This year everything was set for our annual Procurement Performance Acceleration workshop. Procurement Performance Acceleration market leads were flying in from all over Asia, Oceania & Africa, and we had decided to hold our meeting in Bangkok. The week was very full, people were all coming in from Europe to discuss critical topics, and we were all looking forward to defining our actions to close 2020 according to our objectives and prepare the priorities and first activities for 2021.
Then, “BOOM !”. In March the first lock-downs linked to the COVID-19 pandemic cast a huge shadow on our plans, but I thought “OK, the end of June should be fine we will probably still be able to make it then. Well as you can all imagine, I was so wrong… and week after week, the possibility of an actual physical workshop vanished.
At first, I was quite disappointed and I began to think when would be the soonest we could postpone the event? Quickly, I realized that the physical face to face meeting was becoming a missed opportunity. Then I decided, "Wait! I can leverage on the time arranged with everyone to deliver a constructive event in another way and achieve at least some of the objectives of the original in person workshop."
So yes, I came up with an alternative "remote meeting" plan and here is a list of my take away element that have to be looked after in order to ensure a successful event and deliver a maximum value added.
1) Use an efficient video collaboration tool
Allow me to note here that when using Microsoft Team there is a great feature not very well known that seems to help a lot when in an international environment: “live caption”. This actually transcripts the discussion in “subtitles” in a live manner. This works much better with native English speakers of course and can help everyone follow better especially when you have very “fast” speakers and there are non-native English speakers in the audience.
2) Use good hardware at the right place
This sounds probably obvious, but participants need to be in good physical space conditions for the call; quiet place with a good internet connection, and using a proper headset (earphones and microphone both), this will make a huge difference in the usefulness of the meeting for the participant and the whole audience as well, especially when they also are a speaker or presenter. I believe you should avoid low-end earplug type device (such as earbuds, iPhone or Samsung headset). These are great for one to one informal conversation but can fail or be less than acceptable for group calls. I prefer Jabra or Plantronics devices that are made for this and really giving great results. The Logitech headsets can also be quite good. And don’t forget to check with your participants and presenters that they are paying attention to this issue as well. The best thing to do here actually is to experiment with others with such equipment before a group meeting.
3) Virtual meetings should be maximum 4 to 5 hours per day
The 5 hours total we had felt manageable, but it can be tiring. The effort to carry out these meetings is much higher on the phone than in a "face to face". I believe that going longer would have lost critical group energy.
4) Set short sessions
Concentration
over the phone is not the same as in a “Face to face,” so to keep
people from switching to other tasks, while they ostensibly participate
in an ongoing meeting, you need to ensure sessions are not too long.
It’s a balance to be found depending on the specific subjects you might
be covering. We had sessions from 20 minutes to one and a half hour. The
longer ones were definitely too much and I believe we lost some
participants attention along the way. I would strongly suggest not to
exceed one hour in one session, and for those sessions, it might be best
if the content can be partially interactive (see tip 6).5) Prepare the sessions, have a shared agenda and ensure focus
In a virtual workshop, you do not really have the opportunity to improvise, whether on the content or the timing of the sessions. You must be extremely sharp on content and strict on timing. In this context it is critical to ensure the sessions are very well prepared in advance and that you have and distributed a written detailed Agenda. You must clearly define the content and objectives of each session also, and even note in the Agenda the proposed or possible takeaway from the session for the participant as well as the presenter. In our workshop I had sessions that were more about giving information to the markets so as to prepare them for what was coming. These were the shorter sessions as their content was not very interactive. I also had sessions that were more directed at getting feedback and alignment from participants. For such sessions the expected outcome(s) must be clearly articulated and potentially pre-formatted (see tip 7) to ensure the full expected results.
6) Session content must be interactive
I always have as an objective to make a workshop enjoyable and fun. This will help to put most people in a collaborative mood and will also give them fond memories. The idea is that these positive memories will help participants associate those with remembering the strategic and key content and hopefully ensure positive impacts to future execution based on the workshop event outcomes.
Having fun in face to face meetings is quite easy but in virtual meetings it can be more of a challenge. One of the key points is to ensure everybody is actively listening and participating in the session. Video clips can help support this, but A/V content is not always easy (bandwidth challenges), and it’s normally best is to get active participation through session content.
So, I find it is important to bring some interactive content into the sessions, such as opening up the meeting and answering questions in real time, rather than keeping them for the end as often practiced. Include quizzes/live polls, ask feedback from every single participant during the session (the challenge here is to manage time and keep people’s feedback short – at the same time it needs to be real), use voting sessions (see next tip for this)
7) Use a virtual collaboration tool for interactions
This is probably the tip that can make the most difference to your event and unfortunately its importance is often under valued. For me this is the game changer between just another virtual event and a GREAT virtual event.
