In-Person is a 10x
You can't co-create something special without being in the same room
Welcome to the latest entry in The Workaround. You’re in good company with thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and innovators!
I’m Bob, your host. My mission here is to share personal, behind-the-scenes stories of the ups and downs of my career leading tech startups and corporate innovation.
I write to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Here we go…
This morning, I had a wonderful conversation over coffee with a new connection in my hometown. A few hours later, I had lunch with an old friend. Tomorrow, I’m guest speaking at the annual retreat of a startup I’ve invested in. Each time I have a chance to meet people in person, I come away re-energized and just, well, happy.
I’ll bet you feel the same.
We’re pretty far past COVID by now, and people are gradually returning to work, but working remotely is still the default for most of us. In between my marvelous in-person meetups, there are plenty of Zooms with friends and associates with whom I can’t manage to get in the same room.
However, I had an experience offsite last week that fully awakened me to the difference and made me more committed to face-to-face interaction.
Skipping to the Conference Room
It’s Tuesday, and I’ve arrived at a resort in Sundance, Utah. The spot is secluded and surrounded by mountains. I’ve got access to well-marked hiking paths, including a short trek to a waterfall. There’s a spa with remedy options ranging from shea butter drench to gemstone aromatherapy oils. My room is cozy and has a fireplace I can activate at the touch of a button. Snow is quietly falling.
And I get to spend the next several hours in a conference room.
You read that right. I can’t wait for the event to begin. I’m actually skipping down the path to our first meeting. Why? Well, because for the next several hours, I’ll be exchanging ideas and much more with a group of brilliant people from a wide range of backgrounds and interests.
The event I’m joining is an annual treat hosted by Coburn Ventures. For the past twelve years or so, I’ve been a community member of this group, which is the brainchild of Pip Coburn. Pip is a former investment analyst who ventured out on his own several years ago to help equity investors and a range of other business leaders figure out what the future will bring. Instead of writing lengthy reports and predictions, Pip and the Coburn team bring people together to discuss and learn from each other.
Most of the monthly Coburn events I attend occur on Zoom, with members dialing in from the U.S., Europe, and Asia. It’s the Brady Bunch-style setup, but no one does better than this team at creating connections through rapid-fire discussion questions and tight breakout rooms. I come away from each with a page of notes and new understanding.
But once in a while, there are opportunities to ponder in person. Pip called several months ago to invite me to this three-day Sundance Retreat. It’s a big commitment, but I jumped at the chance to break out of the video monitor and see new and old virtual friends in the flesh.
The event is so much simpler than one might imagine. There are no strict agendas, no speakers, and certainly no sponsors. Instead, there are a series of discussion topics with various breakout combinations. Over the course of the three days, I have deep, meaningful conversations with each of the other 40 people at the event. We share opinions about business and our careers but equally, reference our families and the ups and downs we’ve experienced in life.
Things get pretty deep very quickly. I hear investors share their biggest stock-picking screwups—without worrying about being laughed at. We have side discussions about experiences with psychedelics (someday, I’ll share more on this). Irwin, a seventh-generation rabbi, channels Bob Dylan lyrics to make a point about choosing the right path in life.
On Thursday afternoon, we wrap up the event by gathering in a circle to share our takeaways. I talk about how fun it is to gather with a group of fellow business geeks—who turned out to be fellow life geeks. Susan shares how the immediate trust we felt allowed us all to share more—and benefit more. Alex can’t wait to get back to work and apply new leadership ideas he’s learned.
We exchange 40 hugs as the group breaks up to catch flights home. The real world awaits with its email, Slack, and Zoom windows. I wipe a small tear from my eye as I pack up my stack of notes—sad that it’s over but happy that I cleared my calendar to make this work. What a week…
In-person is a 10x Difference
I’m not interested in turning this post into a debate about whether people should work from home regularly or return to an office. But I’m hoping to make the point that we should assign a higher value to the time we spend together in real life.
Email, phone calls, video conferences, and instant messages are forms of communication, but they are far from optimal ways to work. We are a social species designed through millions of years of evolution to work together by meshing our minds. And this happens through so much more than words. It’s in hand gestures, microexpressions, mirror neurons, eye contact, and hundreds of other little unconscious things we do and notice when we’re together in person.
