Question

Use the factors of social acceptability and media richness described in the textbook to discuss the information you need to consider when conducting this evaluation. What additional information would be useful for the evaluation if a key objective of holding virtual meetings is to make decisions as a team about sales policy and strategy? 

Consider several factors: team size and team composition; trust among team members; task interdependence between managers in different locations; constraints on team decision-making; and team structure to improve decision-making.

Answer 1

Meetings are vital for management and communication. Properly run meetings save time, increase motivation, productivity, and solve problems. Meetings create new ideas and initiatives. Meetings achieve buy-in. Meetings prevent 'not invented here' syndrome. Meetings diffuse conflict in a way that emails and memos cannot. Meetings are effective because the written word only carries 7% of the true meaning and feeling. Meetings are better than telephone conferences because only 38% of the meaning and feeling is carried in the way that things are said. The other 55% of the meaning and feeling is carried in facial expression and non-verbal signals.

Hold meetings, even if it's difficult to justify the time. Plan, run and follow up meetings properly, and they will repay the cost many times over because there is still no substitute for physical face-to-face meetings. Hold meetings to manage teams and situations, and achieve your objectives quicker, easier, at less cost. Hold effective meetings to make people happier and more productive.

Brainstorming meetings are immensely powerful for team-building, creativity, decision-making and problem-solving.

Problem solving and decision-making are important in many meetings, although always consider how much of these responsibilities you can give to the group, which typically depends on their experience and the seriousness of the issue.

Meetings which involve people and encourage participation and responsibility are more constructive than meetings in which the leader tells, instructs and makes all the decisions, which is not a particularly productive style of leadership.

Holding meetings is an increasingly expensive activity, hence the need to run meetings well. Badly run meetings waste time, money, resources, and are worse than having no meetings at all.

The need to run effective meetings is more intense than ever in modern times, given ever-increasing pressures on people's time, and the fact that people are rarely now based in the same location, due to mobile working and progressively 'globalised' teams and organisational structures.

There will always be more than one aim, because aside from the obvious reason(s) for the meeting, all meetings bring with them the need and opportunity to care for and/or to develop people, as individuals and/or as a team.

When you run a meeting you are making demands on people's time and attention. When you run meeting you have an authority to do so, which you must use wisely.

This applies also if the people at the meeting are not your direct reports, and even if they are not a part of your organisation.

Whatever the apparent reason for the meeting, you have a responsibility to manage the meeting so that it is a positive and helpful experience for all who attend.

importance and urgency - they are quite different and need treating in different ways. Important matters do not necessarily need to be resolved quickly. Urgent matters generally do not warrant a lot of discussion. Matters that are both urgent and important are clearly serious priorities that need careful planning and management.

You can avoid the pressure for 'Any Other Business' at the end of the meeting if you circulate a draft agenda in advance of the meeting, and ask for any other items for consideration.

Put the less important issues at the top of the agenda, not the bottom. If you put them on the bottom you may never get to them because you'll tend to spend all the time on the big issues.

Ensure any urgent issues are placed up the agenda. Non-urgent items place down the agenda - if you are going to miss any you can more easily afford to miss these.

Try to achieve a varied mix through the running order - if possible avoid putting heavy controversial items together - vary the agenda to create changes in pace and intensity.

Running the meeting:

The key to success is keeping control. You do this by sticking to the agenda, managing the relationships and personalities, and concentrating on outcomes. Meetings must have a purpose. Every item must have a purpose. Remind yourself and the group of the required outcomes and steer the proceedings towards making progress, not hot air.

Politely suppress the over-zealous, and encourage the nervous. Take notes as you go, recording the salient points and the agreed actions, with names, measurable outcomes and deadlines. Do not record everything word-for-word, and if you find yourself taking over the chairmanship of a particularly stuffy group which produces reams of notes and very little else, then change things. Concentrate on achieving the outcomes you set the meeting when you drew up the agenda. Avoid racing away with decisions if your aim was simply discussion and involving people. Avoid hours of discussion if you simply need a decision. Avoid debate if you simply need to convey a policy issue. Policy is policy and that is that.

Defer new issues to another time. Practice and use the phrase 'You may have a point, but it's not for this meeting - we'll discuss it another time.' (And then remember to do it.)

If you don't know the answer say so - be honest - don't waffle - say that you'll get back to everyone with the answer, or append it to the meeting notes.

If someone persistently moans on about a specific issue that is not on the agenda, quickly translate it into a simple exploratory or investigative project, and bounce it back to them, with a deadline to report back their findings and recommendations to you.

Use the rules on delegation to help you manage people and tasks and outcomes through meetings.

Always look at how people are behaving in meetings - look for signs of tiredness, exasperation, and confusion, and take necessary action.

As a general rule, don't deviate from the agenda, but if things get very heavy, and the next item is very heavy too, swap it around for something participative coming later on the agenda - a syndicate exercise, or a team game, a quiz, etc.