Lighten the online meeting load

After so many online meetings Urgh! We’re foggy, brain-fried ... like we’re in a continuous conference.

This is the human experience of cognitive overload. But it’s exacerbated and multiplied by the load that’s coming via one channel - online. Yes, its different to face to face, next to each other, same room or space.

Here are 3 COGNITIVE LOAD COPING habits:

☀️Change state and break.

Take a short break between every meeting. Yes every one. It ‘releases’ the mental load you’ve been carrying. Like emptying a truck’s load. Don’t do back-to-back. Bad. Just 30 seconds, get up, move and BREAK your state.

☀️Stop soaking information and start sensemaking.

In every meeting, WRITE some handwritten notes. Not typed. Hand written. This is ‘externalizing’ information. It actively relieves those fried feels.

☀️Write down more than a meeting’s end points, actions or decisions.

Catch a quotable quote, a smile moment, a PHRASE that sounded good. This helps retain some focus.

And it’s ok... you’re not failing.

We’re all carrying around a huge concrete slab of shock, change, worry and uncertainty. That’s already some heavy stuff.

Break your state

Write it down

Catch a phrase

Summaries are super

In our overwhelm of information, meetings, emotions and the impact of change, to summarise ...is to care. We can’t possibly be listening as well as we might usually.

So don’t just finish your meeting, call or session. Make time to recap and summarise and bring it all together. Spend just a minute, or 3 or 5, summarising what happened, where we are at, what is next. 

It’s ok to repeat stuff. 

We don’t do it enough in ’normal times’, so it’s needed even more in these new normal times. As you bring things together, tying up lose ends for people, reminding and recapping, you’ll help them release some of the mental cognitive load they’ve been carrying.

You help do some of the sorting and storing work for them and their brain. It’s just a smart, leader-y thing to do. 

And it’s a caring thing to do, considering the emotional weights that can fill our mind. A synopsis, a digest ... a nutshell. 

Their brain will say ‘thank you’ even if they don’t. It’s a service most certainly worth the time and effort.

Problem solving / possibility seeking

When you’re problem solving are you also possibility seeking?

When you're into possibilities can you also see things from the problem perspective? T

hese are 2 sides of a coin, a page, two different moods, sunshine and rain.

🌑Problems to be solved require us to sit among some mess, discomfort and irritation. Some people don’t like it. They’ll dismiss it as negative thinking, poo-poo it and want us to all ‘move on’ to more positive ways of thinking.

🌕Possibilities require us to conjure, create and imagine a new world of delight and happy. Some people don’t like it. They dismiss it as positive thinking, poo-poo it and want us to dig back into details of why and who and what of problems.

Leaders in our rapid problem-solving world need to deliver value, and so also need to be alert to these ways of thinking.

Wherever you prefer to ‘live’ (and some of us aren’t fussed, existing happily in both), know that not everyone sees things this way. You’ll need to invite, allow and let in different styles of thinking.

It can be uncomfortable or awkward if not framed, positioned or guided well. And it’s why leaders need to be able to to facilitate at work and do it well. 

Could you make it easier

Is this a question you routinely ask about what you’re working on? How can we do this easier, make it easier, get it done with less resistance, obstacles, blocks, twists and knots?

Most things we’re working on really don’t need to be this hard, but we make them so. We can be distracted, lured and drawn in by others to add more and more, trying to do more and more or talking about more and more.

Because something is challenging doesn’t mean it’s worthy or good. So don’t be one of those people who when they speak, seem to make things more detailed or more confusing.

Life’s tricky enough without making stuff harder.

No silly time-wasting, power-playing games needed. Progress is the prize and reward. Help people work out what’s going on, what needs to be done and then get on and do it. 

No, please... not the ‘save as’ strategy

Opening a document from last year, you ’save as’ to update a few things. Save as another name, change the date. Job done.

We’ve all done it. But no, wait.

’Save as’ when working with a document is an option. You don’t have to do it. You can start anew.

In times of crazy change and uncertainty, don’t be a ’save as’ person, leader or a 'save as' organisation. To replicate last year doesn't make (or take) enough of a shift for the change required of us today.

Otherwise the response (and then the solution) won't even be incrementally different ... let alone exponentially different!

A not-for-profit agency planning their strategy day saved last year’s agenda, sent it through and said, ’This is what we want to do.’

’No. No you don’t,’ I said. Not the same agenda, same venue, the same board, same structure and same presentations. Probably the same ideas and insights too!

Longevity, consistency and continuity are important. But automatic replication ... no.

To exist in the new, you will need to do things differently. Allow the project, team and business to gather new insights, so that sensemaking is current, recent ... and informed from the now.