home worker I don’t need to restrict the sound I make. Also the Macbook speakers are plenty good enough.

This setup works nicely, meetings are rich and clear, and the Macbook seems happy enough.

A bonus is my old headset can now live in my laptop bag (along with a USB-C to USB adapter) ready for conference calls away from the office. Also no annoying unplugging stuff before going out!

0

Preparing For Holidays

Posted on by richardbingham

As a homeworker taking a holiday is just a little bit different to office workers, mainly around being more organised and verbose.

Delete Meetings and Reject Invites. As you’re always physically absent it’s hard to tell if your missing. Go through your electronic calendar or physical diary. Also consider messaging invitees for critical meetings that will take place and you’ll not be attending.

Document State. Ensure all commitments and work schedules have current information, with clear updates and plans for while you’re away and immediate return. This covers you In case of questions or things go badly.

Set Expectations for Progress. Ensure people taking over your responsibilities know what to do and setup a debrief meeting on your return – this will encourage them to take ownership. Share the delegated ownership with higher management AND within your out-of-office message.

Prepare for your Return. Make a to-do list for when you’re back – things you didn’t get to before you left or important things you might forget about.

Clear The Decks. I clear out my whole email inbox before I go. Moving anything useful into a folder and deleting the rest. It makes the hour/s scanning new emails on my return somewhat more manageable.

Leave ‘Emergency’ Contact Details. Ask key people to call or text with serious problems but that you’ll not be looking at work email. This helps you stick to that promise!

0

Reducing Home-bound Interruptions and Distractions

Posted on by richardbingham

Like the now ‘classic’ video below, interruptions can be painful, whether you’re on a video call, phone call, or just trying to get a task done. As such here are some tips to avoid this.

Schedule and Share It. I tell anyone in the house what my schedule is for the day. They know (from me telling them) that at those times they should not bother me, plus they should not make too much noise (vacuum, exciting pets, playing music etc). My schedule is mostly phone/video calls, however sometimes includes deep-focus tasks too. I remind folks just beforehand if I don’t think they’ve remembered too (“Hey, just going on a call – be finished at 3 o’clock”).

Close Doors. I have an office room, therefore I can close the door if I need and this indicates I am not to be disturbed, except in an emergency. Fortunately my children are old enough to understand this now. You might even consider locking the door (that would have helped the guy in the video above). If you don’t have a separate room, consider getting (or making) a room-dividing screen or simply a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign that you can put out.

You’re Not Childcare. For young children, it’s pretty impossible to work productivity and offer your children care. It doesn’t work and attempting it is a big mistake … for your work, your child, and for you! If you can only get periods of childcare, then use those to work.

Decide When To React. Remember what would happen at home if you were actually in the office. Nothing basically. As such you can let some home calls go to voicemail, or let a delivery driver put the package in the safe place or with a neighbour. Don’t jump to everything, ignore some.

Hush Your Personal Mobile Phone. Simply turn the notifications sound down, and flipping the phone over is easiest. Allocate a specific break time for checking it.

Keep Your Work Laptop Clean. Don’t be tempted to put your own things on your work laptop. Often this breaks company policy anyway, but keeping personal items (apps, music, photos, websites etc) away from yourself during work time reduces potential distraction.

Keep Availability Promises. If you want people to respect when you’re unavailable, then they need to know when you will be available. If you keep letting them down and doing extra bits of work when you said you’d be free, then they’ll probably let you down sometimes! That’s only fair!

0

A Picture Tells A Thousand Words

Posted on by richardbingham

I know it’s a cliche, but unless you are a word-ninja then trying to verbally describe everything on conference calls is fraught with risks.

Conveying common meaning and fine detail is hard, plus you never really know which bits they ‘got’ or didn’t quite.

Additionally we’re often blind to our assumptions of our own accuracy – the very reason proof-reading is a thing!

This applies to anything – an intention, a process, an event and even a physical object. They’re all hard to describe fully, for everyone. Add multi-cultural and different language challenges too, just for laughs! Sure, the same applies if you were face-to-face, but studies show body cues greatly aid comprehension. Plus you rarely give a physical meeting with no ‘props’ prepared.

So here are two simple suggestions:

Use Analogy. Leverage something that’s similar and you know listeners are familiar with.

Use Visuals. Diagrams, illustrations, photos or rough sketches – I’d say anything is better than nothing. It’s mentally less draining than relying on every last word, and always makes for richer engagements. I actually have a bank of content related to my work, so I can always “show” what I mean, verses just trying to describe it.

0

Conference Call Meetings: Create High Quality Agenda and Minutes

Posted on by richardbingham

I find the best meetings are well-defined beforehand. The purpose is clear from the outset, leaving to a quicker time to a clearer and more solid result. Outcome-driven meetings feel more positive and are simpler to arrange too.

Use the following to define an Agenda.

  • Questions or Tasks to be discussed, and ideally why a meeting is needed. Carefully consider scope … try to cover too much and people loose focus. Use a series of small discrete meetings if needed.
  • Roughly what you think the expected outcome might look like.
  • Include Ownership of each topic – who will drive the discussion.
  • Include Outcome Assignment – who is up to address each item.
  • Any recommended pre-meeting reading/preparation.
  • Links to specific related material.

Once the meeting wraps up, send a short email (or create a similar record) with bullet points which summarizes the outcomes. Copy the agenda in and for each item summarize the discussion and the outcome and next steps. If it’s your meeting, you send the minutes, always within 24hours.

0

Conference Call Meetings: Starting a Project

Posted on by richardbingham

At the start of a project when many people are remotely located (including from home) it is easy to get sucked into a time-drain succession of meeting-after-meetings without little real demonstrable decisions or progression to show. Meetings are poorly defined, decisions are not recorded clearly, and tasks are not well defined and allocated.

Here is my seven step suggestion to avoid this:

  1. One person is responsible for the completion of project definition.
  2. This person (“definition owner“) states the objective/s, potential approaches, and delivery date estimates in a simple document.
  3. A “Review Team” of stakeholders considers this document and recommend any changes. This can be done in specific meetings or independently using collaboration tools. Adjustments are completed and locked.
  4. The definition owner then expands on this, turning it into a step-by-step high-level project plan.
  5. Again – the Review Team assess the plan and any changes are made immediately. The plan is then locked.
  6. In the final expansion, the definition owner refines the plan into a full detail specification, defines scope, adds work estimates and assignments.
  7. Final appraisal from the Review Team and gives explicit sign-off.

0