Article
The concept of WAR rooms in businesses started ever since the origin of project management.
Conventionally, the war rooms involve all essential decision makers gathering under one roof, brainstorming on the specific problem and arriving at an effective conclusion.
Businesses have been holding war room discussions often, even during the remote work movement through digital opportunities. But with teams following hybrid models and encouraging in-person interactions, the physical war rooms are back to address the time-sensitive matters.
So, here is presenting to you a comprehensive picture about war rooms and how meeting rooms in coworking spaces are being transformed into physical war rooms.
What is a war room meeting?
A war room meeting is a call for team collaboration and team communication on a highest priority basis.
A war room is an age-old practice for problem solving within units or squads. In the times of zero hours or extremities specialists or project owners from different units will gather to solve the crisis under one roof. The room is distraction free, and the complete effort of the team assigned towards achieving the exigency objective.
A war room is also known as a time sensitive situation room, control room or command centre. It is a centralized meeting room where the stakeholders can sit together and communicate easily and swiftly.
History of war room
As a part of the agile practices of IT and ITes sectors, war room is a widespread practice to deliver high quality results. Over the period, it has outreached to different sectors and commonly used across segments as a part of business development problems, project management decision making or even the media houses.
Trivia: An underground meeting place etched in the world history
The concept of war room originated in 1901 and largely Winston Churchill is known as the originator of the war room concept. During the times of crisis, Churchill transformed the underground cabinet rooms into functional, well equipped war rooms with military strategists, planners, ministers, and key members of his government to share vital information and make quick decisions during the roughest emergencies of World Wars I & II.
What is the purpose of a war room in business?
The learning from the success of Churchill and the advantage the single physical room can give, inspired businesses to borrow the concept of war rooms. Just as military practices, teams in IT, engineering, product teams, finance or crisis management use a fully equipped meeting room, sometimes reside in the same vicinity to discuss confidential and classified business decisions or actions determining their future.
Pop Culture
In pop culture, war rooms denote Weekly Action Review or Weekly Activity Report. Occasionally, these weekly meetings are held between teams to discuss the activities – past, present, and future statuses of projects and tasks. Leadership members and executives are part of this forum and debate deciding thoughts on strategies sales, marketing, finance, offerings, product strategies.
While virtual war rooms are great in solving big problems. Virtual rooms may have taken over the physical 'under one roof' formula of a war room to a different level but the corporate theft and cyber security risks have also been a major challenge.
Moreover, the in-person war rooms have been much in demand since the unlock. Even in the hybrid model, teams and companies find it a much easier and simpler process of problem-solving.
Advantages of a war room for teams
1. Communications:
In person, oral communication saves time, simplifies agenda, and gives clarity to collaborations. Instead of having endless tools and apps where members must comprehend on their own, read trail mails to understand, and then take actions, in-person directions and explanations can cut that time short, boost up productive time and improve outcomes.
2. Team bonding:
Face-to-face meetings have proven to have best results. In person teamwork has always been a significant part of business and corporate settings; some of which may be time consuming and not up to the mark in the virtual settings.
While remote work is the future of working, many teams today are advocating a hybrid model of working to excel, engage in deeper discussions and better harmonization within teams.
3. Focussed results:
Under one roof, we can control our distraction, allowing complete focus on the project at hand.
Imagine in a work from home set up, you might have your doorbells ringing, children disturbing and many errands to deliver that could hamper your concentration needed for the project.
But when you lock yourself away for a few hours with people who inspire and motivate you, the tasks can be handled smartly.
4. Lesser revert time:
For instance, you have a week to submit a multi-crore business problem that needs to be sorted ASAP. You have a large team in India, but you also have multiple local teams distributed across cities.
Would it be wise to have to congregate together at one point in a weeks' time or at their respective centres within a few minutes?
Such as
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A team of policy heads and lobbyist in a coworking space in New Delhi
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Specialist team of product and engineering team meets at the meeting room in Hyderabad
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The sales and marketing team members who can use the office space in Bengaluru
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And the founders can join virtual from their on demand office for rent in anna nagar in Madurai
Would it be the greatest congregation of all times to have the brightest minds sit together and work out the finer details in person. And in a virtual call take the final shots!
So, here is an example of how a team of specialists sitting across regions can come together at a common point at separate locations and address the issue at the same time. The time to respond and react to the issue is much less and faster. The result in hand will be quicker and quality can be controlled at respective centres.
Honestly, this 👆 is an imitation of how a team used our spaces across locations to develop a billion-dollar pitch! 😉
In short
In conclusion, there are many reasons why in-person meetings need to be organised. One of the reasons is the WAR meetings. With employees still uncertain about returning to office campus and teams looking forward to collaboration breaks for several reasons, it is important that companies and leadership across industries and segments appreciate and encourage meeting opportunities.
Hope this blog has helped you understand what, why and how teams are effectively using war rooms.
If you are looking to host one, don't stress, 👉🏽 chat here
At CoSqrd we have dedicated spaces from boardrooms to war rooms.
