Within a hybrid environment, meetings and collaboration are challenging and require effort to ensure success, but it's effort that pays off and can directly impact the bottom line. By allowing employees and their leaders to work from the location that suits them best, organizations are banking on the concept that a happy workforce is a productive one. That being said, even a meeting scientist like Joe is still learning how to make it work.
In a recent hybrid meeting, Joe was asked about halfway through the session to lead a discussion of key issues affecting the reconstitution of in‐person work with flexibility for remote workers. In other words, it was a discussion of hybrid work. Unfortunately, what was designed to be a strategy session was a glowing example of what not to do in hybrid meetings, because up to the point where Joe jumped in, the meeting leader had not done a good job of involving online and remote participants.
Joe started off with a best practice that we mentioned: he addressed the remote attendees first. He informed them that he would love to have their participation, and that he'd give them a minute to turn on their cameras and would ask for their input throughout the conversation. In fact, Joe was proud to lead by example by drawing attention to the virtual attendees – in essence, reminding everyone of all the people in the meeting room, physically and remotely. Joe then proceeded to discuss the challenges and opportunities that reconstituting in‐person work would bring.
Joe might have continued to feel quite proud of himself had he not taken a look at the screen a couple of minutes later. Only one of the remote attendees had decided to turn on their camera. The rest remained black squares, even after the overt request to join in. He invited the one visible person to provide their input. During that person's responses and thoughts, another remote person's camera came on. Joe encouraged that person to share their ideas next, and then asked the in‐person attendees for comments. None of the other 15 online participants turned on their camera or tried to chime in, even after yet another invitation.
Any guesses what went wrong? Well, first, it was the lack of setting expectations early that the meeting would involve participation from everyone, including online participants. The other meeting leader did not establish that ground rule, so Joe was in essence forced to try to change the rules in the middle of the game. Second, the online participants may not have even heard the invitation to participate, even though Joe asked multiple times. Why? They were likely multitasking with their cameras off. Third, and most importantly, no one in the room besides Joe had ever been trained on how to participate in a hybrid meeting where collaboration is expected. If you've made it to this point in the book, you know that virtual participants have a responsibility to help by trying to engage. But if they don't know they are supposed to do that, then why would they?
Hybrid meeting success isn't an endpoint but rather a journey. It's measured in milestones rather than ultimate goals. Therefore, in this final chapter, we want to give individuals and organizations an opportunity to consider what a good transition to a hybrid meeting environment might look like. In doing so, we'll also introduce our favorite reflection approach that any individual attendee or leader of hybrid meetings can use to help themselves and others decide what to do next.
In this chapter, we will explore:
The first step in identifying whether you are transitioning well to hybrid work and hybrid meetings is to determine just how “hybrid” you want to be. It's not just a matter of figuring out the math problem of who comes in when and uses what desk. It's actually a philosophical question that should be pondered from the start. Take it from Lisette Sutherland, who offers this advice:
If companies want to really make it work, they have to be really intentional about how they equip their employees and design their processes. The future of work is choice for the individual, but also choice for the company of where you want to be on the remote maturity scale. If you want to just do work from home for a couple days a week, that's very different systems and processes than if you were completely distributed, fully remote. I think companies need to determine where they want to be on the spectrum and then really focus on how do we make that work, because what we know is that we aren't all going to be going back to the office again.
Not only is it important to know where an organization wants to land on the hybrid spectrum, it's also imperative to assess where they are starting from. Moving a company to a hybrid model that traditionally links job performance to hours spent at a desk in the office will be more challenging than moving a company with a preexisting policy that at least allowed for some flexible work. Whatever choice is made, any decision about adding hybrid options will likely require a whole new way of looking at how the organization does business.
“I think a values audit is a nonnegotiable part of the remote transition, because your values have to work without the crunch of an office,” says Darren Murph, head of remote at Gitlab. If your values don't work outside of the office space, then they need be changed.
Once the values are gut‐checked for the hybrid model, take a look at your workflows. Do they make sense now that work can be done in a variety of settings? Take this as an opportunity to question the use of procedures and even equipment that no longer fits into the hybrid reality. In the words of Darren Murph: “Use this as a permission slip to ask yourself, ‘Why are we still using the fax machine?’ Whatever the fax machine is in all of your different workflows, it's time to ask.”
With so many facets of hybrid work that need to be addressed, placing someone in charge of overseeing the transition with a watchful eye on inclusivity for remote workers makes sense. The idea of creating a head‐of‐remote role has been gaining steam as companies seek to implement new processes and procedures that integrate with SOPs of old. And the transition won't happen overnight. In fact, it needs to be a multiyear plan, warns Darren: “This is a fundamental rearchitecting of what people assume and think about work and its integration with life. This is a fundamental rearchitecting of integration with digital tools. It's going to require someone's full attention if you want it to go well.”
