Engagement in face-to-face meetings

A helpful post from Susan Nurre on the IAF forum points to an article on meetingsnet.com that in turn points to a Cornell University School of Hotel Administration white paper (free registration required) on "The Future of Meetings: The Case for Face-to-Face," by Christine Duffy and Mary Beth McEuen of Maritz*. I'd never thought about looking at this area of literature (hospitality studies), but it might actually be fruitful for my research.

The article focuses mostly on "large-group meetings and events", which are not my area of focus. But the concept of "engagement" is threaded through the article in ways that are applicable to the (primarily small group) kinds of phenomena I'm looking at, tying them to specific organizational benefits:

Amidst the phenomenon of ever-increasing information overload and ever-decreasing speed cycles, attention is scarce and fleeting. In this environment, the lack of a focused and attentive human mind is one of the greatest limiting factors in effectively executing business strategy.

and (citing John Medina):

... when people are engaged with information in multi-sensory environments, they are more likely to remember the information (compared to single-sense experiences) and creatively come up with solutions.

Some interesting (and true in my personal experience) observations on the disadvantages of virtual meetings for particular purposes:

Participants stated that the significant temptation to multi-task during virtual meetings was distracting and had an impact on the meeting objectives being achieved. While this may not be a significant problem when the goal is to share information to which people can refer later, it is a real problem when the goal is to initiate something new, whether that is new learning or a new set of priorities that require a shift in attitude and action.

Since my day job is working primarily on the design of new user interfaces, I have seen over and over that getting designs off on the right foot really does require face-to-face interaction. It somehow does not gel right without that.



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* Way back in the beginning of my career, when I lived in St. Louis, I almost did a video and writing project with Maritz. It would've been my first freelance project and was quite exciting. It didn't pan out (for reasons I don't recall).