by Anne Thornley-Brown, Executive Oasis International
Building a Better Business Meeting
Summary: A volume of research is available about the best strategies to engage adult learners. In spite of this, at corporate meetings and during sales rallies, companies continue to subject employees to a series of long, boring presentations delivered by “talking heads”. It’s a dreary and tedious pattern of passive disengagement. There is a better way.
A Broken Business Meeting Model
Our team building firm regularly gets requests from companies that initially request a full day of interactive team building. This is doable with a very short simulation and very specific outcomes but it’s a very tight timeframe. Typically, this time slot is then reduced to 1/2 a day and, ultimately, watered down to a request for a 1 or 2 hour strictly recreational activity after dinner that is, ultimately, awarded to the lowest cost provider. The meeting actually ends up being a series of dry presentations (back to back information dumps). By the time the participants get to dinner, they are exhausted and in bad humour. This pattern has been emerging in Toronto for some time now. We notice that it is also starting to happen with prospective clients in Asia and Dubai. Colleauges in the USA have confirmed that they are seeing a similar pattern. Why is this happening? Companies have indicated that there ends up being way too much content to cover.
Reality Check: A cocktail reception and after dinner entertainment will not fix a bad meeting design.
When a meeting is poorly designed, participants have a hard enough time staying awake yet alone deriving benefit from the content that is presented. So, how can we fix a conference and meeting model that is badly in need of repair? My advice is that it’s time to “spice” things up and re-engineer meetings and sales rallies with accelerated learning. Before we tackle that, let’s get to the root of the problem.
Troubleshooing Corporate Meetings Before They Start
Signs that Your Corporate Meetings Need a Makeover
Every time you get your team together, do you find, as the planning cycle continues you have more and more content?
Do you end up with a jampacked agenda that’s bursting at the seams with content?
Is your meeting composed of wall to wall presentations that require participants to sit passively and listen?
Are your breakout sessions also exercises in passive engagement?
It’s a symptom of a deeper problem.
Pinpointing Root Causes
Here are some possible causes:
- Are there serious communication stopgaps and bottlenecks that prevent team members from getting the information they need?
An information dump once or twice a year is not going to fix that. You need a cross-functional team to diagnose what is blocking the information flow and propose solutions. Tools like flow charts can be of great assistance - Are your meeting too infrequently?
You need to meet more frequently or arrange for virtual meetings in between your face-to-face sessions so that each meeting agenda is not packed with content. - Are you using the wrong medium?
All information does not have to be delivered face-to-face. Virtual meetings, blogs, independent study modules, intranets, interactive content and pre-recorded material accessible in Second Life, or e-learning may be more appropriate than a face to face meeting if there is a need to deliver content that requires little no interaction between meeting participants - Are your processes just too complex?
Torturing employees and forcing them to sit passively through long presentations isn’t going to fix that. It’s time to troubleshoot your processes and streamline them,.
Work on improving communication and processes. Use another platform to deliver some content before the meeting and trim your agenda. Carve out more time for interactive content, team building, think tanks, brainstorming, and interaction. Also, if you are flying employees in from various locations, why not extend the meeting by half a day or a day. Arrange for early arrivals and late departures. Bring participants who are flying from very far in a night earlier so that they can start the day refreshed. Get a meeting package for your first day. Start your meeting early in the morning on Day 1 and finishing when the rooms are available. Instead of cutting out early, finish later on the last day or earmark that slot for city tours and excursions . If your content is interactive and engaging, the time will go by quickly and employees will leave the meeting energized instead of exhausted. Alternatively, arrange for employees from out of town to stay in town for an extra night. It’s relatively cheap to add an extra night if you’ve already paid travel costs. You can off-set the costs by having local employees reduce the number of nights they stay at the hotel.
Putting Your Corporate Meeting Budget on a Diet
Is budget is still a concern? Here are some ways to trim it.
- Free up more budget by opting for double occupancy rooms.
Let’s face it, people won’t be spending a lot of time in their rooms. - Arrange for local participants to stay at the hotel for only 1 night, the night of your social or gala.
- Book suites with living rooms so that each employee has a private bedroom at a fraction of the cost of single occupancy rooms.
- Plan your meeting with more lead time so that you can take advantage of cheaper airfare.
- Book your meeting for a time that is slightly off-season.
If you stay in Niagara-on-the-Lake in July, it will be expensive. Opt for early November or April and the weather will still be comfortable and you’ll save a lot of money. The same applies to mountain locations in Japan or Malaysia or Jamaica in May or September - Stay near where you intent to play to cut down on travel costs.
- If you have to fly your team in from around the globe, select a more affordable location.
Downtown Toronto will be expensive but move just north of Toronto to York Region and you’ll be able to stretch your budget and still access everything that toronto has to offer. Malaysia (try Langkawi, Tioman Island, Cameron Highlands, Berjaya Hills), Thaliand, Canada (Halifax, Cape Breton Island), and, believe it or not, Las Vegas have been identified as some of the most cost effective destinations in the world. Make your plans early and you can save a lot of money on airfare and still provide your team with a truly unique experience. If your team is small, there are even properties at which you can have exclusive use if you book far enough in advance. - Have an alcohol free meeting.
Yes there’ll be complaints but It won’t kill employees if they do without alcohol for one meeting and it will make a significant differenct to your budget. - Alternatively, serve wine with dinner for only 1 meal, the one you designate as your gala.
- Eliminate or shorten the cocktail reception. You can either have a cash bar or provide 1 drink ticket per person for the cocktail reception.
Streamlining Your Content
Engage an internal or external accelerated learning specialist to spend half a day reviewing your content with you. Bring a team building specialist into the loop early in the planning process to suggest delliver methods that can cover content and, at the same time engage teams. Select appropriate methods for delivering content that does not require face to face delivery. Fetermine alternatives to Powerpoint presentations for the remaining content. Here are some ideas:
Anne Thornley-Brown is the President of Executive Oasis International, a Toronto based management consulting firm that helps companies succeed even in the midst of turbulence. Their services include the facilitation of meeting and strategy sessions, team building, and executive retreats. Their featured destinations include Canada, Jamaica, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Singapore, Japan, and Malaysia. Anne also owns a training and development company that speciazes in accelerated learning.
Anne Thornley-Browns blog Corproate Team Building focuses on strategies for boosting the bottom line impact of team building.