Clark Valberg is staring into his computer’s webcam. As the CEO of InVision, a 750-person software company where every employee works remotely, video conferences are the norm for him. But there’s one peculiarity about the meeting Valberg is currently in with his chief operating officer. They’re sitting in the same room.
To hear Valberg tell it, the future of all business meetings is video.
“Getting together in-person doesn’t scale,” he says. “We get together to fortify our personal relationships, build rapport, and create intimacy… but real work happens online.”
Valberg’s opinion may seem extreme. There’s certainly a collective brain that can only be accessed when employees are rubbing shoulders around a shared whiteboard, right?
Or perhaps we’ve just been conditioned to think that checking-in IRL is the best way to get to the bottom of an issue. With the majority of work in many offices already happening online, maybe meetings should be no different.
Do it for the remote workers
A 2017 report from Gallup found that 43% of employed Americans already spend at least some time working remotely. But most offices are still set up in a way that treats remote workers like second-class citizens. Cameras for video meetings are mounted above conference room TVs, giving the remote worker the perspective of a literal fly on the wall. Side conversations either distract from the task at hand or obfuscate important information. The technology inherits—and even amplifies—some of the biases we see with in-person meetings, like rewarding the person who talks the loudest.
In short, video calls can still be very painful. But when it’s the default, even for people who are connecting from the office, it at least levels the playing field for everyone.
Do it for the collaborative effects
The tools knowledge workers use to get work done are already online. Tasks are managed in Trello and Asana. Conversations take place in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Documents are shared with Box and Dropbox. Slide decks are stitched together on Google Slides or Keynote.
The beauty of these tools isn’t just that they’re digital. It’s that they create collaborative venues, where anyone with access can track a project’s progress, contribute to the discussion, or leave some feedback.