What does a healthy hybrid meeting and work transition look like for organizations? Well, there are quite a few potential indicators. We list some of them here with a few ideas on how you might measure them.
If you are reading this book, we are assuming that you are at least curious about, if not an enthusiast for, hybrid work. However, we know this is not a universal feeling, and that is perhaps the biggest barrier to a smooth transition to hybrid. Your organization may have committed overall to include flexible work options, but there may be leaders within the organization who are not on board – leaders who may be unable or unwilling to let go of control over their employees’ work location. Some CEOs in mid‐2021 began demanding that employees plan on returning to the office, despite the data from pulse surveys indicating that a majority of employees were not ready to come back full‐time to the brick‐and‐mortar building. In fact, in June 2021, articles began to pop up about the “Great Resignation” (Hsu 2021). People started to protest these demands to return to work in person by walking away from their jobs, declaring “I quit,” and finding work elsewhere that allows for hybrid or even fully remote.
Thus, probably another barrier to a healthy transition is a lack of recognition of the reality of the transition. Sure, some employees won't be prepared to leave their jobs over it, but plenty are prepared to and indeed have left. The organizations who embrace flexible work schedules will likely attract those who have both the desire for control and autonomy as well as the ability to be self‐motivated to get their work done. We call those folks “top performers” or “top talent,” and they can find a job in any market, because they are good – really good – at what they do. There's a real danger in losing this type of employee. After all, no organization wants to be one that fails to attract and keep top performers simply by being unable to embrace the inevitability of hybrid work.
Beyond the somewhat backward mindset we just discussed among some CEOs and other leaders, there are other individual considerations that introduce challenges to the healthy hybrid meetings and collaboration transition. We'll discuss three of those here.
Across any organization, you'll find a variety of personalities that either help or hinder a transition. You may have seen evidence of this in the abrupt switch to virtual. Some employees adapted quickly to the change with a can‐do attitude. Others were paralyzed by this very nontraditional way of working that was foisted on them. Individual demographic differences may make the transition to hybrid harder or easier, just like they made the transition to virtual harder or easier.
We are seeing a degree of self‐selection occur where workers who do not want to learn how to thrive in the hybrid model are finding organizations that are choosing to stay in the traditional Monday‐through‐Friday, in‐office model. We are also seeing people take early retirement instead of joining in on the collective challenge of learning a new way of working. Ultimately, a transition is easier when everyone is working toward a mutual goal, so this attrition occurring may actually be a help rather than a hindrance.
Individuals will differ in their desire to put forth effort in hybrid meetings and in the new collaborative environments. Our biggest learning from the data shared and the experiences reported in this book is that a healthy transition to effective hybrid meetings is a team sport. That is, it requires both leaders and attendees engaging in the right behaviors to set the stage for and enable good meetings and inclusive collaboration. The leader cannot do it alone. Individual attendees are not without a responsibility for the success of their meetings. It takes everyone pulling together to get this cart over the next rise.
For a successful transition to hybrid, there is a profound need for people to adjust to new and different circumstances and situations within the environment. At the individual level, we call it openness to experience. At the group level, we call it flexibility. At the organizational level, we call it agility and adaptation. The future of a hybrid workforce will be bright for those who build a trusting, cohesive, and inclusive collaborative environment that enables openness to new experiences, flexibility, and adaptation.
With the transition to hybrid, sometimes it may come down to tech savviness or at least a willingness to become better at it. For example, when Joe has a problem with his phone, he hands it to his 15‐year‐old daughter, who fixes it immediately for him. Sure, Joe could have figured it out eventually, but it takes his daughter a fraction of the time to make it right. Familiarity with technology and a willingness to learn new tools will enable or constrain the transition. Don't make the mistake of equating this to age. That's a stereotype that has not held up well during the pandemic, when many people's grandmas figured out how to video call with such expert fashion we wondered if the “old dogs can't learn new tricks” phrase is actually passé. However, there may be some people within an organization who simply aren't willing or wired to adapt or adjust as new things develop beyond the initial hybrid shift.
Resilience is needed now, and it will surely be needed in the future. A successful transition to hybrid creates a blueprint for a successful transition to whatever else comes next. There will continue to be disruptions. The question is: Will organizations institutionalize ways to cope and manage the disruptions, or will the disruptions eventually kill the organization? To guide you and your organization, we want to offer a tool you can use to better ensure you fall into the former category – a reflective exercise that can help you identify next steps wherever you are in the transition.
