We (product team) started PM Forum to engage with the project management team. To accommodate the global teams and time zones, the meeting is held at 6AM with Asian/ European group and 11AM with European/ American group. We were excited to get to know the PMs, had pre-session survey to gather interests and introduced ourselves at the kick-off meeting. Yet only 1 PM introduced himself and said something during the session. We were disappointed, especially for American team who got up early for the 6AM call.
In our meeting de-brief, we decided to be more proactive with the 2nd group. Each of us reached out to a few PMs before the kick-off to get to know them, used a different tool for the in-session poll, and gave more elaborative intro ourselves. The results…is very different: bigger turn-out, more active participation (intro, comment, question, poll…), we ended up a bit over-time as PMs were asking questions.
We’re excited about the turn-around – lesson learned: be proactive, set good example, and take action. We continued the momentum by following up with PMs immediately to plan for future sessions and recruit co-design partners.