Personal microphone-speaker-enabled meeting rooms are on a fast rise around South East Asian board rooms. Are they changing the meeting culture, or can they be deftly overcome to return meetings again to a great excuse to catch 40 winks and have a chat with your mates?

One of the significant differences in the South East Asian business style a business visitor from Western countries may notice is the way meetings are run. One may first of all be perturbed that while you are addressing a group, there seem to many side conversations going on, and you initially blame your communication skills, especially if you are talking in say English, and many in the meeting normally speak a different language. That perception changes quickly as soon as locals in the meeting speak, and you notice the same behaviour occurring. As soon as the "boss" speaks however, you can hear a pin drop. There are several theories on why this may occur - my favourite working theory is that the business culture is such that most important decisions are seen to be made during personal one-to-oner's rather than in larger and group meetings, relegating decision making in group meetings to be mere "formalizations" of decisions already made. That in turn may be related to a preference for not letting your opinions and thinking be known publicly, maybe for fear of losing face, or losing flexibility later.

Related to this is that South East Asians generally tend to speak with softer voices than many foreigners.

Over the years we have seen technology come to the rescue, with microphone speaker systems being installed in many board and meeting rooms in South East Asia, in effect more modest and smaller versions of the microphone systems you see set up in large meetings of say the UN or government. Basically you sit down at a seat with a table standing microphone and speaker in front of you with a button and a red light. When it comes to your turn to talk, you press the button and your voice is amplified, simultaneously discouraging others from being able to conduct side conversations and increasing your mouse squeak to a roar. It evens the battlefield for the softly-spoken. Only one speaker can work at a time, so its unlikely to amplify your coffee slurping noises and hand phone conversations. Until you turn off your mike, nobody can turn theirs one, resulting in frequent panicked gestures to retiring speakers who have settled back into the seats into lah-lah land to turn off their bloody mike and give somebody else a burl.

One large Thai governmental organization I work with have just moved offices and have a new board room with these nifty things. After 3 meetings over a few weeks, it seems that at last we are getting the hang of it, especially if someone remembers to turn the bloody thing on. On the con side, it restricts movement and body language a lot, making standing up and being demonstrative a no-no, and speakers tend to stare at the mike rather than looking at others. Unfortunately though, it also seems to discourage interaction and make the meeting even more formal than necessary. A-ha! moments die a death.

Nevertheless the critters are getting more popular every day, though some bosses I know have expressed a quiet preference to me that all the buttons should be on their desk, allowing them to shut up their detractors and amplify their cronies with a deft flick of a switch. Somehow, I think they still may get their way...