What the pandemic taught us about virtualizing our organization

Our company provides community relationship consulting services for a wide range of businesses in Chile, from Arica in the north to Punta Arenas in the south, in the mining, forestry, energy generation and transmission, retail, wholesale, distribution and other sectors. We help our clients build strong and lasting relationships with their neighbors, through the mutual reduction of risks and creation of shared benefits.

Over the course of 20 years, we have assisted more than 100 companies develop more than 500 projects that respond to the needs of the locale while meeting the goals of the investors and society at large. This has been challenging and rewarding; we have had ups and downs, and some of those downs have been very difficult to surpass; nevertheless, it's safe to say that every challenge has brought its teaching moments, and the recent pandemic is no exception.

Moving to virtual

Chile's response to the onset of the pandemic was rapid and forceful. Chileans had their first round of vaccination earlier than the USA and Canada and lockdown was at some moments much more serious than in North America. During these lockdown periods, our firm had to learn how to continue providing our consulting services in a virtual manner, since travel - even local travel - for any but the most dire emergency was completely prohibited. Online video meetings became the new norm, as elsewhere. Offices sat empty for months. Many of our staff enjoyed the ability to work from home, but for some, particularly with young children, the work day was challenging.

During this "forced virtual operation" period, we saw our relationships with our clients changing as well. Meetings had a more relaxed atmosphere; we found ourselves "in" our clients' homes, and they in ours. Attendees seemed (mostly) less stressed, since there were no rushed trips from one office to another, and the time gained by not having to race from one event to the next created more time to prepare and more opportunities to converse.

Adjusting to online

One strange barrier appeared that needed some attention: most meeting software suggests an hour by default, and so most meetings at first seemed to be booked for an hour, even if only ten minutes was required. Gradually, as we became familiar with this new reality, we began to book shorter and more precise meetings, and found ourselves resolving urgent issues as soon as they were identified.

Given that our people, and our projects, are located all over the country, we also found ourselves better able to spend meaningful time with all staff, and our staff better able to spend meaningful time with both clients and their stakeholders. At the same time, since travel was highly restricted, our travel expenditures dropped to zero - both the time needed for travel and the direct transportation costs.

Were we missing things that physical presence would have uncovered? Of course; but so were our clients, and so were their stakeholders. In a way, we had the perfect opportunity to prototype a new working culture based on a set of tools that we had used casually and poorly (at best) in the past. No more three hour meetings with 20 people jammed into an eight person boardroom and three more "attending" by cell phone. Of course we missed the lovely Chilean pre-meeting ceremony of coffee and mineral water and cookies. But as a prelude to a three hour meeting? Where key personnel were attending voice-only on a terrible phone connection in a noisy and overcrowded space? Not so much.

Lessons learned

Fast-forward to the current moment, and many of the lessons we learned during those prototyping sessions have turned out to be useful as we come back to a mixed-mode and highly distributed business culture. In no particular order, here are some lessons we have learned:

1. In-person meetings are time-consuming to organize, expensive in terms of travel and accommodation, and because of that, "bulky" with attendees that only need to be there for part of the meeting because it was so difficult to otherwise get everyone together.

2. In contrast, virtual meetings are the very essence of agile. Learn to make it short, focused, inviting only the necessary people, having a tight agenda; in principle, virtual meetings provide the opportunity to adopt some of that Agile methodology to build a new meeting culture. Virtual meetings are much better focused on the objective of the meeting, and with a bit of luck can wrap up in agreements on how to proceed, rather than just fizzle out into a bunch of other points that someone will study for a followup meeting.

3. Think about how staff respond to the more-virtual culture. Consider how to measure their reactions to it, what they see as weaknesses and strengths; how their physical and mental health changes; how working relationships in the company change. We have had to devise new and innovative ways to continue building relationships among ourselves as we maintain company culture though we are meeting in person much less. This includes creating a mechanism to help substitute for some of those "sidebars" that occur when everyone gets together in person and are often where real value is traditionally materialized.

4. Create a regular all-hands virtual interactive meeting schedule. For large organizations this is challenging to impossible, but maybe achievable and desirable at the level of sub-organizational units. In order to be successful, these virtual meetings require careful attention to what is important or significant for the team members, so as to avoid workshopping and empty dynamics that don't connect people together.

5. Use the all-hands virtual interactive meetings to build a virtual-forward culture. We found these guidelines work well:

• Same time every week, during work hours.
• All staff required to attend unless on leave, on vacation or dealing with an unavoidable situation with clients.
• Create a committee to plan the meetings.
• Develop an etiquette and lead by example. For example, sometimes attendees have a poor-quality connection, so they apologize for being audio-only; or hands are raised, rather than jumping onto a conversation, side conversations or talking over others; always acknowledge what others have contributed; respect the diversity of opinions; strive to include all attendees in the conversation; monitor what works in each meeting in order to guide decisions for structure and content of subsequent meetings.
• Introduce topics that are by definition of interest to the group but not operational. For example, tell us about where you live or where you are working, invite external presentations on topics such as promoting mental health, upcoming regulatory changes that relate to company activities, overviews of interesting and relevant methodologies and technologies, client "visits," and so on.
• Make the sessions interactive and compliment contributors.
• Use various facilitation tricks judiciously, such as brainstorming, so as to avoid turning the meetings into a game show.
• Record (either directly in the technology or by taking minutes) conversations for subsequent review.
• Observe the "reality" of the group. There are many ideas and tools proposed for establishing group dynamics on the web, in articles and human resource journals, but to a large degree, the contribution characteristics of the members of the group drive what is possible and what works in order to create effective relationships and strengthen organizational culture.

6. Think of ways to make the built culture spill over into business / operational meetings, whether virtual or in-person.

7. Create a much-less-regular schedule of all-hands (or small group) in person meetings. In these meetings, don't allow the geographic distribution of people to limit their attendance. Also, schedule well in advance so all can attend. Differentiate strongly between the purpose of the in person and virtual meetings. Include unstructured social time, and provide one or at most two structured interactive sessions per day. Finally, document outcomes and use them to help drive upcoming virtual sessions.

Working through challenges

Of course, challenges arise out of this virtual culture, and many of those are something new in our society. Of course, we need to respond to these challenges effectively and rapidly, without a comfortable space for careful planning. Nevertheless, we should consider several characteristics and values that will make us more effective and efficient in our management of this virtual culture, whether directly for work purposes or for building that culture:

• Always be creative; not all solutions have been found, especially in relation to virtual work.
• Always maintain focus on the objectives; the "how" can be figured out afterward.
• With respect to the difficulties that will arise, always listen carefully first; then organize and look for solutions together.
• Always work on building the adaptive capacity of personnel, both on the basis of their work and the way they carry it out.
• Always consider different "key internal people" who can be relied on to help resolve difficult problems, share perspectives and drive toward "collective intelligence"; they will be your allies in solving complicated problems.

We understand that not everyone's business can be made virtual-forward; we also understand that many organizations have come up with any number of (often specious) arguments about why they must return to the office. In our case, our experience tells us that we are a much better organization, both from the perspective of staff and management, as we have become virtual-forward.