
What It Takes to Run a Great Virtual Meeting
Under the best of circumstances, virtual meetings tend to be less productive than in-person, or than they should be. Read our guidance for best practices to lead engaging and productive virtual meetings.
Their extensive experience working with executive teams has given our partners unique insights into how organizations function.
At the height of World War II, the CIA’s predecessor, the OSS, issued a classified document: the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Devoted to disrupting institutions behind enemy lines, the document detailed acts of sabotage like slashing tires and draining fuel tanks. But within its pages were eight methods for sabotage designed to thwart the internal processes of organizations, with tips for wasting time (e.g., “insist on doing everything through channels”) and bringing efficiency to a halt (e.g., “Refer all matters to committees”). Decades later, these eight sabotage methods still lurk in our workplaces. Masked as “good” behaviors, they slow down your group’s – and your – best efforts. Simple Sabotage exposes these often unintentional but highly corrosive behaviors and provides countermeasures to protect against each one. Find out how other firms evaluated their own organizations regarding these behaviors.
Under the best of circumstances, virtual meetings tend to be less productive than in-person, or than they should be. Read our guidance for best practices to lead engaging and productive virtual meetings.
Social distancing and travel restrictions have made it difficult, if not impossible, for organizations convene in person. Some controversial conversations need to be had now more than ever, so we need to learn how to do them virtually.
Doing business on Zoom, WebEx, Teams and the like presents many challenges, but what’s been overlooked is that these virtual platforms also give managers an extraordinary set of “superpowers”: the ability to do things in meetings that were either unthinkable or enormously challenging in the old days of conference tables and flip charts.