Time to Take Stock?
We are all collectively going through a genuinely new experience. Never before have we had such limitation of movement but also had access to such developed communications technology to stay in touch.
Consequently many people’s ‘new normal’ is sitting at their dining room table having back-to-back videoconference meetings. There are many posts circulating about the pros and cons of these so I won’t dwell on that. One thing I have noticed about its consequences, though, is that our attitude to online meetings and the connotations they carry have changed, almost overnight.
Organisations that were instinctively averse to videoconferencing have been forced to reconsider; and many are discovering that not only can they get everything dome that they did before, but that their meetings are shorter and more focused.
The basic ‘sender-receiver’ communications model that has long governed our communications choices has seen a shift. The model tells us how the medium of communication chosen affects the communication itself; both how it is perceived and, by association, its overall effectiveness. We see this everyday in the ‘should I phone her or email her?’ conundrum. Until recently, online meetings carried certain connotations and were sometimes subject to objections and suspicions.
Circumstances have now conspired with the quality and sheer availability of the technology to change this.
For example, one project we have running at the moment is a P3M3* maturity assessment, which involves interviewing many different people around an organisation to determine its ability to manage portfolios of programmes and projects effectively. In the past we would only use videoconferencing as a last resort, preferring to meet people face-to-face to establish rapport before reviewing their work. On this project, however, we have had to compromise and have found it has had minimal impact on the quality of the assessment, purely because people’s perceptions of that medium of communication have also changed.
Everybody has had to adapt in so many ways and this is just one result. To that regard, the Lockdown is proving a good time for many organisations to take stock; to review and reflect on their current or past way of doing business and how that can be evolved as we emerge into the Brave New World beyond. For our our clients, this often includes reviewing how they approach their projects and they are finding it is easier now than ever.
Ray Mead is director of p3m global, an accredited P3M3 consulting partner and specialist portfolio, programme and project management company. www.p3m.global
*"P3M3?" is a (registered) Trade Mark of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.