So here’s a post I never thought I’d write, but as I’ve chatted about my experience with colleagues, customers and friends I thought I’d put some ideas down on paper.
The other week, I went to a meeting, a real one, Face to Face. This was a meeting with a simple goal, but not a simple bullet pointed agenda – it was an update and discussion on the recent announcements that VMware made at our annual VMworld event, in the language and context that made sense to the customer in their current situation and market. We had both decided that we’d like to do that face to face, and for me, I’d not had a face to face meeting since Feburary 2020.
Driving and arriving at the meeting
The drive to meet up was about 30 mins, and I try to avoid doing calls from the car, so I’d done something I’ve not done for months, I blocked out the time in my diary needed to drive there. That meant no calls, no Zooms, no Slack, no WhatsApp – just me, the car and the road. I found myself spending this time thinking about the meeting, planning, allowing my mind to follow and consider the threads and conversations that I was going to have.
When I got there I felt prepared, refreshed – like I’d had time to arrange the thoughts in my mind before speaking to the customer. I was also very aware that I was more than a colour rectangle in an Outlook diary to them, they too had invested time and travel to meet up. Perhaps that shouldn’t have made a difference, but it did, it made a big difference about how I (and upon speaking to them, how they) approached the meeting. It changed how invested in the meeting they were emotionally, and thus how invested they were in the outcome and followup.
The Meeting Itself
The meeting was great, it turns out that in spite of everything going on today you simply can’t replace person to person interaction and communication. The meeting flowed better, we read visual cues, anticipated better and it made me realise that I had actually forgotten how impactful face to face communication was, something that left me feeling surprised.
Heading Home
It was on the way home that I had the epiphany to write this article, I was doing something that in my diary of back to back Zoom calls I never did, I was reflecting on the meeting, my brain following up, replaying and reframing conversations that I’d had. During that time I’d realised there were about 4 different opportunities adjacent to the conversation that I’d had during the meeting, and formulated a way to follow up on them when I got back home.
I also realised that it drove much more spontaneous conversation, for example I went to use the toilet, creating a short break – and on returning my customer said ‘aha, now while you were away I had time to think and why don’t we explore how we can …….’. I asked myself how would that have happenned on a Zoom call, even if I’d scheduled a 5 min break mid-call, most people would try to context switch away from the meeting, not ponder on something waiting for someone to return.
Back Home
After getting back to my home office, I had a couple more Zoom calls to do to finish the day off, and suddenly I was back into the world of back to back calls. I found myself asking my brain to context switch from meeting to meeting, I suddenly noticed that I’d lost that time to plan and the time to reflect even on the few meetings that I had that afternoon.
And lastly, at about 6pm I got a text – “great to see you today, lots for me to think about, we should catch up again soon”, when has that ever happenned hours after a Zoom call ?
And what about today ….. a total contrast.
Today I’ve not come up for air between meetings – there’s been no opportunity to think or reflect, not even time to tidy up my notes in Evernote or replay them in my mind. Whilst I feel productive (in the sense I’ve attended lots of Zoom calls ) – that lack of reflection time and inability to add value by identifying the other opportunities has to be hitting productivity and impact. Likewise, I suspect those people I’m talking to aren’t as investedin the calls, often cutting them short as ‘I need 5 mins to prep for my next call’.