Before our workshop I investigated several options to see what could be done to bring a new dynamic into my event and ensure full and deep collaboration of all the participants. I looked at what was available for me at the corporate level as well as what other tools I could use. I specifically focused on Microsoft Team (including the white board), Klaxoon, which had already been used by some of my team members and finally Mural.co, of which I had the chance to be an early tester. There are actually dozens of tools available (an actual very good list is available here). My choice finally went with Mural.co (Still using Microsoft Team for the audio/video part), and I have to say I had absolutely no regrets. Mural .co allowed us to collectively bring the workshop from Good to Great!
Of course, the sessions need to be prepared and pre-structured in Mural, but thanks to this investment you can achieve a lot during a short session. The sticky note concept, the timing options and voting session really help all participants to actively contribute and deliver an aligned content in our very short sessions. The outcomes were very cogent and complete, and a set of aligned expectations/actions was structured for all of us to take-away and ensure swift implementation.
8) Set roles to support the workshop lead
This advice, I would already give for a face to face workshop, and it is even more important for a virtual workshop. It is usually a very good idea to ask for support from some of the participants. First it is removing some of the presentation burdens from yourself, secondly it allows the participants to play a more active role, and therefore forces them to be more focused on the workshop.
There are different roles than can usually be distributed to the team:
- Action taker: One of the key outcomes of the workshop will be a list of agreed actions to be executed as a follow up of the workshop. These actions can be individual or collective, but it is very important that they are clearly captured so that when someone reads them without the Workshop context a few weeks later, the content stays clear. It will be very difficult for you to run the session and capture the actions at the same time, you might even make some actions yourself. The action taker will have the time to reflect and capture the actions clearly and ask the support of the group in case it is not clear to her/him. It is also a great practice to review these actions at the end of the day as a group to ensure they are reflecting and capturing the discussion of the group
- Timekeeper: Ensuring we are keeping time is critical for a virtual workshop. You will have people joining by phone for specific session, and because the session is virtual, they might have commitment before and after your session so you must absolutely be punctual. The timekeeper will watch the clock, remind the presenter/participant of the time constraint (middle of the session, 10 minutes / 5 minutes left and the end)
- Parking Lot Manager: At some point there will be some challenges or important questions brought to the table that are not central to the Workshop but as they are not part of the Agenda the session will not enable them to be covered properly. If we agree as a group that this is a important question/issue that needs to be discussed/resolved, the “parking lot” can come into play. This will allow you to avoid going into problem solving discussion, on peripheral but important subjects, that can cause you to cannibalize your workshop schedule.
These are the main three roles that I advise you farm out to others but there are other you might want to add based on your expected outcome and experience.
9) 4 days in a row maximum
If you have already run a similar one week workshop in a face to face, your first idea might be to try and achieve the same with a virtual workshop. This would of course then require your workshop to be five days. I believe this is probably a mistake. You will not be able to achieve the same intensity with a virtual workshop than with a face to face one, so the best idea would be to reset your expectations and start from scratch considering your actual constraints. The point of course is that face to face workshops differ greatly from virtual workshops.
From my experience I would set the maximum duration of a virtual workshop to four days, five hours each day (including a 30 to 60 minute refreshment break and maybe even one or two bathroom breaks). After four days, the energy level in the group starts to decline and it is good to leave Friday for people to catch up on their week and reflect on the Workshop content. They won’t have a flight home to do that!
10) Set a conclusion and summary wrap up meeting the following week
As the Workshop is virtual, we can use a different wrap-up setup. During my last Workshop I realized that the participants were not ready for an efficient conclusion on Day Four (last day) of our workshop. So, I simply decided to use the time I had reserved for this for reviewing our “parking lot” issues (see tip 8) and set the conclusion meeting for the following week.
This worked great and was a great idea, it gave me the time to work with the various participants and presenters to prepare a summary of the workshop, capture the outcomes of our Mural.co (see tip 7) session in a presentable format, and capture the essential decisions we had taken for actions.
The conclusion meeting was really useful as everybody was fresh, people had the time to reflect, and we were very efficient. Each participant had a perfectly formalized take away with a clear action plan to share with their respective market leadership team.
As a conclusion, I think ultimately organizing a virtual workshop is not so different from a face to face event. But you will spend less time on the logistics and you can reinvest this time in a thorough preparation of the sessions that ensure interactivity to keep your participants fully focused. Finally, your energy and passion of course will go a long way in making your workshop a success !
Fabrice Blanc
About the author : Fabrice Blanc is an experienced Supply Chain & Procurement international leader, he has worked across the world on multiple continents and has been managing multicultural physical and virtual teams.
You have mentioned here great information here.platform to meet coworkers virtually I would like to say this is a well-informed article and also beneficial article for us. Keep sharing this kind of articles, Thank you.
ReplyDeletemuch obliged for sharing significant data about virtual workshops. On the off chance that you need be proficient specifically division or region, take some sort of preparing in it. I will assist you with getting information and experience.
ReplyDelete