Redefining a productive meeting

 Making better decisions starts with openly evaluating tradeoffs and risks, not merely advocating information. Unfortunately, the translation of work from the physical to the digital has only increased the risk that people will spend time together without achieving their intended outcome.

In fall of 2020, I wrote about the challenge of translating human interaction to remote settings in an article titled Remote collaboration is here to stay. Should it be? With that article, I included a virtual meeting guide intended for anyone who wants to gather two or more people to achieve an understood outcome — but needs a hand reframing from physical to virtual. You can download that guide here.

Never hear “that meeting that should have been an email” again

Often all it takes to move from a report-out that should have been an email to a productive discussion is thoughtful framing. Using visual cues or analogies helps signal to participants that this is not your average meeting. Here are a few examples of how a graphic meeting guide can kickstart collaboration — either remote or in-person.

Storytelling

Following a conference, team members prompted discussion with management about the future direction of the team by using four "rules" of storytelling. Throughout the conversation, participants told stories about what they saw at the event and concluded with a commitment to accountability and a request for support.

Education

Sometimes a picture is really worth a thousand words, especially when busy people need to understand complex themes. In a graduate course on innovation taken at Savannah College of Art and Design, depicting the key points of a case study graphically helped focus the team's time on relevant takeaways, rather than comprehension.

Persuasion

Analogy is a powerful tool for persuasion. Using the template of news coverage of a historical event, this Prezi laid out analogous points to bolster a strategy recommendation.

(Because the fully animated presentation is no longer available, the steps of the discussion have been highlighted in green for the purposes of illustration.)