by Russell Clayton, Chris Thomas, and Jack Smothers as written on hbr.org.
Fran Melmed is the founder of context, a communication and change management consulting firm. She spends her days performing communication audits for organizations and meeting with clients. Sounds like a recipe for a sedentary workday, right? On the contrary. Fran is part of a growing trend known as walking meetings or “walk and talk.”
A walking meeting is simply that: a meeting that takes place during a walk instead of in an office, boardroom, or coffee shop where meetings are commonly held. Nilofer Merchant wrote in HBR about her own transition to walking meetings after realizing that, like many Americans, she was sitting way too much while working. Merchant traded her coffee-shop meetings for walking meetings and immediately saw the benefits. Likewise, Melmed finds that merely holding some of her meetings while walking has given her the necessary “unplugging” time she needs in order to be an effective writer.
Recent research finds that the act of walking leads to increases in creative thinking. This certainly supports the usefulness of walking meetings. Plenty of anecdotal evidence also suggests that walking meetings lead to more honest exchanges with employees and are more productive than traditional sit-down meetings.
Based on this, we undertook an exploratory study of the benefits associated with walking. We surveyed a population of approximately 150 working adults in the U.S. to gather input about their walking meeting and work habits. In short, we find that those who participate in walking meetings are 5.25% more likely to report being creative at their jobs than those who do not. Additionally, the responses suggest that walking meetings support cognitive engagement, or focus, on the job. Those who participate in walking meetings are 8.5% more likely to report high levels of engagement.
What we found adds support to the notion of walking meetings being beneficial for workers. Is an increase in creativity of 5.25% likely to make or break a business? Most likely not. However, look at these findings through the lens of a cost-benefit analysis. The costs associated with regularly participating in walking meetings are next to nil. Keep in mind that walking meetings are not breaks from work. They are meetings that would have taken place regardless of whether they were held in someone’s office or while walking around your office complex. There may be no cheaper way to achieve moderate increases in creativity and engagement.
Just how do walking meetings produce these positive benefits in the workplace? Ted Eytan, MD, Medical Director of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health and a vocal advocate of walking meetings, has some ideas. First, from a neurochemical perspective, Dr. Eytan emphasizes that our brains are more relaxed during walks due to the release of certain chemicals. This aids executive function, which governs how we focus on tasks and deal with unforeseen events, among other things. Open-ended responses to our survey seemed to back this up by referring to moments of creativity sparked by walking meetings.
Furthermore, Dr. Eytan believes walking meetings lead to better employee engagement by breaking down barriers between supervisor and subordinate or between coworkers. He sees the bonding achieved through walking meetings as a micro version of the bonding that can be experienced when coworkers travel together on business trips. David Haimes, a senior director of product development at Oracle, has experienced this in his meetings with team members: “The fact that we are walking side-by-side means the conversation is more peer-to-peer than when I am in my office and they are across a desk from me, which reinforces the organizational hierarchy.”
To be sure, not all meetings are suitable for walking meetings (and not everyone is physically able to participate in walking meetings). Sometimes it is valuable to have materials or a whiteboard close at hand, and sometimes, as in an intense negotiation, it is important to be face-to-face. The best candidates for walking meetings are ones where colleagues are conferring on decisions or exploring possible solutions. Indeed, in our survey, participants holding managerial and professional positions experienced more of a creativity boost from walking meetings than those in technical or administrative type jobs (though all categories realized some benefits).
If you are inspired to give walking meetings a try, here are a few tips that can help your walking meeting go well:
Consider including an “extracurricular” destination on your route. Dr. Eytan, whose office is located in Washington, D.C., often mentions the nearby Washington Coliseum as a place to stroll by, and notes it is where the Beatles played their first U.S. concert. Naming a point of interest, he says, provides more rationale and incentive for others to go for a walk.
Avoid making the destination a source of unneeded calories. One of the arguments in favor of walking meetings is the health benefit. However, this is easily negated if the walking meeting leads to a 425-calorie white-chocolate mocha that wouldn’t otherwise be consumed.
Do not surprise colleagues or clients with walking meetings. It’s fine to suggest a walk if it seems appropriate in the moment, as long as it’s clear that you’ll be fine with a “maybe next time.” But if you’re planning ahead to spend your time with someone in a walking meeting, have the courtesy to notify them in advance, too. This allows them to arrive dressed for comfort, perhaps having changed shoes. You might also keep water bottles on hand to offer on warm days.
