RADIO SHOW/AUDIO PODCAST
Solutions...with Courtney Anderson! (SwCA)
Episode 220 -
Originally aired 11/24/2014 9:00 AM -
MEETING MAYHEM! series -
“Virtual Meetings and Time Zone Treatment!”
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Solutions...with Courtney Anderson! (SwCA) has tens of thousands of downloads in over 40 countries and is growing! This is one of the fastest-growing global business podcasts! I am host Courtney E. Anderson and I have been featured as a business and legal expert for numerous media outlets including BusinessWeek, CNN - HLN, Cosmopolitan, MSNBC, USA Today, FOX News, CNN International, The Wall Street Journal and many more... This show is a dream come true for me as I am able to share my lifetime of experience with dedicated and passionate community members around the world. Thank you! To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: Subscribe via iTunes Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) I DO NEED YOUR HELP: - Please leave your rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes! - Leave your rating and review on Stitcher by clicking here . - PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW BY COMPLETING OUR DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY AT LIBSYN! |
TALK SHOW EPISODE NOTESThis is our series, MEETING MAYHEM™!
Definition of meeting: “a focused interaction of cognitive attention, planned or chance, where people agree to come together for a common purpose, whether at the same time and the same place, or at different times in different places.” (http://www.okstate.edu/ceat/msetm/courses/etm5221/Week%201%20Challenges/Meeting%20Analysis%20Findings%20from%20Research%20and%20Practice.pdf) Definition of mayhem: “actions that hurt people and destroy things” Mayhem. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mayhem Why this series? Meetings are one of the most ubiquitous business and organizational tools in the world. From MIT Sloan, “Employees spend increasing amounts of time in meetings and love to complain about them. But privately they see meetings as a productivity tool -- one that companies can learn to use better.” http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-science-and-fiction-of-meetings/ We face meetings around the world, in person, via phone, via video, via online chat, while standing, while sitting, while walking, in boardrooms, hallways, and everywhere else humans may gather…let’s immediately eradicate the most destructive meetings! The most destructive meetings waste time, talent and resources. They create mayhem and this series is dedicated to stopping them. Let’s make meetings effective and banish the mayhem that poor meeting management (from organizers, presenters and attendees) causes! In this series we work through techniques to tame and mitigate meeting mayhem anywhere, any time for anyone! This episode is, “Virtual Meetings and Time Zone Treatment!" In this show we discuss A Stone* of Solutions™ including: 1. Earth is our home planet. 2. We have colleagues, clients, customers, vendors, partners and knowledge experts located around our planet that we need to have meetings with! 3. Due to the physical size of our planet and the rotation of it and other bodies in our solar system, we experience different conditions at the same moment (daylight, darkness, etc.). 4. How many times zones now? "Given a 24-hour day and 360 degrees of longitude around the Earth, it is obvious that the world's standard time zones have to be 15 degrees wide, on average. It is worth mentioning that some sources claim there are 24 standard time zones, while others say there are 25 time zones. The perspective of the number of time zones depends on the definition of a time zone versus the International Date Line." http://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-history.html 5. What? 24 or 25 different time zones is too many! 6. It could be worse. There used to be over 300 time zones in the US alone! 7. Why bother? Who needs people in different time zones in a meeting? If you don't want clients, customers, vendors, partners or any other opportunities outside 'your' time zone, then that is your choice. It is potentially going to harm your organization (regarding growth, talented labor, etc.). It is a choice. 8. If you decide you do want to explore the best of what the planet has to offer for your organizational meetings (clients, talent, experts, etc.), how do you do so most effectively? 9. DO NOT: - State that "it is only one person in that time zone" (so they have to attend at 3 am or else not come at all). - Exclude diverse time zone attendees entirely from the meeting because "it is too much hassle" (we'll just send them a memo). - Cancel all meetings as "it is too much hassle." 10. What is the hassle? DO: -Look up the time zones and simply pick a time that is available and NOT in the RED ZONE for anyone. Tools exist to help with this. 11. The RED ZONE for meetings is the time traditionally set aside for sleeping (approximately 11 pm - 7 am) or the equivalent. NOTE, shift workers in the same time zone also have the same concerns. NO ONE should be required to attend a meeting at the equivalent of 3 am. NO ONE. 12. Or, schedule multiple meetings to accommodate different groups. Accommodate and never exclude. It is a wonderful privilege to have multiple time zone meeting attendees! 13. Diversity of time zone does not equal diversity of value. 14. From Harvard Business Review, "Share the burden of 24/7 across the team. We will never be able to change our human circadian rhythms, even though some of us may be early birds and others night owls. Time separation on a global team presents one of the biggest physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges. Despite all our “understanding” of being a global team, we used to always privilege Grand Rapids (U.S. Eastern Time) in our meeting schedule and make our Asia team members stay up late. Several months ago we started a rotating meeting schedule. Every month, each team member now has one evening, one mid-day, and one early morning meeting, and misses one meeting that falls in the middle of their night. No team member is expected to attend a team meeting between 10 pm and 7 am." - https://hbr.org/2014/06/managing-a-team-across-5-time-zones/ All humans in all time zones are equal. No matter what time zone you are in, please join in to this episode! *A stone is unit of measure equaling 14 pounds (so we have 14 elements in our one stone of solutions!). |
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