At a time when everyone seems to be spending a big part of their day in Zoom meetings and other online confabs, how many of those meetings are awful? Yes, we know most meetings are awful in the best of times, but online meetings can be even worse.
I have a few thoughts about how to make them less awful and more productive right now. Our tips from a few months ago on more effective online presentations still apply, but there is a difference between doing online meetings by choice and doing them by necessity. Many people have never spent much time in online meetings: Their inexperience is showing.
During the pandemic, many people who have never spent much time in online meetings – or are used to being in the conference room while a few others attend remotely – are being forced online. Their inexperience is showing. This can lead to lots of unproductive time spent trying to deal with audiovisual chaos rather than getting work done.
Business and IT leaders should be patient with people struggling to learn, but they should also be aware of the tools available to help them take charge and run more effective meetings.
While I’ll be sharing Zoom-specific tips, many also apply to other online meeting environments, such as Microsoft Teams. For an open source alternative, you might try Jitsi, which could even open up possibilities for adding your own custom video experiences (see github.com/jitsi).
But even if your workplace has a different favorite, you’re likely to find yourself sucked into Zoom meetings with customers or partners. Zoom has become enough of a dominant force in work, education, and society that The New York Times is publishing “We all live in Zoom now” stories. Friends who had previously used Funny Zoom backgrounds only occasionally are telling me they find themselves exhausted after a day of back-to-back Zoom meetings, many of which are poorly managed.