Redemption of Conference Calls

Last week it was emails...so why not talk about a close second in the difficulty rankings for communication - the dreaded conference call. There have been a couple of recent posts out there in the blog world recently on the topic:

• Sasha talked about how to run your team on one end of the call
• Godin talked about adding a chat/presentation tool to the call
  

I'd like to add in one more part to the conversation - the group conference call. These are those calls you have with multiple organizations (1+) that brings another team to the the table.

So let's say you've got your team in place using Sasha's techniques above, and are using the chat/presentation feature Seth suggests - how do you wrangle in the folks from all sides? On calls like this, you've probably experienced people talking on top of each other, cell phone interference, speaker phone traffic, no leadership, people afraid to speak up...and those are just the ones I could think of in a quick 10 seconds.

There are solutions, but its up to us managers of the world to tackle these and bring some order to the chaos. We can run a good one...here's how:

• Be clear about who the leader is on the call. If there are multiple teams, there may be multiple leaders, but the lead org should take the lead (meaning the organization that is the ultimate stake-holder). If there's no lead org, you've got bigger issues to solve first.
  
  
• Be on time (even early) and start on time. If someone else is more than 5 min late to the call, start without them. If its mission critical for them to be on the call, step away from the conf call for a min and try calling them direct on their cell AND emailing them to let them know you're waiting on them. If 10 min passes and still no-show (again - only for the mission criticals), apologize and tell the group you'll have to reschedule.
  
  
• Send all info BEFORE the call (not during...). This includes things like documents you'll be reviewing, login info, etc. If something needs to be reviewed before the call and you expect to hear concise feedback (not blink reactions), make sure you send it hours in advance (if not a full day). Don't expect a smooth call if you're wasting the first 20 minutes trying to get things in front of people.
  
  
• Send a reminder about the call the same day (even if you've done a calendar invite) along with critical details (dial-in info, etc). It sounds weird, but also include timezone info in your reminder. I've been shocked at how many conference calls were missed because someone said "noon" to someone in a different timezone.
  
  
• Whittle down large groups to the critically necessary folks (sorry interns). This is much easier to do for your team (see Sasha's entry). Much harder to tell someone else's org to do. But go ahead and make the suggestion anyways. Everyone will be glad you did in the end.
  
  
• And whatever you do DO NOT use speaker phone. Use conference party lines that allow everyone to get on their own horn and chat. This one step alone will reduce 75% of your problems.

Try it out.