How to Decide Whether Your Meeting Should Be an Email, Video Conference, or Phone Call

How many meetings have you sat in and said (probably to yourself), "This could have been an email."? How many hours did you spend trying to get the wording just right on the email, and responding to all the questions, before you finally said, “Let’s get on a video call.”? 

When it comes to managing communications on a remote or virtual team, the question always arises: which tools are best? The different question is: Which tool should I use for what purpose? 

Bettina Buechel at IMD Switzerland came up with a decision-matrix that might help. She suggests two parameters:

• Richness (lots of cues, real-time communication, customized for the audience) and 
• Scope (consistent delivery of the message across time and space) 

Every communication medium -- from a one-on-one conversation to spam -- fits within these dimensions

The graphic appears to depict three clusters: 

High richness/low scope: When the stakes are high, there is no room for misunderstanding. Face-to-face conversations give you the maximum verbal, vocal, and visual cues. One-on-one conversations allow you to focus your attention on one person and to customize the message. Synchronous conversation, regardless of the format, provides an opportunity for immediate responses to questions. Cues, customization, and synchronicity are particularly important when emotions are involved, for example when stress over a project could lead to defensiveness, or when seeing the look of panic or confusion on someone's face would make you change your approach. Hiring interviews and performance coaching are situations in which emotional cues are important. 

Medium richness/medium scope: Then there are situations when it is important that you get information out to a larger group, but listener feedback is not essential at that moment. This cluster of approaches might be used when your whole team needs access to the correct and latest information, and it would be useful to be capture for later reference because it is likely that there could be questions. For example, a conference call recording allows others to listen to a recording and get the same information as those who did attend. Questions might be asked in a different forum. 

Used correctly and consistently, social-networking tools like file sharing (SharePoint and Google Docs), blogs, wikis, and texting are valuable "medium richness" communication tools. The opportunity for feedback, seamless updating, and referral makes this approach richer than a simple email. When time isn't of the essence, and sharing your best thinking is required, these tools allow you to ponder before responding, help avoid group-think and allow all members of the team to participate fully.

Low richness/high scope: If you have spent any time apologizing for the tone of an email, you understand that this is due to the inability to clarify things in real-time. The tendency of those old poorly written emails to come back to haunt you also speaks to high scope. Email works nicely when you need a simple message communicated quickly, consistently, and across the entire group. This form works well as a preparation for or a follow up to richer conversations. If an email has emotion, stick to positive emotion. 

This article itself is an example of a low richness/high scope medium. In an effort to increase its richness, I asked for feedback. Here's what I received: 

"A close look at this model suggests that primary differences in communication are:

• Richness is the level of customization required
• Scope is how long the message needs to be able to be referenced

It is not hard to decide between cluster 1 and cluster 3, but it is difficult to choose between 1 and 2 or 2 and 3. "

So, help me expand the richness of this article even further! What are your thoughts about this matrix? Did it create any questions for you? Do you agree with these parameters or do you have a different viewpoint you could share?

Jonathan partners with high-performing technical specialists to reach their full potential as people-leaders. Combining his science background, corporate experience, and teaching skills, he creates a knowing and trusting relationship necessary to ask clients to do the hard work of building new skills, using their time differently, and embracing values that bring them and the organization the greatest success. To learn how Jonathan can help your organization, visit envisionpartnersllc.com