Stick to small groups. Haimes recommends a maximum of three people for a walking meeting.
Have fun. Enjoy the experience of combining work with a bit of exercise and fresh air. Perhaps this is the one piece of advice that doesn’t need to be given. Our data show that those who participate in walking meetings are more satisfied at their jobs than their colleagues who don’t.
Based on our survey and the clear case to be made for walking in general as a key to good health, there would seem to be no good argument against making a habit of walking meetings — or at least giving it a try.
Russell Clayton is an assistant professor of management at Saint Leo University’s Donald R. Tapia School of Business. Follow him on Twitter @ProfessorRWC.
Chris Thomas is an assistant professor of management at Saint Louis University’s John Cook School of Business.
Jack Smothers is an assistant professor of management at the University of Southern Indiana’s Romain College of Business.
Collaboration capabilities in Office 365 have taken the suite from the old office standard to something truly great. While a lot of collaboration still takes place via email, and in newer tools like OneNote, the Word document still reigns supreme for content creation requiring multiple contributors.
The three tips below span both Word Online and Word 2013. If you have the opportunity to create a collaborative document in Word Online, check out the video and post for tip #1.
If Word 2013 is required for your team, you can still take advantage of collaborative elements like tracking changes and communication via comments, as described in tips 2-3, and manage the version control and storage in a way that works for your team.
1. Use Word Online to Seamlessly Co-Author Documents
There are various ways to co-author a document in Word Online–the exact methodology is up to you. For example, two users might co-author a document at the same time, with each assigned different sections. Or, a group leader may take the primary authoring role, with one or two remote group members following along from home with the document open. Check out this video for an example of how Word Online co-authoring is experienced.
2. Track Changes in Word 2013
Tracking changes in Word 2013 is an key part of the collaboration process in Office, especially important as documents are easier than ever to share and access. If you’re responsible for editing and marking up a document, follow the steps in the video above. You can also change the markup view in order to make it easier to edit, or make it look more friendly to your recipient.
3. Add, Reply to, and Complete Comments in Word 2013
Adding, replying to, and completing comments are key elements of collaborating and communicating in Word 2013. Comments and revisions got a makeover with Word 2013, with a much more streamlined look and feel and improved functionality. Comments now include long-requested functions like replying and marking as complete. The video above provides the steps to add and reply to comments in Word 2013, as well as mark them as complete.
See how to add contacts to your Skype for Business Contacts list so they’ll be a click away. Every contact you add is assigned membership in one or more of your contact groups. You define your own contact groups to add contacts to—like My Team, Lunch Bunch, or Data Analysis Project.
#inTheTechKnow is a series of quick tech tips and fixes presented by Jennell Mott, Business Operations.
Don’t see the technology that you would like to learn? Submit a suggestion to inthetechknow@managedsolution.com and we will be sure to cover it in our upcoming webcast series.
Yapi Kredi Micrographic
Yapı Kredi
Turkish bank upgrades communications to respond faster to changing financial markets
The pace of global financial markets continues to accelerate. Yapı Kredi, one of the largest banks in Turkey, recently upgraded to Skype for Business Server 2015 to speed communication and collaboration among employees. Management can address all 19,260 employees at once using the new solution, and teams can have virtual meetings that are enriched with real-time video, instant messaging, and screen-sharing. The bank better safeguards sensitive data across all communications channels and has a lower-cost infrastructure.
React faster
With the global economy and financial markets so interconnected today, what happens in Beijing can affect markets in New York and Sydney, and do so within minutes. The rise of Internet banking has also changed the financial landscape. A bank’s competition is no longer just the bank down the street; it’s banks all over the world.
Yapı Kredi, one of the largest banks in Turkey, lives with these challenges every day. Established in 1944, Yapı Kredi is the fourth largest privately owned bank in Turkey as measured by assets. Part of the KFS Group financial services network, it has more than 11million customers, 1,007 branches, and 19,260 employees across Turkey and Europe.
Yapı Kredi has continually invested in communications and collaboration solutions to help employees stay connected and be more productive. For email messaging, the bank uses Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. To share information and collaborate, it uses Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. For real-time communications, the company, until recently, used Microsoft Lync Server 2010.
