What determines the success or failure of online meetings?

The normalization of remote work, which unexpectedly permeated Japanese society due to the COVID-19 pandemic, presents new challenges to our work styles.

While offering benefits like flexible scheduling and reduced commuting burdens, it has also highlighted numerous societal challenges—such as the difficulty of fostering spontaneity and the impact of diminished communication on team creativity.

Remote work will undoubtedly remain a part of our lives even after the pandemic.
The key factor determining the success or failure of this remote work is, in fact, the "facilitator."

In Part 1, we explain the key points for fostering creative collaboration in online meetings, focusing on the pivotal role of the "facilitator."

Emergence in Remote Environments is Now a Challenge

While business reports and information sharing pose no problem, collaboration that generates ideas from scratch is difficult—

This is a common complaint about online meetings as remote work becomes prolonged.

In a survey of remote workers worldwide conducted this year by Buffer & AngelList※1, "communication/collaboration" was cited as the top problem.

What exactly is the difference between online and offline? First, let's outline the advantages and disadvantages of each.

The sense of unity that fosters consensus—understanding how your ideas resonate with team members, identifying which proposals gain broad support among various ideas, and capturing not just words or text but also expressions and the overall atmosphere.

The biggest challenge is that achieving this in online meetings is difficult.

To overcome this, web conferencing systems incorporate various features. However, due to differences in individual literacy levels, many Japanese companies are not utilizing them effectively.

Furthermore, as remote work becomes more established, opportunities to advance projects not only with members who already have sufficient offline interaction but also with members first encountered in a remote environment will increase.

In such an environment, advanced skills are now required—skills and a mindset that enable high-level collaboration while fully leveraging the capabilities of each team member.

The Increasing Importance of Facilitators in Online Meetings

In remote environments, where smooth progress through unspoken understanding ("Aun no kokyuu") cannot be expected, clear role division among team members and meticulous communication are even more essential than in face-to-face settings.

Maintaining good relationships also demands greater mutual consideration than in offline settings. The facilitator serves as the central hub managing these responsibilities.

While facilitation skills are crucial for smooth meetings in person, the difference in skill level directly impacts the entire team's performance even more in online meetings. The facilitator's role in online meetings consists of the following three key responsibilities:

1. Designing the PDCA Cycle for the Entire Meeting

As the saying goes, "Eight parts preparation," planning not only during the meeting but also the pre-meeting preparation and post-meeting action design is essential for smooth project management. The facilitator's job includes designing the meeting goals and setting the agenda, allocating time, and instructing on pre-meeting tasks.

When setting the agenda, it is crucial to ensure the volume and content can be covered within the meeting time. Prioritizing discussions by importance and urgency helps reduce the risk of running out of time before critical topics are addressed, avoiding a "cut-off" scenario. For longer meetings, consider incorporating short breaks (e.g., 10 minutes every 60 minutes) to maintain member engagement and focus.

To achieve high-quality collaboration within limited time, it is also necessary to have members review the required background materials for the day's discussion beforehand and to collect each team member's opinions and concerns via email or chat. Furthermore, ensuring members adhere to these preparatory steps is essential.

After the meeting concludes, promptly sharing decisions and next steps is crucial. In this process, it's smoother if the facilitator focuses solely on running the meeting while another member handles taking minutes.

2. Maintain a neutral stance to maximize participants' initiative and potential

Online meetings often make it harder to sense each other's presence, leading to a tendency for discussion to be dominated by a few individuals. Additionally, senior members, those in higher positions, or key team members often end up speaking excessively, even without malicious intent. In such situations, the facilitator must sometimes intervene to curb those who speak too much and actively draw out opinions from less vocal members. A key advantage of online meetings is that the design of the space doesn't visually reinforce power dynamics, unlike the "upper seats, lower seats" hierarchy in physical meeting rooms. Strive to build even flatter relationships than before.

To create a flat communication environment, it's effective to include an "icebreaker" session at the start of meetings, rather than diving straight into the agenda. This helps ease tension and foster a sense of unity. While this type of communication may be less familiar to Japanese participants, it doesn't require anything special. Simply exchanging information like "interesting news you've noticed recently" or "recommended resources" among attendees can be highly effective.

3. "Reaction Design" to Facilitate Expression and Consensus Building

To encourage active participation from team members, it's effective to establish "rules" for reacting to and narrowing down ideas.

For example, when narrowing down ideas generated in a brainstorming session, scoring each proposal with cards (e.g., raising a 5-card for a 5 out of 10 rating) or simply asking for a show of hands can reveal that an unexpected idea actually has high overall support.

Additionally, deliberately using chat functions when soliciting questions can be effective. This makes it easier to elicit active participation from individuals, such as junior staff or new members, who may hesitate to ask questions verbally. Skillfully blending verbal dialogue with chat-based opinion gathering to maximize member engagement is where a facilitator's expertise truly shines.

Accelerating Cultural Transformation Through Remote Work

In Japan, remote work rapidly spread as an "alternative to in-person meetings" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, however, remote work was already being promoted as a "highly productive work style that leverages diverse talent." For example, in Europe, the foundation for remote work—such as standardizing job procedures and promoting paperless work—had already taken root to facilitate immigrant integration and work-sharing initiatives.

It has also permeated as a flexible, creative work style for knowledge workers seeking to enhance specialized skills alongside their jobs, or as a way to balance work with childcare or caregiving responsibilities.

To achieve high-quality collaboration in a remote environment with team members possessing diverse backgrounds, lifestyles, and values, it is essential not only to master the tools but also to possess the skills to engage in dialogue with diverse talent while maintaining psychological safety, and to cultivate a mindset that embraces differing perspectives. The author firmly believes that the evolution of collaboration skills adapted to the remote environment directly contributes to cultural transformation within Japanese companies and enhances their competitiveness.

※1: The 2020 State of Remote Work
Production Support: Balloon Consulting