Paul Corney seminar "Keeping the show on the road in a virtual world" - by Lissi Corfield

Lissi Corfield is currently Chair of NetIKX.  She has a PhD for her study of 'Knowledge Management in the Charity Sector', as well as an MBA.  She has written articles for KM Journals and is actively involved in KM groups in the UK. She worked for many years as a Head of IT for a major charity and is now retired. She can be contacted at: sacorfield@hotmail.com  

This is a time when we all learn to live with digital disruption. Processes and procedures that had lasted year upon year are suddenly subject to brand new ways of doing things.  One of these changes has been to meetings.  We no longer need to travel to go to meet someone.  We have the potential to have a virtual meeting, where wonderful technology means that geography does not stop us sharing live documents and possibly even admiring each other’s outfits!   

We can go to meetings with all the information we need in the palm of our hands, via laptops or smart phones, leaving all those cumbersome files and bundles of paper behind.  This opens a new world of opportunity for knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer.  These changes have many advantages but, as always, it pays to think carefully about the disadvantages too, so that we can take steps to reduce them.  We still need to build confidence that we all understand digital opportunities fully and are certain to get the best from them. 

This article reports back from a NetIKX (Network for Information and Knowledge Exchange) seminar where we spent a full afternoon grappling with the issues linked to Virtual Meetings. The speaker was Paul Corney.

Anyone who has sat through a meeting where many people are intently studying their mobiles, will know the frustrations that can cause.   And virtual meetings are notorious for the problems that technology can introduce.  Paul Corney, the President elect of CILIP, and an author and speaker of repute, took us to the heart of the issues for Knowledge Managers.  If meetings are one way that we share knowledge, it is essential that we, working as we do to ensure the best possible sharing takes place, will be in the forefront of establishing good practice.  

 

We considered all the possibilities for a wide range of meetings.  Paul has a wealth of experience - he had been line managed by someone on the other side of the globe, 9,000 miles away – clearly virtual meetings would be required and when it is your boss on the line, you do not want to have any distractions messing up communication. He also highlighted examples from the recently published KM Cookbook, including the International Olympic Committee whose Knowledge Management programme began in Sidney in 2000 and where significant amounts of knowledge is now organised and transferred.  This can allow learning to be disseminated to wider groups than ever possible before. It also highlights a variety of issues such as organising subgroups and breakouts.

 

Paul took us through a short masterclass, aided by a stunning slide set, looking at the benefits and pitfalls; the good, the bad and the just plain awkward.  One of the resources he introduced to us was a short video clip (A Conference Call in Real Life) which portrayed a virtual meeting as if it was a traditional face to face meeting.  This had the impact of presenting what we know can go wrong but made hilarious when acted out.  For example: the times when people were talking but the sound had gone or the strange situation of “Pete has joined the meeting” intoned several times as Pete’s link drops and he has to keep getting back up and running.  And of course, the “lurker” who was in the meeting all the time but did not let anyone know he was there!  

 

As Knowledge Management advocates, we understand the importance of the media when messages are to be transmitted and it is vital that we don’t reduce our effectiveness in our ability to share when we embrace the most forward-looking technology.  The video clip was just one of the valuable resources we looked at during the meeting.  Since the seminar NetIKX has collected a small set of resources that can be used to help understanding the issues, and they are available through our website.

Paul provided us with a table outlining the pros and cons of different meeting software.   It was particularly helpful to get the facts, augmented by the experience of people in the room.  Of course, there are different ‘best choice’ options depending on the type of meetings you intend to support and the available resources. One well-resourced organisation uses Microsoft Teams, which will control social media use through that device, while others use Zoom, a simpler choice, or Webex, the more traditional option (this very useful table is available on the NetIKX website).  Once your software is chosen, you need to ensure that there are no problems with users having different software versions, or incompatible systems and remembering that simply because they have the software, this does not mean they know how to use it effectively!

Of course, the best meetings have help and support from technology expertise; a strong reason for keeping good relations with our counterparts in the IT department!  Firewalls may have to be negotiated without leading to security risks.  It may be that in your eagerness to facilitate knowledge sharing you forget to consider the dangers of ‘leaking’.  There are many technical issues to negotiate to get the best possible solution to your virtual meeting needs. 

 

And so, we come to the non-tech questions.  What differences do we have to manage with a virtual meeting compared to traditional meetings?  Do you need different rules? Will there be alternative ways to enforce them? Are there timing issues, or cultural issues and how do you get feedback to learn how well things worked and where you can improve?  One issue that we considered carefully was whether a good meeting chair would automatically be a good virtual meeting chair or if some different skills were needed.   A solution could be to have two chairs:  one to manage the meeting content and another to monitor and confirm Protocol.  This could solve all your problems - or possibly lead to utter confusion and conflict! Paul suggested an interesting resource could be a book by Erin Mayer, which includes a chapter called “The most productive ways to disagree across cultures” in “The Culture Map”’.  He suggested the words: ‘that is really interesting’ which from an English person with a dry turn of phrase can have an idiomatic meaning contrary to its general meaning.

 

The meeting highlighted lots of useful ideas.  We then considered these in table discussions, so the participants were able to pull together the ideas they had found useful.  

Here are the Top Ten in reverse order of popularity.

 

10. Consider security – don’t overlook this when tackling the technology issues.  

9.  Consider if the meeting needs to have small groups, or specific break-out groups.  

8.  Ensure the participants understand the established etiquette.

7.  Ensure participants are confident and competent with the technology before the meeting starts. 

6.  Consider how the role of Chair will need to adapt to the virtual format.

5.  Consider if you can build on face to face meetings to supplement the virtual ones.

4.  Decide if you need to have two people taking lead roles: Chair of Content and Chair of Protocol?  

3.  Consider cultural issues as these may be emphasized and exacerbated by the virtual format  

2.  Preparation is vital: IT compatibility and time issues etc. need to be thought through.

1. The recommendation that reminds us all, that virtual meetings will ultimately have the same dynamic as any other meeting:  It is most essential to have a clear purpose and outcomes that are understood by all participants.  

 

 

Resources:

 

Paul Corney, The KM Cookbook: Stories and strategies for organisations exploring Knowledge Management Standard ISO30401  

 

NetIKX Website: each seminar has a page on our website where we collect resources relevant to that meeting.  Look at the page for January 2020.