Video is on a 2-D screen. In-person isn’t 3-D…it’s more like 10-D when you add up all the activated social senses.
Being together is the phrase I like best. We’re being our full selves, which brings trust, happiness, laughter, and understanding—all the stuff that helps us cooperate better in our business enterprises.
Here’s a test: Close your eyes for a moment and think about a recent meaningful discussion you had with someone in person. I’ll bet you can recall key conversation points, the weather, the location, and maybe even the bits of personal connection you shared.
Now, try the same thing with your last video chat. Quite a difference, eh?
Meeting someone in real life brings along an entire environment to trigger memories, and we tend to open up more when all those social systems are clicking.
I find that being together is like a kind of dance, a work of the art of living that we co-create with our meeting partners. There’s the opening handshake or hug, the finding of common ground in personal interests and connections, the move to the entree topic, the back-and-forth of establishing trust, and the resolution to aligned next steps. It might be one-and-done, or this may be the latest of many future meetings, but either way, there was a special moment in time left on the coffee shop dance floor.
We Have to Make In-Person Meaningful
Again, the world couldn’t run today’s economy without virtual meetings and asynchronous communication. But that means we have to treasure and optimize the limited time we spend at the same place and time. Here are a few ways I’m working to make being together more special:
Give it a full hour or more. We need room to get into the conversation and see where it goes. I always find that an hour goes by in what feels like 5 minutes. Save the 30-minute check-ins for Zoom.
Never multi-task. Nothing breaks the mood more than checking our phones or watching alerts pop up on someone’s screen. Turn the phone over or put it away. If you’re worried about missing your next appointment, set an alarm.
Keep it regular. Friendships and key work relationships need to stay warm to stay strong over time. So make sure you get key trips on the books. Commit to company off-sites, keep attending key conferences, and try to get in a couple of coffees per week.
Company offsites are for bonding. If your business is mainly remote, plow those office savings into events every three to six months. And when you get together, make it mainly about renewing the bonds of friendship and trust.
Mix people up. There’s nothing worse in a group setting than being stuck next to the same few people for hours when you’re hoping to mix it up. Introverts like me hate working the room, and everyone defaults to hanging with those they already know. The host’s job is to ensure every attendee interacts with as many people as possible, so don’t be shy about pausing to re-seat and re-introduce.
I consider myself an optimistic realist. In this case, realistically, there are way too many benefits of a remote work world for us to revert to a world of co-location and commuting. But the optimist in me feels that humans will successfully shift into a hybrid model that captures the best of both worlds.
Long before remote work and dating apps, my wife and I did the long-distance dating thing for the first two years we were together. Eventually she moved to my city, I bought a ring, and we’ve been together 31 years this month. We made it work. You can, too.
Happy anniversary, Steph!
How we might work together…
Are you interested in launching your own consulting or service business or need help taking your current services business to the next level? Fleet is our holding company for services, and we’re actively looking to build business partnerships with winning leaders. Let’s talk!
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Feel free to schedule a time during my Office Hours to discuss questions, feedback, networking, or any other topic!
BONUS: Cool Content of the Week
A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…
Apple is Crushing it (Literally)
One day after I hit the send button on my Steve Jobs market research post last week, the tech and advertising worlds lit up with buzz about the latest Apple TV commercial. If you haven’t seen it yet take a pause to click below…My guess is they didn’t do any market research on this ad.
I saw a bit of the controversy but went into watching it with a pretty unbiased mind. My take:
As a consumer, It hurts me to see beautiful things get crushed.
As a marketer, I found this to be a wasteful and polarizing way to make a pretty weak point: The iPad is thinner. (Yawn.)
As a content creator, fellow Substacker Stephen Moore makes much better points about this ad's failure than I can. So he deserves my Cool Content of the Week link. He’s a great writer on business and tech.
Finally, I found it interesting that Apple’s apology came from its VP of marketing communications, Tor Myhren. He’s the “Barr” character in this story post of mine.
You cannot replace face-to-face!