CO-ELEVATE
VIDEO CONFERENCING
Effective off-sites can benefit
from the advantages of virtual
communication—if you are
willing to adapt.
When I was the chief marketing
officer at Deloitte & Touche, we would
have our annual leadership off-site in
Las Vegas or Orlando. I remember people
practicing their presentations far into the
night, and the next day we’d sit for hours
in uncomfortable chairs in a huge room
listening to our leadership talk about the
future of the business. Looking back at
those meetings, I have to wonder: Were
they truly effective?
Today, I am convinced that
videoconferencing and other virtual
technologies give us a much better way to
conduct strategic off-sites. I realize that
numerous companies have held “virtual
off-sites,” but typically for the wrong
reason (saving money) and with the
wrong goal (to replicate physical off-sites).
One idea was to encourage spontaneous
conversations by simulating a “virtual
cocktail hour.”
Wrong! Replicating traditional, physical
off-sites results in a “poor man’s” version
of the real thing, like online training
courses that consist of nothing more
than a video recording of an instructor
followed by a test. Instead, companies
need to be much smarter about how
they conduct virtual off-sites. They
need to leverage virtual capabilities that
overcome the shortcomings of a physical
setting and vastly improve the process.
The result: A new type of off-site that is
actually superior to traditional off-sites.
Why? Because it elicits honest feedback,
encourages candid pushback and,
eventually, obtains true buy-in from the
entire organization.
At Ferrazzi Greenlight, we interviewed
dozens of people about this, and we’ve
come up with a formula that works. Here’s
what we found.
Let’s start by remembering why
companies have strategic off-sites in the
first place. The overall goal is to figure out
the best strategy for a business, a process
that can be broken into five major steps,
each of which can be performed better in
a virtual environment:
1. COMMUNICATE
STRATEGY, DIRECTION,
AND ISSUES OF
IMPORTANCE;
2. ENGAGE
THE BROADER
ORGANIZATION FOR
FEEDBACK;
3. FINALIZE
STRATEGY AND BUILD
CONSENSUS;
4. CASCADE STRATEGY
INTO THE FABRIC OF
THE COMPANY; AND
5. MOTIVATE
EMPLOYEES AND BUILD
CAMARADERIE.
COMMUNICATE:
Different people absorb information in
different ways. Some are very quantitative
and prefer spreadsheets of raw data.
Others are more visually oriented. In
a virtual environment managers can
communicate in multiple forms, utilizing
everything from plain text to video and
multimedia.
Another advantage is greater inclusion:
Managers can invite many more
individuals to participate in the off-site
because of the low cost of adding people.
And unlike a traditional off-site, where
a handful of executives must translate
and relay important information to the
field, everyone will hear the exact same
story with the same urgency. We avoid the
classic telephone game problem in which
a message is repeatedly passed along and
can easily lose power or accuracy until it
bears little resemblance to the original.
ENGAGE:
In many traditional off-sites, executives
ask for honest feedback but in a oneto-many
format that serves mostly
to push through their agendas and
get everyone else to march in step.
Participants suppress any pushback and
offer subdued comments that result in a
polite consensus, regardless of whether it
actually exists. But what would be much
more beneficial to the company is true,
frank feedback, especially from those
employees at the front lines. One of the
beauties of a virtual off-site is that it can
be conducted in separate sessions spaced
out over weeks. This allows each business
unit enough time to evaluate a proposal
and respond with the unvarnished truth
about any potential obstacles. Everyone
can participate, and the top leadership
will get a better feel for the real challenges
from all angles and levels. Also, as good
ideas bubble up, management will learn
who the truly innovative and insightful
employees are, even if they might be
buried deep in the organization.
FINALIZE:
After receiving honest and thoughtful
feedback, executives have the rich
communication channels they used before
to respond with, “We heard you and here’s
the input that we’re incorporating into
our strategy; here’s what needs further
investigation; and here’s what we’re
rejecting and these are the reasons why.”
Such transparency and candor as the
strategy is being modified and finalized
can go a long way in building true
consensus for the final strategic initiative
so that everyone will eventually be rowing
in synch, stroke by stroke.
CASCADE:
Now comes the work of turning strategy
into action, often left for after the off-site
without sufficient attention given to it.
But what if it’s instead performed before
the virtual off-site’s conclusion? The goal
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