Equipped with the knowledge that a healthy transition is achievable though barriers remain, we call your attention back to all those checklists from earlier in the book. If you completed them at that time, you've begun the process of looking in the mirror and reflecting on your own experiences and opportunities in your hybrid meetings. If you have not yet completed them, take a moment to turn back to those chapters, and proceed to reflect on your meeting experiences.
Armed with your reflections, you are now prepared to consider the adaptive improvement model (AIM). The adaptive improvement model is known by many other names in business, including continuous improvement and total quality management. However, AIM is meant to be applicable across all levels – meaning that individuals, teams, managers, and organizations could essentially use the same approach in a collaborative way. AIM requires the consideration of three key ideas: things to continue doing, things to stop doing, and things to start doing. For ease in describing AIM, we focus on the individual level, but one could just as easily replace “I/you” with “we/us” or even “our organization.”
Given these three sections of AIM, and having hopefully just completed some serious reflection on the provided checklists and your current situation, you are prepared (and perhaps your team with you) to complete the AIM worksheet provided here. Again, the goal is to complete each of the boxes, celebrate the things that you are doing well (continue), identify the things that need to end (stop), and commit to the things that need to begin (start). As you do this, consider the various opportunities and barriers to success. Doing so will ensure that foreseen barriers and opportunities for success are accounted for and integrated into the plan.
AIM WORKSHEET
| CONTINUE |
| STOP |
| START |
In our previous book, Suddenly Virtual, we predicted that hybrid meetings and hybrid work would become the future of our work lives. That might not seem so impressive now given hindsight, but at the time of our writing of that book, it was no easier back then than it is now to see what the future holds. Regardless, we believe the future really gravitates toward a few broad ideas, and we are confident that these will be helpful as you continue to navigate the hybrid meeting and working environment.
We believe that remote work, hybrid work, and face‐to‐face work will continue; however, the breakdown of these work situations will probably never return to 2019 levels, because employees will continue to demand flexibility and organizations will accommodate this, at least in many cases. We also believe that meetings will be more diverse in terms of modality than ever before. We started to see that in June 2021, and, with time, we expect to see the number of hybrid meetings continue to increase.
Pre‐pandemic, there were certain assumptions about meetings – there were too many of them, they were bad, and there was nothing anyone was going to do about them. The COVID‐19 pandemic caused an equilibrium shift, and thus, the demand for tips, tools, tricks, and training on how to make meetings better has never been so high. We expect that in the near term, organizations will look for ways to provide hardware, software, and skillware for their employees to make the most of any kind of meeting. Karin's clients will continue to need coaching about being on camera and getting business done through a webcam. Meetings have always been at the heart of moving business forward, but little has been done to make them better. Organizations spend billions of dollars on meetings every year when you factor in the costs associated with salary/hourly wages, meeting space, technology, and opportunity cost (i.e. they could be doing something other than meeting) (Allen, Rogelberg, and Scott 2006). We believe the meeting disruptions that we've experienced have crystallized the need for quality improvement, and thus, organizations will focus on getting a better return on their investment.
Face‐to‐face meetings aren't going away. Virtual meetings aren't going away. Hybrid meetings linking the two are also here to stay. Organizations that aren't equipped to navigate all of them will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. The pandemic reshaped how people communicate, personally and professionally, and created an expectation that there will always be choices in how to do so. Leading organizations will not fight that shift but embrace it for the opportunities it presents. Communication and collaboration without geographic boundaries mean a wider net can be cast in hiring employees, prospecting for new clients, and cultivating current customers. However, in order to harness all of the meeting channels, organizations will need to constantly assess what is working and what is not. Discard the technology or the process that isn't a good fit and find the right technology that supports and enhances the process that works. The AIM framework is designed for continuous improvement. We suggest putting the emphasis on continuous.
The transition to a hybrid meeting model may not be linear. In fact, it may resemble what we've seen in graphs representing the growth of the Dow Jones Industrial Average – a series of peaks and valleys, but over time, a general rise. As you and your organization move toward this hybrid meeting option that reflects flexible work, anticipate that there will be some backsliding that will likely require at least some tweaking, if not some revamping, of your plans. Look at the best practices and select a few to try to implement in your own sphere of influence. Remember to give them some time to prove themselves. Anything new demands an adjustment period. If you find they are not paying off, try another technique or process included in this book. Our sincere hope is you do not simply give up; rather, we expect you and your organization to thrive as you embrace hybrid meetings and make your organization more inclusive than ever before.