Remote Board Meetings: Are Your Members Playing BINGO?

Best Practices, CEO Corner : Article

advisory-board-300x199 If you manage an association or standard-setting organization, there’s a good chance your governing board is dispersed across the country—or even across the globe. After all, most association board members are simultaneously leading separate businesses, and answering to the stakeholders in their respective offices/cities. Even the most dedicated among them would have a hard time attending all your board meetings, if participation always meant getting on a plane, losing a day’s work to travel, etc. 

So remote board meetings are a great solution, right? They’re convenient; they’re cost-effective; they’re eco-friendly…  Why hasn’t every association and consortium shifted exclusively to teleconference board meetings? 

Maybe it’s because of facts like these, cited in a 2014 Harvard Business Review blog

  • 65% of conference call participants admit to doing other work while “listening” in
  • 63% are sending unrelated email
  • 55% are eating or making food
  • 47% are going to the restroom
  • 43% are checking social media
  • 9% are exercising 

But the worst part is, if you read the Atlantic article in which these statistics are also mentioned— particularly the reader comments—almost no one is surprised by what’s happening. It seems that professionals have come to expect some level of divided attention during a dial-in meeting (the less official cousin of the face-to-face meeting). One commenter actually recommends Conference Call Bingo, which is a real thing. 

The good news, of course, is that not all remote board meetings are created equal. You have the power to create more organized and engaging events, while proving you have no intention on wasting members’ valuable time. And that may be the first key to winning greater buy-in. 

Our latest white paper offers 10 strategies for making remote board meetings more effective—including how (and how not) to use technology to keep all participants engaged. You’ll also get ideas on developing time frames, ground rules, and quick action summaries. 

Download this free resource today, and share it with your association leaders.

New Call-to-action

Back to Knowledge Hub

What's on our minds?

Fetch Tweets: You currently have access to a subset of Twitter API v2 endpoints and limited v1.1 endpoints (e.g. media post, oauth) only. If you need access to this endpoint, you may need a different access level. You can learn more here: https://developer.twitter.com/en/portal/product Code: 453