Because Online Meetings Matter more than ever before [book review]

This is somewhat of an insider perspective, compared to a typical review – I have been aware of this book’s creation for a long while, and I work regularly with its author. I know that she took the time it required to make it as comprehensive and valuable as it possibly could be, but none of us could have predicted the incredible timeliness of its release – at the moment when all around the world many people are turning to online platforms for their meetings and other forms of collaboration, often for the first time ever.

As I have written before, a reactive suggestion to simply send everybody home with their laptop is a remote work strategy set up to fail, when it comes to successful implementation, particularly at a large scale. The ways we connect and communicate in the collocated workspace need to be completely re-thought to translate successfully to an online, or partially online, situation. And that is before we talk about how we collaborate and carry out the work itself.

Having meetings online sounds like an easy place to start though, and in many ways it has never been easier – from a practical and technological point of view, we have a huge range of platforms available to us, and tools which are ubiquitous and accessible and in many cases free to use. Our colleagues have the best chance they ever have had of a decent internet connection wherever they are, and at least some kind of device for getting online. So, online meetings should be very straightforward, right? 

Well, just like everything else in the online workspace, these things don’t just happen. They need deliberate planning and management to work successfully, whether you are dealing with an emergency transition or a long-term strategy. 

Online meetings have a potentially very different role to play in your teams communication ecosystem to the traditional face-to-face setup, and Pilar Orti takes a deep dive into the meaning of meetings in business today. In fact one of the worst things you might attempt is to directly replicate your present pattern and system of meetings in the workplace to the online setting, because at the very least you’ll miss out on a critical opportunity to review how you communicate and get things done together. Formal reports, agendas, minutes – elements of these might be appropriate in your online meeting, but more often than not would benefit from being significantly adapted to the new circumstances. In the client work we do at Virtual Not Distant, a lot of people seem to realise instinctively that there is real potential to do things better - even if it’s not always obvious exactly how. This book is the manual for doing just that.

So as meetings take their place within your pattern of online communication, they can fulfil different roles within the team and its work, potentially going far beyond your expectations. Pilar talks in detail about how to create a meeting charter, which embeds psychological safety across your online communications, and shapes the roles that you play within the meeting itself. 

Her extensive experience as a group facilitator makes all of this valuable advice applicable for leaders of any group communication whatever the setting, but also addresses those particular misunderstandings or difficulties that can arise when we are dealing with an audio or video connection. However good the technology is now, it’s still potentially a barrier, and never more so when there are issues of tension or disagreement...

The book talks about many different kinds of meetings, some of which do have analogues in the colocated space, but others which are unique to remote working – in particular those meetings which replace the more informal conversations and connections which tend to happen around a shared physical space, but need to be engineered in to the communications ecosystem for a distributed team. If you’ve never been to a “virtual coffee” before, it might sound strange at first – but planned spontaneity facilitates the little interactions and sparks which can be the glue that holds an online team together.

“Online Meetings That Matter” takes the strategic decision not to go too deeply into specifics about technologies of the various platforms available. Obviously this would be the quickest way to date any publication, but Pilar’s choice is more intentional than that, and it is clear that she wanted to focus on the principles behind the choice of technology, rather than features of any given application. There are many different ways online meeting tech can be delivered now, people have different devices and operating systems, not everybody has a choice about what they use at work, and in many ways they are all getting more and more similar to one another as their functions increase and overlap. 

Far, far more important than what program you use, is why you use it and how are you use it – so if you are expecting a list of applications and their features you won’t be disappointed because there is a live resources page, BUT, you may be prompted to think more deeply about why you choose the technology that you do, and the habits or behaviours your choices either nurture or dissuade. 

You do have to deal with technology, as Pilar reminds us, and not just when you’re having a meeting: “There is no way around it. When working in a remote team, you need to master the technology and be comfortable using devices. You cannot let poor use of technology get in the way of effective communication”. So if you’re concerned about this, don’t worry, the book does include a range of useful tactics for dealing with connectivity issues like audio delay, a discussion of audio vs video calls, and considerations around whether or not to record your meetings.

Despite my declared interests, I can honestly say this book, complete with its original illustrations, should be mandated reading for anybody who has to facilitate gatherings and conversations online in real-time in any situation - whether this is a team of experienced distributed workers collaborating across continents to deliver a specific project, or a ‘traditional’ board meeting being hastily reconvened online due to travel restrictions. It could not have been published at a better time, and could help your team make the best of any online conversation – developing new ways to get things done collectively, which could even prove superior to gathering in a room together.