SeanFromCanada's Blog

Three Ideas to Move Things Forward (without meeting face-to-face)

We’ve tried – proposing lunches, coffee and times to grab a beer.  Both of us own businesses and our calendars are pretty full.  I can see that we’re losing momentum, and imagine it won’t be long before we forget to keep trying.  This is really frustrating, so I started to ask what’s so hard about this…

I’ve noticed that one of the greatest challenges I have these days is aligning my time.  More specifically, it’s challenging to be in the same place as people I want to meet with, at the same time.  I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise, I average about 40 – 45 meetings every workweek, and I’m meeting with people who average about the same.  Roughly 20% of my meetings are booked a year out, and the rest usually are booked 3-6 weeks out.  My friends and business colleagues say they are no different.

With both parties having this kind of schedule, what are the odds of us both having an open time slot at the same time?  I’m not going to do the math, but I can tell you from experience, they’re low.

So what’s the answer?

Not seeing my friends?

I don’t think so.  In some cases, the answer lies in finding other ways to communicate with some of the people I’m meeting with.  (For clarity, I believe in face to face communication and there are certainly circumstances where it’s not only the best way, it’s the only way…but other times, we’re meeting face to face only because someone said ‘we should book a meeting’).

Many of the meetings I have are to advance ideas and explore possible options.  I’ve noticed there is a lot of ‘presenting’ going on in these meetings (not back and forth conversations).  I suspect these meetings are my opportunity to change the mode of communication.

The options include:

Email:

I know we all feel we have too much email coming in – but think about the opportunity for 2 or 3 people to build on an idea through email.  One person can send an email at 8:00 am with their ideas.  Another could read it at 10:00 am and respond after thinking about it at 12:00.  The third person could respond to the ideas at 10:00 pm and by the next morning, a decision could be made.  No time alignment necessary.

Project Site:

Being a SharePoint guy, I’m a huge fan of centralizing activities, data and documents into a single place – a site.  Here, people can add documents, create and publish reports, start threaded discussions and make announcements to team members.  Point being, people can work from anywhere, at any time, and the project can move forward.  No time alignment necessary.

Social Media / Enterprise Social:

While not for every purpose, the communication tools available through sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Yammer and SharePoint’s News Feed enable information sharing and communication that are not time dependent.  The conversation becomes searchable (for future reference) and if you decide to include someone later in the conversation, they can catch up easily (by reading the previous threaded discussion).  Again, no time alignment necessary.

As I go forward with my calendar, I’m going to become more aware of whether the effort of aligning our time (to meet in person) is the right approach.  Perhaps some percentage of my meetings can be transitioned to other forms of communication…so I have time for that beer with my friend.