There were limits as to the number of people who could be on a Lync call, but Yapı Kredi management wanted to have all-company meetings with 19,260 employees on the audio conference. Additionally, many employees felt that videoconferencing in Lync Server 2010 was not easy to use. Employees who needed to communicate with individuals or partners who were not on Lync had to use third-party conferencing and instant messaging services that were not authorized by the corporate IT department.
“Growth has the potential to add more people, layers, and delays to decisions, but time is very important in the banking business,” says Ali Serhan Çetin, System Engineer for Yapı Kredi. “Interest rates and other financial factors are in constant flux. We must be able to pull people together quickly to distribute and discuss information and make decisions that affect our offerings and profitability.”
Connect thousands of people in seconds
For these reasons, Yapı Kredi was eager to participate in the early adopter program for Skype for Business Server 2015, the successor to Microsoft Lync Server 2013. After just a few weeks’ use with a subset of its employees, the bank is moving forward to roll out the service companywide.
Çetin says that Skype for Business enhances employee communications in all contexts and areas of the business. “We can use Skype for Business to conduct big group meetings,” says Çetin. “Our education department, IT department, product divisions, and other groups often need to train hundreds or thousands of people at once. Or, managers want to update large dispersed teams on how markets are changing. They just open Microsoft Outlook, click on a group name, and launch a Skype Meeting in seconds.”
During such meetings, IT teams, for example, can control employee PC screens remotely to demonstrate a new software feature or fix a problem. They can also copy and paste screenshots and other attachments into the Skype Meeting instant message window.
“Before, we would fly thousands of people to Istanbul each year for trainings and meetings,” Çetin says. “By using Skype for Business, we expect to reduce travel expenses by at least [US]$700,000 annually and improve employee productivity by eliminating the wasted time that travel entails. Plus, meeting and training attendance is far better when we hold sessions with Skype for Business.”
Yapı Kredi is working to load large, media-rich presentations into Microsoft Azure Media Services and distribute them using Skype Meeting.
Make small meetings richer, too
Smaller team meetings are better, too, with Skype for Business. Yapı Kredi has branches throughout Europe and software development teams all over Europe and Asia. With Skype for Business, teams can meet virtually and have five live-stream video screens active at once. “In Lync Server 2010, we could see video only for the active presenter, but being able to see the expressions and reactions of people listening is very valuable,” Çetin says. “This helps our remote teams forge stronger relationships and work together more effectively.”
Teams use the chat feature in the Skype for Business client to communicate ideas during and outside of calls. Multiple people can participate in these conversations and reach decisions, even without holding a Skype for Business call.
“With Skype for Business, employees have multiple ways to quickly communicate, get information, and make decisions, which helps us move rapidly to react to changes in financial markets,” Çetin says. “We can put together loan packages and other financial solutions faster than our competition.”
The company’s human resources (HR) personnel use Skype for Business to interview job candidates. Previously, they used the consumer Skype service for this, but the IT organization had to temporarily open dedicated ports in the company’s firewall every time HR staffers wanted to update Skype. “By using Skype for Business, we can communicate with external Skype users safely,” Çetin says. “We install the Skype for Business client on employees’ computers and eliminate the need to have the consumer Skype client installed.”
Still other Yapı Kredi teams use Skype for Business to communicate with the company’s parent firm, KFS Group, and with other KFS Group affiliates around the world. “With Skype for Business, it’s very easy to stay connected to our parent firm,” Çetin says. “We had this connection with Lync Server 2010, but our family is getting bigger every day, and Skype for Business has a far greater participant capacity and is far easier to use.”
Expand faster with less friction
Çetin likes how tightly connected Skype for Business is with other Microsoft productivity tools that employees use every day: Outlook, other Office programs, and SharePoint 2013. “It’s very easy to send an instant message or set up a quick Skype for Business meeting from Outlook or SharePoint,” Çetin says. “The ability to communicate instantly from our most-used programs increases productivity across 19,260 people. This helps us grow with less communications friction.”
As an example, employees previously shared Microsoft PowerPoint presentations by uploading them to SharePoint sites. Colleagues would then download the presentations to their PCs. However, these downloads used a great deal of network bandwidth, which was expensive and slowed other network traffic. With Skype for Business integrated into Microsoft Office, employees can share a PowerPoint presentation into a Skype Meeting from the PowerPoint Ribbon.
