Improve team conference calls with a very simple trick
Stumble It!Create a single frame video conference using a peopleclock to help participants concentrate and engage better.
I discovered this very simple technique in an article in the Harvard Business Review, Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger
One of the problems of audio-only conferences is keeping concentration when you lack any visual stimuli.
Its also aggravated if you have never met some of the people on the call or know what they look like - you can't "put a face to the voice".
The technique is simply to create a single A4 page with a small photo of everyone in the call each located at a different time on the clock.
In other words - a Peopleclock.
Everybody keeps this peopleclock visible (either on their screen or via a hard copy print-out) for the duration of the call.
So when a participant speaks either for the first time or when they have not contributed for a bit they just say "Its Ken here at 3 o’clock" or "This is Joe at 9 o'clock".
You would be amazed at how just glancing at the speaker’s picture as they talk can bring more life into the call and makes it easier to avoid your mind wandering.
It is like a single frame video conference - very simple, very cheap, very low-tech, no software downloads or web-cams required - but actually very effective.
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Organisational teams: thin slice for responsiveness
Humans and animals do not need complete information to act; they can operate on various clues provided there is a sufficient context. Organizational teams can also use this thin slicing technique in conjunction with short messaging to enhance their performance. Malcolm Gladwell’s introspective book Blink digs deep into the abyss of human cognition to illustrate the human ability to think at a subconscious level. The idea of thin slicing is used where one is introduced to only a few snippets of information which lead to a series of conclusions based on moments of rapid cognition – an ability claimed to be intrinsically dormant in most humans. By bioteams guest author Max Bhanabhai.
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