Perspective
I spent almost 4 hours on conference calls today. That’s typical of most Mondays. I’ll spend another 4 hours on conference calls on most Tuesdays as well. Then at least an hour on Wednesdays. Probably 2 hours on Thursdays. And maybe another 2 hours on Fridays. That’s about 13 hours on conference calls on most week…way too much for me to feel comfortable or excited about.
Today, though, I had to laugh as I finished one particularly long call and I got 2 very different messages from participants – one during the call and then one at the conclusion:
Participant 1 – “I couldn’t take it anymore” [just before he hung up]
Participant 2 – “Great collaborative call today” [right after the call was completed]
I think back over the more than 5 years that I’ve spent with my current company, and during the first 2 years, I spent no more than 2 hours a week on conference calls. During the next 2 years, that probably doubled, so no more than about 4 hours a week on conference calls. And now as I’ve entered my 6th year with the company, I’m up to about 13 hours per week on the phone. In fact, I’m on conference calls so much now that my team is threatening to take the door to my office off its hinges in protest to get me back focused on them. And sadly, I can see the 13 hours now climbing even higher as we work through the economic crisis that affects us all and as we work even harder on collaborative efforts to leverage best practices and to reduce costs.
As I put all this in perspective, on most conference calls I feel exactly like participant 1. I’ll stay tuned in and clued in for a short period of time but as the call drags on I lose interest and lose focus. On those rare calls where I feel like participant 2, it’s typically because the call is focused on an urgent and compelling issue with a clear need for decisive action. The issue and the need for action thus drive intense focus from all those participating and in many ways forces alignment of purpose and common commitment to problem resolution.
It would be nirvana to me if every single meeting or conference call was driven with a clear purpose and an urgent need for decisive action. Unfortunately, most organizations and most individuals do not operate this way. Instead, meetings and conference calls are needed for information sharing and reporting rather than decisive action.
As the demands on time get more acute in this increasingly tense business environment and as the mandates for more timely and more abundant information become more extreme, large conference calls or lengthy meetings will become a thing of the past – they just take up too much time. Executives will be forced to depend on emails and business reports for routine information sharing, and then meetings and conference calls will only be used for two things: (1) to quickly collaborate and decisively resolve any issues prior to immediate action; and (2) to strategically plan and leverage the collective passions and expertise of an entire team against multiple possible outcomes.
As you might have guessed, I’m a big fan of getting to this nirvanic future as quickly as possible!