Why Conference Calls and Hangouts Don’t Work

You’ve likely experienced one. You may even love them. Your day filled with blocks of them. You can even do them on Google Plus. The truth is, conference calls and hangouts don’t work. Oh, there might be an exception or two, but the vast majority run anything but smoothly.

Too Many People Involved

Just because we can have a Google hangout with 10 people on it, doesn’t mean we should. The more generally isn’t merrier. If you keep it to 3-4 people, you have a fighting chance, but once you get north of 5 the chances of chaos increase dramatically. Phone conferences calls with 20+ from multiple locations are laughable.

Technology

It’s just not there yet. Feedback, distortion, noisy lines, all lead to an inefficient experience. Video is worse. The bandwidth and speed can’t meet the demand of video. When is the last time you had clear video and audio on a Google Hangout? Never. Hold on, I’m having trouble hearing you, and I can barely see you.

People are too Easily Distracted

You’re in a room with 8 people, all with their laptops in front of them. There are 20 more people on the bridge that are at home, or at another office. All with their laptops in front of them. The only person focused (generally) is the person talking at the time. Kids, dogs, and traffic are often heard on calls. “Can you please mute you’re phone, the noise is disrupting the call.” If only I had a dollar every time I heard that barked out.

They are too Long

I think most people can hang in there for 10 minutes. When you start to get past 10 minutes, people start to drift, especially if they’re not in the same location as the speaker. The problem is calling a meeting with multiple people for 10-15 minutes won’t give you the time needed to go over what needs to be discussed. So it’s a catch 22.

Quick Tips

Keep them short, 30 minutes or less

Keep them small, 5 or less is preferable

The more people you have, the shorter they need to be

Mandate that everyone on call/hangout needs to participate

No smartphones allowed

For participants working from home – Kids, dogs, etc. should not be seen or heard

So an awesome guy that I use to work with, Jason Klock, brought this video to my attention earlier this morning. No conference call was necessary. The video was produced by Trip and Tyler , and they hit it out of the park. The video is 4:00 minutes, and you will be laughing.

comic via GCS Agents

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/MPeKQt