Here’s a weird thing to think about: we never used to think about going to the office at all.
Why would we? “The office” was where work happened and when it was time to go to work, we slammed our coffee and headed out the door. We took for granted that we would have a bunch of meetings with people we knew, that would sit right across the table from us. We had a sense, intrinsically, of how to get things done in that environment: how to read the room, how to generate ideas from the people around the table, how to gauge whether or not our boss was paying attention, and on and on. We established—without even realizing it— muscle memory for in-person collaboration.
Then we took a break for a while. And our muscles…have atrophied.
But more and more of us are finding ourselves back “in the room” with our colleagues. For offsites, for workshops, for special events: we’re seeing more and more of our clients trying to find ways to bring their teams together, in person. They’re noticing the challenges of reacclimating to getting back together, of course, but they’re also noticing the opportunities.
If we have to re-learn how to develop our in-person collaboration skills, what bad habits can we avoid? How can we make live events better than they ever were?
Why get together in person in the first place?
One of the biggest things we’ve noticed lately as our clients have been turning to us for strategizing big, in-person events is a newfound appreciation for the event in the first place. Getting a team together in a room is more precious than it used to be. It happens less often and feels more…exciting as a result.
In-person events never stopped being important or useful, of course. They’ve just been a little harder to pull off for the past few years. Whether you’re bringing your team together to get something done, or to get folks energized around a new idea or initiative; whether your celebrating something you’ve accomplished or realigning your team around your organization’s culture: all of these experiences and objectives feel more vital and productive when you can do them in person. It’s not that you can’t get these things done virtually, but they’re a little harder and they certainly don’t feel the same.
Why is that, exactly? A lot of the “feeling” of live events comes down to things that are hard to quantify. But we’ve all experienced them. There’s a sort of serendipity to being in-person that you can’t plan for: the unstructured time, the incidental conversations, the focus that being together requires and the energy created by that focus. You can try and capture these feelings and experiences virtually, and some organizations are really good at doing so. But they tend take a lot more planning and expense for results that are by no means guaranteed.
Challenges and Opportunities
We’re going to spend the next few months in this newsletter exploring the value and evolution of live, in-person collaboration. We believe that as more organizations are “returning” to these kinds of events, there’s a huge opportunity to improve the way we think about and organize them: to make them more cost effective, more productive, and less wasteful than ever before.
We’d love to hear how your team has been thinking about getting together in person lately. Have you noticed any pain points? Do these events feel differently than they used to? Reach out to us today and let’s find some time to talk about it.