Less Video Calls

Ask yourself:

Could this meeting be a zoom?
Could this zoom be a phone call?
Could this phone call be an email?
Could this email be a text?
Could this text be unsent?

Could we in silence retreat to the forest?
Could we, by game trails & forgotten paths, vanish into the trees?

— Louis Evans (@louisevanswrite) March 16, 2021

I was reminded of this twitter poem (hardly believably, three years back now) in the middle of this time-thief of a recent so-called Hall of Fame thread (not for the faint-hearted).

I find myself saying fairly often to those with whom I work to make their video sales calls more distinctive (and their plenty other aims) that one outcome of our time together also ought be that overall, you actually can make less video calls.

Certainly less prevalent today, as we near the four-year anniversary of you-know-what, is the once ubiquitous request to turn every phone call into a video one.

This is not best practice.

There's also numerous viral examples of zoom meetings that have exasperated attendees, when they realise - usually pretty early in - that the hour blocked off could've simply been a five-minute phone call.

The overwhelming slip behind such misfires, is the lack of stated, acknowledged and desired purpose behind the video call.

Which produces aimless meetings that crucially, did not match the ideal medium to the best outcome.

Indeed, if you use Google Meets you'll likely have seen at some stage their now infamous attempt to ensure the meeting convener provides a "reason" for the meeting. In addition to the meeting title you've already provided. Even trying to guilt you into it by telling you how many combined minutes you're potentially taking out of the organisation, tallying the number of invitees by duration of slot.

Then there's the frustrating circularity of rock-paper-scissors. Such as when that video call could've been covered in an email [recent eg], that email needs an instant back and forth dialogue of a phone call, that phone call really should've have been visual for the theme to flower.

Then there's arty flourishes from the above thread's replies. Like this sample six;

trees booked up until 2pm

To vanish into the trees turn to page 34 - To have a Zoom meeting turn to page 61

Ask yourself…if I keep trying to avoid all these meetings, could my job disappear?

Could this tweet be a silent thought?

Narrator: But, while everyone was in a meeting, a zoom, a phone call or desperately scrolling through their email, the trees had silently vanished.

could this podcast/webinar be on Clubhouse?

Oh for the trees, hey.

That last one is interesting in that the tech is evolving all the time. As I blog frequently, anyone that uses Microsoft Teams for video calls is not serious about making successful video calls. Plenty better options exist. Likewise the key to any worthwhile, productive, consequential discourse is matching the method to the message.

I believe this invariably leads to way better outcomes, and paradoxically, less video calls.

Can you see the forest for the trees on this one?