Making Remote Meetings Work

So you’ve read all the advice about working with remote teams, and it boils down to this: Communicate, communicate, communicate.  How do you  make communication work on the phone?  How do you get what you need, when you need it, effectively?

I’ve spent the last two and a half years owning and participating in remote teams - England, France, Uruguay.  All are a several time zones ahead of San Francisco.  Many of the participants have had limited or no English.   Our goals have included get-to-know-you, software design, development, and quality work, debugging, security and performance changes, customer cases, customer support calls, and more. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Relationships matter

• Meet in person - even if only once.  It is several orders of magnitude harder to work someone you’ve never met, then with someone whose hand you’ve shaken. There’s simply no substitute for knowing if that hesitation on the phone is a language thing, a personality thing, or an I-didn’t-actually-do-it thing.

• Respect their time.  Don’t ask them to attend 8pm or 6am meetings, leave their weekends intact.  Save the word ‘emergency’ for times it’s needed - then if you have to fire drill, they’ll know it’s important.

Own your phone lag

People wait for a natural break in a conversation to ask a question, or to say something.  Without visual cues, they wait longer. Combine this with VOIP or phone lag, and you’ve a recipe for disaster: a longish pause, followed by everyone talking, followed by another pause …  To fix it:

• • Use short, clear sentences with definite endings. Complete thought, full stop.  Complete thought, full stop.
    
  • If caught in the start/stop pattern, say “Go ahead, James,” and then wait as long as it takes for your pause, the sound’s travel time, their pause, the response, and the return trip.  Pick a person, ask for a response, wait.  Don’t repeat the request until it’s very clear you’re not getting one.
  • If people are having a hard time with the lag, take charge: ask for clarification on someone’s last point, ask if they understood, etc.  Pick a person, ask for a response - same as above.  This makes it clear whose turn it is, and resets the conversation.
  • If you have new members on the phone - a consulting expert, etc - be sure to cue them in, first thing.  “We have a bit of lag on the phone, Kristen.”

They can’t read your mind (Watch your assumptions)

A boot in American English is a specialized shoe.  In Britain, it’s the trunk of your car. “I checked, and it works” also means different things to different people, depending on the company, the culture, and how important they think checking really is. Ditto with everything.

• Give context:  Don’t just say “this has to work.” Say “we don’t have time to do this twice.  If we find a problem after install, we lose the last three months of work.” Say it once when everyone’s on the call, be sure everyone understands, and move on. This helps people think about their actions and responses.
• Ask for more detail:  Don’t just say “Did you check it?” Say that, and  then say “how?” and “how many times?” and “what edge cases did you try?”
• Get off your high horse: You’re on the phone, so they have to let you look over their shoulders. So don’t ask questions to catch them in a mistake, and don’t make them lose face in front of their peers. Ask for detail, and then LISTEN. WAIT. CLARIFY.

Get groups of people on the phone (in each location)

I know this runs counter to conventional wisdom; most experts advise having everyone on the phone if even one person is remote.  I disagree. I strongly disagree!

• Dialed-in members have a harder time hearing each other, and there are no visual cues for spaces in the conversation. They talk over each other more often.
• More callers means more technical problems - everything from signin/signout notifications to multiplied background noise (five people’s office background noise vs. one or two).
• It’s easier to zone out - or attempt multitasking - when you’re on a call, so overall participation drops

Ultimately, the more people you have on the phone, the more difficult communication and consensus become. To that end:

• Have as few meeting places as possible - get groups of people on the phone, in a conference room. (A group here, a group in France…)
• Make sure everyone sits as close to the telephone as possible, and have people speak loudly and clearly  - and more slowly, if you have foreign language speakers on the phone.  Don’t allow side conversations, while you’re at it.
• Encourage people to ask for a repeat if they can’t hear, or didn’t understand.  I also like to repeat information (especially technical information..) when I’m leading the meeting: “Let me be sure I’m getting this.  You’re saying …” This isn’t just for my benefit; it keeps everyone on the same page, and wakes people up.  Participate!
• Check up on people to ensure they’re getting it “Francois, is that clear for you?” This is especially important for foreign language speakers.

• Finally: EVERYONE SHOULD DIAL IN AT LEAST ONCE - so they know what it feels like.  Banish people to a separate conference room one at a time, if you have to.

Keep meetings short and to the point.

In my experience, (almost) no phone meeting over 30 minutes in length yields more than a better-conducted 30-minute meeting. There are a few exceptions, of course - information-driven meetings and design meetings spring to mind.  But your average, run-of-the-mill, checking-up-on-you meeting?  1/2  hour should do it.    Be useful. Don’t bore your participants.  Stop talking and start getting things done. Give speeches on your own time.

• Have an agenda, and stick to it. You may have to do a lot of legwork beforehand to have an effective agenda.  So be it.
• Ask people to take side discussions offline.
• Set a meeting for yourself at the other end, if you have to

Have a call every day

This is a corollary to the above.  Have short-and-sweet phone meetings, and have them at least once a day.  It’s important to have a presence in your remote teams’ workday - even if it’s just a five-minute call  to be sure they’re on track.

• In general, I don’t recommend requiring people to attend a meeting if they don’t have to be there - with the exception of your daily checkup call.  Get everyone on  the phone once a day.

Make yourself available

The farther away your team, the harder this is - but:

• Answer their email first
• Give them an easy, casual way to reach you - Instant messenger, your cell number, Skype, whatever works for you. Fast, simple communication gets a lot more done than formal meetings.
• At the end of every single call, ask if they need anything - and if they do, get it done ASAP.  Even if you have to go down to the HR department and fax the form yourself.

Visuals can be useful.  Or not.

This is last because it’s least important.  I haven’t done many visual conferences, but I’ve found the setup more trouble than it’s worth. Once I’ve used some really good videoconference tools, I’ll come back and update.  In the meantime:

• GoToMeeting (or something similar) is great for demoing features, going through lists, showing ongoing project work (we use a computerized ‘wall’ for agile scrum meetings), and giving powerpoint presentations.
• It is *not* great for large spreadsheets, many-paged/tabbed demos, or you talking while showing everyone your awesome background image.
• In general, people are easily distracted by visuals. Use yours with purpose, or don’t use them at all.

A lot of these points are applicable to meetings in general, but they’re especially important for teleconferencing. When done well, working with remote teams is a pleasure, something I’ve come to enjoy. Now: Is it 5pm in Paris yet…?

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Also worth reading:

Ten Tools for Remote Teams and Making the Most of Virtual Meetings (BNET)