What do you notice on a professional level that has changed to the overall detriment of operations since COVID? One area that I believe is still in the midst of recalibrating itself between the god of efficiency and the god of utility is collaborative meetings. I say this coming from the finance side of the house, and I believe experiences vary widely across department and industry types. Nevertheless, what I describe below is true across all types of industries and job classes.
In an effort to learn, communicate, and generate ideas, periodic collaborative meetings occur. Such meetings occur in companies where geographic territories define operations, they happen in industries where trade associations exist, they exist within professional user groups of industry software, and they exist within regional government agencies.
The necessity of COVID facilitated an onrush of transition of collaborative meetings from being in-person to being virtual. Suddenly, the planning and travel needed to attend these meetings was gone. From your computer or phone, you became connected to your collaborative network. The convenience was great, yet the human connection was not.
As we fast forward past COVID and to the present, many of these meetings have either transitioned back to what existed prior to COVID or to a less frequent in-person schedule that might be supplemented by a virtual platform. In such cases, I would content that by the actions taken, it has been understood that the personal connection whether it be networking or simply the ability to communicate in a traditional setting outweighs the convenience and ‘efficiency’ of the virtual method.
Yet, there are groups that have not found their way back and continue to forsake personal connection for the digital convenience of the virtual meeting. Such action is deteriorating the transmission of knowledge, understanding and connection to the past for emerging leaders in the industry. The understanding and mentorship needed for any industry to grow and florish, necessitates each generation of workers to be able to build off of what the prior generation accomplished.
Prior to COVID, I led a statewide collaborative group. As the leader of that group, my own technology loving self, removed the option to video in by members that were not able to attend in-person. Why? Because for the whole, the virtual option robbed both the in-person attendees and virtual attendees of the interaction they would have when they showed up physically to the meeting. I know first hand because for a number of years prior I relied on the virtual method to avoid the time to drive to the meeting destination. It robbed me of building connections beyond the questions I would sometime pose through a microphone or tidbits of information I’d glean from hearing someone report out.
In our world where the electronic and virtual experiences dominate our professional and personal lives, we need to ensure that groups that exist to develop leadership and ideas are not relegated to the impersonal areas of the virtual world. Getting out from your office and connecting with fellow counterparts within your industry is critical for your understanding and leadership development. it’s also how you can ‘pay it forward’ to those coming up behind you in their career.
Don’t forsake personal growth for personal convenience. We all need a certain level of personal connection with one another to build and grow.