Zoom Lessons from London Lockdown

Hi there and I hope you are still keeping safe and well.

I thought we might be able to ditch the “London Lockdown Tag” However in the Uk we have been sentenced to another 6 months. Like me you have probably been spending a lot of time on one and I imagine many of you are a bit zoomed out.

If you are a bit Zoomed out, I have a top tip for you which will increase Zoom participation on your meetings to 100% with full engagement ( at least for the earlier part of the meeting) and I will explain how in a moment but let me contextualise the learning this week.

Over the last 10 weeks I been have been running a program to develop finance business partnering competencies with a European finance team (all virtually of course) and this afternoon I am having a meeting with their senior leadership team to do a post course review on the key learning outcomes achieved.

This morning I had a knock at the door from the postman as the parcel wouldn’t fit through the letterbox. I assumed it was a yet another delivery to one of my teenage children but was surprised to see it was actually addressed to me and had been hand writtten. Inside was a collection materials to make the Friday afternoon meeting go just a bit more smoothly and include a small bottle gin, a can of tonic together with some snacks and a note to say that this was for the meeting this afternoon. To top all of that it was personally signed by the CFO and I thought what a great idea for stakeholder engagement.

I know for some of you alcohol may not be culturally appropriate in your country and you could send them something more relevant but the fact that you send something shows you care (they’ll remember it) and ensures that they definitely turn up to the meeting and it definitely makes things a bit more fun than another zoom call.

So hopefully you are now going to now change the way in which you conduct Zoom calls on a Friday from now on. If you have any tips you use to liven your online engagement please share as the whole aim of these blogs is to encourage us all to learn from each other and become more effective Finance Business Partners

Also, thanks for all your comments and feedback and especially looking forward to some zoom ones this week

 Stay safe

 Sean