5 Productive Online Meetings You Can Have Now

We've been relatively quiet recently as COVID-19 expanded globally, other than developing and releasing checklists for you to address business continuity planning. (And trust me, based on conversations with executives even late last week, there are many of you who still need the checklist eBook right away!)

One reason for the quiet?

I came back from speaking at a client conference with symptoms that resembled COVID-19. Beyond self-isolating, sleeping twelve hours daily for several days, and trying to keep up with client commitments, we've been working to redeploy an alternative for productive online meetings that we've been using for years within major strategy planning engagements.

Years ago, we began translating the in-person Brainzooming process for online collaboration. Online meetings allow us to accelerate strategy development, increase flexibility, and reduce client’s travels costs. We've used online meetings within our collaboration platform to:

• Successfully engage internal experts and board members for strategic input
• Develop entirely new brands
• Imagine hundreds of new product names
• Allow broad, remote teams to contribute to and document strategic plans

Basically, anything Brainzooming can accomplish for clients during in person workshops can also happen with remote participants online. That’s where Blast! fits as a new option for you!

This offering, for those of you who are now leading remote teams (or are a part of a new remote team), provides a structure for one of five typical objectives during an online team meeting:

• Impact: An efficient way for remote team members to share project status highlights
• Pulse: Gain a timely sense of your team's perspectives on important topics
• Painstorming: A venue for the team to confidentially and honestly identify issues
• Innovate: Tap into team members' diverse thinking to brainstorm ideas and solutions
• Gameplan: Identifying concrete steps to take action and implement
• Sustain: Determine what wins to build upon so that you continue to innovate

The big benefits of a Blast! come from its focus and timed agenda, the ability for all participants to simultaneously type comments and ideas that everyone can see, and proven Brainzooming exercises that foster strategic, innovative thinking. If you want to energize your remote team, Blast! is the answer.

The surprising thing about these productive online meetings?

The way Brainzooming designs and facilitates a Blast!, they are unlike typical online meetings and conference calls. We can move through strategy and innovation exercises more quickly online than in-person and produce more input in a shorter amount of time. In a recent online meeting, every minute participants were sharing ideas, sixty percent of them offered a comment. There's almost no way to match that productivity in an in-person workshop!

How does a Blast! work to create productive online meetings?

Once you visit the Blast! page, we’ll reach out for you to select the type of meeting(s) you want for your team. We’ll confirm:

• What type of topic overview you want to deliver in the meeting (audio only or also with a pdf overview)
• Audio and security preferences
• Your preferences for participant interaction, including whether you’d like responses to be identified or anonymous
• How you’d like the meeting report delivered to you

We’ll create an invitation that you can share with your team. Once they login at the scheduled time, you provide the overview, then we facilitate the group through your chosen exercise all within thirty minutes. Depending on your preferences, you can discuss the team’s input then or save the review for a future meeting.

How do participants feel about the Blast! experience?

Imagine your team being excited about a meeting – it’s a reality with Blast!. Here are comments from a recent client Blast! online meeting:

• “This was absolutely great for fielding information. I would use this ALL THE TIME myself.”
• “I'd like to find more ways to use this tool within our team.”
• “This is effective because there is a clear objective. Our calls typically regurgitate the preceding call and have mostly been redundant and yielded no benefit to me.”
• “I'm a fan of this format. I (was a) little hesitant at first, but after going through it, love it.”
• “I was surprised by the level of involvement vs. how quiet our normal weekly calls are. This format and being anonymous gave everyone a place to express themselves.”
• “I really like this system. I also like when you can see others’ responses. It helps generate more ideas.”
• “Sparks ideas and thoughts from other feedback.”
• “Feedback is honest and that is what we need to move forward.”

Try a Blast!

Try your first Blast!, and you’ll quickly discover how productive online meetings can energize you and your team to stay focused, motivated, and productive! - Mike Brown