8 steps for an effective hybrid planning meeting

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by David McKeown9,037 views·Updated Jul 6, 2021
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Outfield Leadership CEO Dave McKeown shares how to optimize your meetings in the hybrid workplace. Watch his video to learn the 8 steps to get started. For more information on Dave or to watch more of his content: - Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemckeown/ - Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davemckeown - Watch more of his Prezi videos: https://prezi.com/user/cngn-apps9yf/ - Check out his website: https://www.outfieldleadership.com/ - Get his book: https://www.selfevolvedleader.com/

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated

  1. in this video, I'm going to share with you how
  2. to run a hugely effective hybrid planning session.
  3. My name is Dave McEwen and these are my findings
  4. from the Outfield.
  5. Yeah, Okay, right.
  6. Yeah, yeah.
  7. Hey everybody Dave mccune here with another episode of findings
  8. from the Outfield, powered by Prezi and today I'm going
  9. to talk about how to build a really compelling hybrid
  10. planning process.
  11. Look, they say that the great return to the office
  12. is coming or maybe it's not.
  13. Most recent surveys have indicated that if given a choice,
  14. employees favor some combination of either a fully remote or
  15. a hybrid arrangement for the foreseeable future and that will
  16. bring with it a raft of challenges.
  17. One of the biggest challenges for leadership teams in this
  18. new hybrid setting is on running effective planning sessions and
  19. the natural tendency for most groups will be to revert
  20. to their in person ways of interacting and then to
  21. sort of tack on some remote participants and having run
  22. hundreds of planning sessions both in person and virtually I
  23. can tell you that this approach will culminate in a
  24. clear divide between those people that are physically present and
  25. those that have dialed in.
  26. You'll get weaker, less creative ideas and you'll have a
  27. looser sense of team cohesion an alignment than you'd want
  28. if you're looking to build a compelling hybrid planning session
  29. here are the eight things to consider as you do
  30. it. The first thing is just to acknowledge the reality.
  31. When we had to switch to planning in a completely
  32. virtual environment, it felt a little clunky and a little
  33. strange and a little unusual at first, but we got
  34. through it and the same will be with this switch
  35. to hybrid meetings.
  36. So give yourself and your team permission for things to
  37. feel a little strange as you work through those early
  38. stages, but also clearly set your intention, which is to
  39. build as inclusive a process as possible within the constraints
  40. that you have.
  41. Second thing is to ensure that you gather all information
  42. in one place ahead of time, get a central virtual
  43. repository and put all pertinent information in it ahead of
  44. the event.
  45. This should include your agendas, your pre reads, any decks
  46. that are presented and and all tools or documents that
  47. are used to capture outputs.
  48. Nobody should be providing any brand new information on the
  49. day of your session, nor should they be sharing previously
  50. unshared files from their machine.
  51. Make sure everybody's got access to the same documents at
  52. the same time.
  53. And that will ensure that everybody has been given the
  54. time before the meeting to review it and come up
  55. with their own questions rather than eating into valuable discussion
  56. time. Whatever you get together, the third thing is to
  57. resist the urge to have everybody joined virtually.
  58. You know, if you say to somebody, hey come into
  59. the office but then sit in your cubicle or your
  60. room and dial in and engage with us there.
  61. It doesn't exactly motivate people to want to get out
  62. of bed and put on some real world clothes and
  63. track into the office.
  64. So instead set up one central planning room for your
  65. in person participants um and make sure that you've given
  66. them access in that room to the web conferencing tools
  67. that you're going to use, but then also set up
  68. some other stations or rooms with a computer and those
  69. tools that participants can access throughout the session.
  70. That comes particularly important whenever you add this step, which
  71. is to mix in person and virtual participants in your
  72. breakout sessions break are a great way to reduce group
  73. thinking, a planning session and to have some creative ideas
  74. come out of smaller group thinking sessions.
  75. But our natural tendency will be to bump in all
  76. of the people that are in person into groups together
  77. and then to have all of the virtual and dialed
  78. in folks in another set of groups.
  79. But that will just serve to further alienate your virtual
  80. participants. So instead of that, use those other breakout rooms
  81. from the point above and bring some of your in
  82. person folks there and give them the opportunity to interact
  83. with at least one other virtual participant during those breakout
  84. sessions. The next thing to consider is to use virtual
  85. rather than physical collaboration tools.
  86. Look nothing beats a good whiteboard or a flip chart
  87. for a brainstorming or planning session.
  88. I love to use them.
  89. But unfortunately if you opt to use the physical ones
  90. in the room with you then what will happen is
  91. your folks that are dialing in will miss out on
  92. the opportunity to add and edit.
  93. Edit and iterate and otherwise engaged with those tools.
  94. There are a ton of great virtual white boarding tools
  95. so set those up on all of the computers that
  96. you're using and give all participants an equal chance to
  97. use them.
  98. Next thing to ensure you that you do is to
  99. facilitate the conversation because left to their own devices devices,
  100. most hybrid teams will gravitate toward conversations that start in
  101. the room, then start to incorporate a bit of feedback
  102. from those on the call and then move back to
  103. those physically present.
  104. For a decision, you should facilitate your hybrid discussions a
  105. little more rigidly by specifically alternating the perspectives of people
  106. that have dialed in and those that are gathered together.
  107. The ultimate thing to think about is to debrief break
  108. time has as good as your facilitation skills are in
  109. the room, you're in person, participants will almost certainly progress
  110. the conversation that you're having in the space between the
  111. formal working sessions and rather try to stamp out what
  112. can often be meaningful and creative conversations encourage those conversations
  113. to happen, but build in an appropriate debrief time after
  114. each break to share any outside the rumor has and
  115. get everybody else aligned.
  116. And then the final thing to do to make sure
  117. you've got a really awesome hybrid session is just to
  118. check in with your team on what's working regularly.
  119. Don't assume you're going to get everything right immediately.
  120. Instead building some regular review points to discuss what's working
  121. and not wanting, what's not working in the process that
  122. you're using and then adjust as you go.
  123. So there you have it.
  124. It things to consider for your next hybrid planning session.
  125. I hope you have fun doing it.
  126. Let me know how it goes.
  127. Or if you've got any questions and make sure you're
  128. subscribed to receive more episodes of findings from the outfield.