As Yapı Kredi rolls out Skype for Business to all 19,260 employees, training will be minimized because nearly all employees are familiar with the Skype consumer product. “Employees love the Skype look and feel,” Çetin says. “They love the emoji, the little smiley faces, that they can embed in Skype for Business messages. All the icons are the same as in the consumer Skype product, and they can access their existing contacts from the Skype for Business client. Giving users a tool that they already know and love is huge in getting them to use it. Employees have significantly increased their use of instant messaging and videoconferences since we rolled out Skype for Business.”
Help meet regulatory requirements
While employees like Skype for Business because it’s familiar and easy to use, the IT department likes it because it’s an enterprise-grade communications solution with the security and compliance features needed by a financial institution. “When we have to respond to fraud investigations, we can very quickly capture Skype for Business instant messaging conversations and send them to officials,” Çetin says.
Reduce infrastructure work and costs
Yapı Kredi has reduced the work and cost of its communications infrastructure by upgrading to Skype for Business. “Previously, we upgraded Lync Server 2010 infrequently because it was difficult to do so, but it’s very easy to deploy and update Skype for Business,” Çetin says. “Additionally, with Lync Server 2010, we used physical edge servers to communicate with people outside the bank. But with Skype for Business Server, we’re able to use pooled virtual edge servers, which reduces infrastructure costs by $20,000.”
Yapı Kredi uses a Cisco Voice-over-IP (VoIP) solution for internal telephony, with calls going over physical desktop phones. With its Cisco VoIP system in bank offices and the Skype for Business mobile client on mobile phones, Yapı Kredi may be able to eliminate its PSTN telephony system to the outside world. “We have a huge number of offices outside of Turkey, and when employees travel to those offices they can now make Skype for Business calls from their mobile phones rather than making long-distance landline calls. That could be another significant savings,” Çetin says.
For education, Microsoft HoloLens will help make incredible leaps forward in productivity, collaboration, and innovation. See how Microsoft HoloLens transforms the way we teach anatomy and our understanding of the human body as we help to prepare the next generation of doctors.
Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular TED Talk of all time.
While there is no question that what you say matters, studies suggest the words you use make up just 7% of the impact you have.
The remaining 93% is split between your body language and tone.
That's why it's imperative to master the nonverbal cues you send. And since a presenter has only about 60 seconds to hook the audience, it's important to get them right from the start.
We spoke with Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc., and author of "Well Said!," about mastering the art of nonverbal communication. Scroll down to see her tips.
Oftentimes, we have no idea what our faces are communicating. "Because our facial expressions are closely tied to emotion, they are often involuntary and unconscious," Price says.
Letting our emotions get the best of us can negatively affect the impression we give, whether it's a presentation or a one-on-one conversation. To avoid a misunderstanding, hold a slight smile, nod occasionally, and make sure you show interest, she advises.
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.
"Make sure 'business casual' is not 'business careless,'" Price says.
Professional attire, such as suits or jackets, should be worn to important meetings and presentations, especially with senior leaders and customers, she says. It's also important to avoid showy accessories, busy patterns, and tight or revealing garments.
Concentrate on the tone of your voice.
Price cites the common phrase: "It's not what you said; it's how you said it." If someone has ever said this to you, they are referring to your paralanguage, or tone, she says.
"Separate from the actual words used, these nonverbal elements of your voice include voice tone, pacing, pausing, volume, inflection, pitch, and articulation," Price says. Recording a few of your conversations can be a good way to identify the emotions your tone communicates, she says.
Offer your full attention, and avoid multitasking.
In an increasingly digital age, constantly checking your phone or emails may seem discrete and standard, but it should be avoided. Multitasking can often be "perceived as disinterest or disrespect," Price says.
Offering your full attention means using open body language, which includes uncrossed arms and legs, squared shoulders, and portraying clear engagement in the conversation, she says.
Maintain strong eye contact for more than a brief second.
The importance of maintaining eye contact can't be overstated.
Simply glancing at members of the audience is known as the "eye-dart," Price says, and it "conveys insecurity, anxiety, or evasion." The key is to maintain direct eye contact for at least two seconds before moving to the next person, she says.
Managed Solution has developed a proven deployment and migration strategy for our clients moving to Skype for Business. Let our unified communications experts take away the headache of migration and deployment so that your transition to Skype for Business is simple, smooth, and secure.
Skype for Business can be purchased as part of an Office 365 plan that includes Office, Exchange and SharePoint.
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