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We all cringe at the thought of sitting through yet another weekly meeting in which we hash out the events of the seven days and discuss what each team member feels is top priority moving forward. These meetings can seem mundane and tiresome as can the time spent creating an agenda leading up to them. In “The Advantage” Patrick Lencioni addresses how to eliminate the fuss and capitalize on time to ensure your dreaded weekly meeting not only serves purpose, but makes it enjoyable.

According to Lencioni “there is no more valuable activity in any organization than the regular staff meeting of a leadership team.” He has designated weekly or bi-weekly meetings for tactical purposes. These meetings are to quickly create a real-time agenda and assess top priorities. The challenge is evaluating the importance of each priority brought up by team members while eliminating topic distractions.

Continuing our discussion on effective meetings, Patrick Lencioni in his book “The Advantage — Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business” said, “The highpoint of being a leader in an organization is wrestling with difficult decisions and situations. Truncating those high points just doesn't make sense.” Lencioni makes a strong case for the utilization of adhoc topical meetings where management digs into the critical issues that can have a long term impact on an organization or that require significant time and energy.

According to Lencioni, managers should separate their tactical conversations from their strategic ones. Combining the tactical and strategic conversations just doesn't work and leaves both set of issues inadequately addressed. He further states that if leadership goes more than a month without a strategic meeting, something is probably wrong.

In his book “The Advantage — Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business” author Patrick Lencioni boldly states, “If someone were to offer me one single piece of evidence to evaluate the health of an organization, I would want to observe the leadership team during a meeting.” He then makes a compelling case for the use of daily check-in meetings where management teams briefly review schedules, events and issue alerts.

Lencioni advises the team get into the habit of gathering once a day, for no more than ten minutes, to clear the air about anything administrative that would be helpful to know. He further advises that there be no agendas and no resolution of issues, just an exchange of information. Two Rivers Conferencing's toll free reservationless conference services perfectly complements this healthy organization strategy!

International business is exploding across all industries as new technology makes the world a smaller place. Although more international business opportunities exist than ever before, communicating effectively with parties in different countries can be a challenge. Different physical locations, different time zones and long travel durations combine to create strong barriers to communication. Audio and video conferencing are powerful ways for geographically distributed groups of people to collaborate effectively. They allow multiple participants to communicate as a group and create real time teamwork where it otherwise could not exist. They can also allow sharing of documents, drawings, spreadsheets and even full motion videos, which aid the communication process.

As significant as the benefits of international conferencing may be, challenges to effective communication do exist. Accents from non-native English speakers can be difficult to discern. Some words and phrases have different meanings in different countries which can lead to confusion. With that in mind here are some do's and don'ts for international audio/video conferencing:

It is a challenge to connect professionals suspicious of sharing information with other professionals in the same industry — even though sharing expertise could benefit both parties. Conference calling technology provides an effective way to bridge this need for shared professional expertise. A real estate agent program provides a strong example of the benefits of sharing information at a distance using conference calling.

A sales representative from a large conference service provider (CSP) attended a real estate sales seminar hosted by an acknowledged industry expert on the best practices for achieving success in residential and commercial real estate. His seminars were attended by some of this country's most successful real estate agents. The sales representatives were told that surveys taken by the seminar's attendees indicated that the agents strongly valued the information obtained from the program's presentations and educational events. Surprisingly, the survey data showed attendees gave even greater value to the information shared among fellow sales agents during the many social and business networking events that occurred over the course of the three day conference seminar event.

In our April 24th blog, we discussed conference call techniques for meeting managers, where we emphasized knowing your conference call provider's features and options. This will help you manage your calls more effectively. Last week's blog (June 24th) on conferencing etiquette provided guidelines for the moderators and participants. This week we want to add more ways for improving your conference calls.

We would recommend having your conference calls at a regular, recurring time. The conference call can be scheduled daily, weekly or monthly. The key, however, is to schedule the conference call at a consistent day and time. This allows your team members to plan their schedules and emphasizes the value you place on the participant's input. Having this fixed schedule shows respect and helps to maximize the success of your conference meeting for all involved.

Many business people have questions about the proper etiquette to use when hosting or participating in a conference call. While many have weighed in on this issue, there is no one set of definitive rules governing proper conduct of a conference event. We would like to offer the following suggestions as guidelines for consideration by anyone required to host/moderate or requested to participate on a conference call.

Guidelines for hosts / moderators:

Surprising your conference call participants with questions can result in embarrassing delays as they search for an appropriate response. Fortunately, these awkward moments can be prevented entirely and for all time by having conference event moderators adopt the practice of alerting participants in advance of their required contribution to the group's discussion. Like all good habits, adopting this practice requires discipline and practice. One respected approach identifies seven basic steps that we have applied to the circumstances of a conference event moderator:

Meetings held on audio, web and video conference calls are one of the common ways that many of us get work done on the job. We may discuss issues, share new information and make important decisions in meetings. However, conference calls can also be one of the ways that time is wasted in the workplace. A timed agenda can be a great way of keeping meetings on track and making sure that meetings not only begin and end on time, but that each topic also gets its just allotted time. We believe that the use of a timed agenda can also serve as a helpful training and recognition opportunity that can remove the burden placed upon the conference call moderator or host for developing and managing the conference meeting's timed agenda. These opportunities are highlighted in bold print below.

A long-time customer of Two Rivers Conferencing recently shared a story with us about a recent conference call they hosted that was very different from the day-to-day business conference calls they regularly attend. Because this story deals with something that I think many of us can relate to, we want to thank the customer for sharing it with us and allowing us to share it with you. Because we can't tell their story any better, we've posted the complete letter below.

If you are looking for recent industry trends and data on work-place telecommuting, look no further than the July 2012 article in the Industry Market Trends (IMT) blog at ThomasNet.com News: Working Together by Working Apart: The Telecommuting Culture by Ilya Leybovich, which very nicely summarizes a wealth of data on telecommuting from many different sources, including an Ipsos/Reuters poll of over 11,000 people in 24 countries, including the United States. Here is just a small sampling from that January 2012 survey that reflects impacts on worker efficiency and employee morale:

One of the ironies of the vast amount of online information available to help managers and business owners is that with so many sources, it can be difficult to keep up with the most recent information on any given subject. A recent article at smallbiztrends.com provides a summary of some of the latest findings on the benefits and challenges of telecommuting. Topics covered included cost savings, workplace efficiency, employee job satisfaction, the latest in work-at-home trends, establishing data security for remote workers, and a lot more. There are also links to the information sources if you want to do a deeper dive. The overall message is pretty clear - if you are willing to take the right steps and safeguards when enabling telecommuting within your workforce, it can be a win-win for both you and your employees who would like the option to work remotely.

Two Rivers offers a wide range of tools that are designed for your remote work force, including Audio Teleconferencing, Web conferencing, and Video Conferencing. To find out more, and let us help you choose the right service for your team, contact us today.