Advice on how to avoid bad electronic meetings

The Goodman Center has released a new report which can help nonprofits avoid bad meetings and boring trainings. Given the current economic climate, everyone’s looking to cut costs and work smarter, which means more organizations are scheduling teleconferences, videoconferences, and webinars instead of in-person meetings. Although this approach saves money and makes sense, something is lost when we meet this way.

The center invited public interest professionals from across the U.S. and Canada to find out what. More than 1,200 people completed an online survey that provides a clearer picture of the potential downsides of “meeting without meeting.” The new report, “Dialing In, Logging On, Nodding Off: The True Costs of Teleconferences, Videoconferences and Webinars,” is available online. Click here for the complete report.

The survey asked the open-ended question, “What makes a teleconference a waste of your time.” Respondents cited: poor time management (20%); noise and technical problems (16%); insufficient interaction (13%); and too much information for the allotted time (13%) as foremost among a long list of problems.

For videoconferences the leading time-wasters were: technical problems (33%); poor time management (12%); lack of agenda or clear objective (11%); and boring or irrelevant topics (11%). And for webinars the most frequently cited problems were: poor leadership or facilitation (24%); noise and technical problems (20%); title not matching content (18%); and too much information for the allotted time (16%).

One person who spoke for many wrote, “In general, meetings can be a waste of time whether done in person or done on a teleconference. I don’t see the medium as the issue. Useless meetings are useless meetings.”