Meeting software: Strategic value beyond time and space

Convenience and cost-savings are powerful incentives for companies to use technology as a way of convening meetings, and they do so knowing that an electronically-mediated session will be different from a face-to-face meeting. Compare a conversation to an e-mail exchange and the differences in the content and quality of the communication are obvious. Ajay Vinze, director of theW. P. Carey School's Center for the Advancement of Business through Information Technology, has studied what happens when meetings move away from the conference table. If managers understand the dynamics they can utilize these technologies strategically, he says.

"Groupware" is the catch-all term describing the technology that enables teams to "meet" without gathering in the ubiquitous conference room. In an effort to solve logistical issues and control the costs associated with bringing people together in the same place, companies have adopted various versions of this technology. But what is the impact of moving group interactions behind a computer screen or the keypad of a hand-held device?

It doesn't take years of research to understand that the nature of an interaction changes depending on whether the communication is face-to-face or remote, like an e-mail. Ajay Vinze, an information systems professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, has gone beyond this basic observation, focusing his research on how meeting/facilitation applications change the way colleagues interact, improving net results.

It's a topic that businesses should care about, given how many hours and dollars the average business spends on meetings. But Vinze, director of the Center for Advancing Business through Information Technology (CABIT), says that companies using technology to facilitate team meetings — or those thinking of implementing such a solution — should look beyond the convenience factor and, instead, consider the sociological and organizational ramifications. "While I am a technologist at heart, in this context I was less interested in the technology itself than what the technology does to the process," says Vinze.

"Group Think" meets "groupware"

Vinze has been studying groupware systems for twenty years, dating to the early 1980s. At the time, IBM and Xerox, which had vested interests in groupware from both a product development and an organizational standpoint, had started looking at how technology could improve meeting results and efficiency. In multiple studies over the past five years, Vinze has looked at the confluence of technology and sociology when organizations use meeting facilitation groupware or group support systems (GSS) applications such as those from GroupSystems and Facilitate.com.

These products are more robust and offer more options than most virtual meeting technology, but Vinze says the conclusions of his research can be applied to other products, from NetMeeting to e-mail and even messaging or chat programs. As a starting point, Vinze considered the sociological phenomenon of group polarization, wherein a group of people makes more extreme decisions than each individual in the group would on his or her own.

In short, it's like a game of chicken: Someone proposes a crazy idea and you go along with it because you don't want to look scared or antagonistic; and because no one else is protesting, the group makes a decision that individual members would not. Writing about the concept, Vinze says, "A number of historic fiascoes have been attributed to group polarization, including decisions made by President Nixon’s inner circle regarding the handling of the Watergate cover-up, and the Challenger space shuttle tragedy."

Sometimes, Vinze says, the "Group Think" phenomenon can be used with positive results. For example, imagine a corporate leader charged with reinvigorating company strategy. As an executive, you might hope that your team would set high, daring goals that would exceed the expectations of what each member of the group would consider reasonable if asked privately. The polarization that characterizes "Group Think" can be explained two ways, says Vinze.

The Persuasive Arguments Theory holds that a group’s decision is a function of the persuasiveness of arguments that individuals are exposed to before formulating their final decision. Second is the Social Comparison Theory, which postulates that individuals align themselves with the behaviors and opinions of a group leader. Strong personalities or people with power can influence how individuals think, sometimes overriding better arguments made by others.

Have you ever nodded in defeated agreement when the boss stubbornly insisted on moving ahead with a bad idea? Logically, Vinze says, people are more easily swayed by face-to-face interactions than they would be if they were not identifiable to each other and shared ideas at a distance. It's hard to hold an anonymous meeting in a conference room — giving everyone a set of Groucho Marx moustache-and-glasses only goes so far — but computing technology can cloak identities.

Sheltering participants behind a computer screen can create an atmosphere where people express themselves more freely. Douglas Griffen, director of strategy and facilitation at Scottsdale, Arizona-based Advanced Strategy Center, has facilitated thousands of meetings using groupware software and says the results are dramatic. And, participants do not need to be separated by geography.

Employees often sit around a U-shaped table in the same room, typing answers and ideas as a facilitator leads the discussion. Griffen notes that technology-assisted meetings offer a few notable advantages. First they allow those who never speak up the chance to share because, in a tech setting, everyone can "talk" at once while a face-to-face conversation requires that each person speak in turn.

Second, the results are more immediate as ideas are already on paper, so to speak, and you don't have to wait for someone to furiously scribble on a pad. "If you talk to most of my clients who do this on a regular basis, they would probably say that they get two to three times as much done in an electronic meeting as they do in a standard meeting, without exception. But what they would also say is that the quality of results is so different," says Griffen.

Anonymous meetings can also neutralize an overly dominant person who stifles debate. Vinze notes that this can be very frustrating for the person who's accustomed to being in control.

"As a face-to-face conversation proceeds, the dominant individual takes over and moves the group towards his position — the group then lines up in that direction. But, in a technology-supported environment the dominant individual is unable to actually assert his dominance … this technology is amazingly annoying to very dominant managers."

However, while anonymity breaks down some social barriers in a way that can be beneficial, it has a darker side too. When individuals cannot be held liable for their actions, norms governing courtesy and decorum can go out the window. During mock sessions, Vinze would sometimes see a mild-mannered middle-manager suddenly drop his filter and begin to berate others' contributions under the cloak of namelessness.

On the other hand, anonymous or not, virtual meetings aren't always appropriate. Certainly it's hard to build personal rapport when interaction is limited to a computer screen. In general, face-to-face meetings are also good for task-oriented items that don't require a lot of bold thought.

A set of levers

Groupware can also be a powerful strategic tool. Organizations often employ technology to facilitate virtual meetings to "conference in" people who could not be present at a physical meeting because of time and space constraints. Very few organizations think to use meeting software when everyone is located within the same building. However, if virtual meetings provide value because they alter the social interaction of a group, the utility of groupware is far greater than a limited solution employed to bring together far-flung team members.

For example, Vinze discovered that depending on the type of task and the composition of the group, companies can mold the outcomes and interactions that groups produce by controlling the way the meeting is conducted. Groupware technology and face-to-face meetings are like a set of levers, he says. Throwing one lever will produce riskier results while using the other will dial the results back towards a safer, less risky outcome. "A savvy manager will recognize [this] and use it to his advantage," says Vinze.

Bottom Line:

• Businesses value the so-called groupware technologies for the cost and convenience benefits; however, the impact of moving a meeting behind a screen or keyboard is actually broader than that.
• Participation in electronic meetings is often better, because members can "speak" simultaneously.
• The one-off nature of these meetings makes it more comfortable for some people to "speak" up. It also neutralizes the strong personalities who tend to dominate face-to-face meetings. When the technology masks identity, though, managers should be aware that some will use the anonymity to engage in discourteous talk.
• Savvy managers understand the sociology of meeting technology and use it strategically to manage outcomes.