English Channel

Hey, Let’s Meet on That!

By Bill English, Partner

The advent of COVID has significantly increased the use of video conferencing technologies, such as Zoom or Teams. Before COVID, if I had four face-to-face meetings in a day at four different locations, that was a busy day for me. Today with Zoom, I can meet 7-8 people each day who are in different locations – all from the comfort of my home office.

But the problems inherent in face-to-face meetings haven’t really changed. They’re simply compounded when we meet more often. One study found that we are, on average, attending 13 more meetings each week, though each meeting is, on average, 12 minutes shorter than our face-to-face meetings before the pandemic hit, according to this Harvard Business Review (HBR) study. These increased but slightly shorter meetings are also more taxing because each one is always “on camera” where we need to continue looking interested and attentive the entire time.

In order to make our meetings more effective, I’ll suggest we take a moment and go back to the “why” a meeting takes place, “what” you need out of it that you cannot get more efficiently through other means, “who” is really needed in the meeting and “how” you want attendees to feel afterward (worth their time/waste of their time)... MORE

Betsy Niemeier on Leading a Steel Fabrication and Design Business During COVID-19

In this week’s One Take CEO Interview, Co-Owner and President of M&N Structures Betsy Niemeier shares how she has dealt with all the challenges thrown her way recently, including COVID-19, another surge in steel prices, delays in vendor delivery time and political polarization in the workplace.

During each One Take, a business owner or CEO shares how he or she is leading through the COVID-19 pandemic and other unprecedented issues that emerged in 2020 and early 2021. No script, no edits, just frank from business leaders for business leaders... MORE

Watch this interview on YouTube or listen via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.