This is first in a series of 2 Blogs.
It focuses on Daily, Weekly & Monthly Meetings.
Part 2 will focus on Quarterly & Annual Meetings.
Daily Huddles
Purpose: This meeting increases the frequency of communication, creates awareness, creates connection and reduces the clutter of email, phone calls and other random communication. When you know you can find your teammates in one place every day to connect you gain efficiency.
Guidelines for Daily Huddles
- 15 Minutes or less.
- Stand up meeting – this means you stand rather than sit so you don’t get too comfortable.
- Use video and not just audio conferencing if you have a disparate work force (even if only 1 person is typically remote).
- Round robin lightning round updates – each person gets to speak for 2 minutes or less.
- While this person is speaking, no one else speaks or interrupts. Clarifying questions can be asked after they are done speaking.
The focus of the updates should be regarding customers, suppliers, employees or anything else relevant to the team. It does not need to be a list of everything the individual is working on.
CHALLENGE & RESPONSE
It’s too challenging to meet everyday
Commit to doing it for 30-60 days and then check-in on how it’s going and what you can do differently to make it more effective.
I don’t need more meetings
After trying it for 30 days assess whether it’s cutting down on other emails, phone calls and inefficient meetings. It likely will.
Don’t make it feel like a staff meeting
Focus on the big stuff and not every item that is on your calendar. Everyone’s busy. We do not need to prove it.
Weekly Meetings
Purpose: This meeting provides an opportunity to share good news, check-in on quarterly priorities, identify any new issues or shifts in business and time to work on 1 (maybe 2 at most) priorities. The key to success of your weekly tactical meeting is that there is a clear timeline plan and a meeting structure.
Guidelines for Weekly Meetings
- 60-90 Minutes
- Quick check-in – 1-2 minutes at most. Even large groups should get through this in 15 minutes or less. Indicate 1-2 accomplishments and 1-2 top priorities for the week. These should be accomplishments and priorities that are important to all. The best check-ins are related to the quarterly priorities.
- Customers and Employees – Discuss any customer or employee issues that have surfaced in your daily huddles or your meeting check-in.
- Report on Key Metrics – Such as revenue, billings, receivables, profit, churn…whatever is important to your business and your team’s success. Focus on any changes from last week’s report rather then a deep dive into all the company’s financials.
- Meeting Core – Here’s the part of the meeting that may or may not be planned. The time to work on a priority needs to be planned, but the specific priority or issue may not be. It might be identified through the check-in process, review of the customer/employee issues or key metrics. The leader or a team member may also identify an issue ahead of time. Preparation of an issue in writing will expedite the process of communicating the challenge and getting to work on solving.
- Checkout – 5 minute or less. What was good, what was missed, what needs to be worked on outside of this meeting in the next week? Is there something important that should be covered in next week’s meeting?
CHALLENGE & RESPONSE
Too structured agenda
You’ll want to have the template for the agenda and the timelines identified but identifying and focusing on the most import priority is the responsibility of the team leader and is a developed skill. If you can get the priority identified ahead of time that’s best for everyone but sometimes it does not become clear until the check-in. Embrace this flexibility in order to focus on what is most important now.
Forgetting to check-in/check-out
Checking-in gets everyone engaged, sets the tone of the meeting. Check-out allows feedback at the end to set the agenda for the following week.
Check-in takes too long
Remember to teach your team members to give quick highlights and no questions while checking-in. Save questions for the end and do not get caught into details that do not need to be addressed in this meeting. Suggest topics that are important, but not relevant to the group be addressed offline.
Monthly (and Ad-Hoc) Strategic Meetings
Purpose: The monthly strategic meeting and ah-hoc strategic meetings allow your team to dive deeper into strategic conversations and tactical challenges related to your quarterly priorities. This also gives you a chance to adjust your quarterly priorities if your business environment has changed since your last quarterly or annual strategy meetings. Once your team knows that there is a place designated for the larger and more complex conversations it is easier to stay focused in your daily and weekly meetings
Guidelines for Monthly (and Ad-Hoc) Strategic Meetings
- A half-day is usually the minimum and sometimes a full day is warranted. Monthly is the typical rhythm but every 2 weeks or every 6 weeks might work better for your business. Feel free to experiment with different rhythms.
- Check-in – Still quick but dive a little deeper. 2-4 minutes per attendee depending on the group size and agenda for the meeting. Ask a probing question that everyone must answer such as: Please provide your top 3 priorities and name your number 1. How has your perspective of what’s important changed in the last month? What employee has surprised you the most this quarter? What’s our biggest opportunity in the next 30 days? Just find something creative and thought provoking that will engage all team members into the meeting immediately. Check-ins are still designed to get everyone in the right frame of mind and begin thinking at the right altitude.
- Key Metrics – Report on monthly business metrics such as revenue, billings, receivables, profit, churn…whatever is important to your business and your team’s success. The depth of reporting on these key performance indicators will vary depending on what you cover in your weekly meetings. Usually this is a good time report on month end results. The best teams report not only on the past but discuss the forecast for the next month.
- Quarterly priorities review – A good practice is to have a chart or other graphic to track status of each quarterly priority. For example, a table with a green, yellow, red status gives you a good idea of what to work on. Green status items just need an update and a report on the next action items. Yellow items need to be unstuck. Sometimes this is a quick conversation or getting a group of folks on the same page. Red items usually require a deeper dive into discovering your obstacles, resolving issues, realigning a team, getting assistance from another team member, creative problem solving or re-assessing the importance of the priority. Choose your own chart or graphic. Something basic or be creative
- Deep dive issue processing – There will likely be a quarterly priority that you are stuck on or something will have changed in your business since you created your objectives in your annual or quarterly strategic meetings or an employee/client issue that needs extra time. The balance of the meeting should be used to either address these ‘Red Status’ items or do address the something new. Ideally, you’ve identified this prior to the meeting and can plan for how the group will work on it. However, at times it becomes evident during the check-in and/or the priorities review. You must leave time to work deeply on 1-2 items that are most important now. A deep dive into an issue can often take 1-2 hours or more. You may break into smaller groups if you have 7 or more people. What will have the biggest impact on your ability to achieve plan this quarter or this year? Work on that issue to resolution and action or at least the next action if it is a complex issue. The folks at Liberating Structures have some great ideas on issue processing and group work – http://www.liberatingstructures.com//
- The Parking Lot – this is where you will leave items that you cannot get to. Keep a list of these items as your Parking Lot. At the end of the meeting you can decide if they are important enough that they need their own Ad-hoc strategic meeting. An Ad-hoc strategic meeting is a meeting specifically focused on working this one issue to resolution or next action. The Parking Lot also can help you shape the discussion during a Quarterly or Annual strategy meeting. If the item impacts the current plan, then it likely needs its own Ad-hoc strategic session. If it is long term in nature or has a larger impact across the business, then it is likely an annual or quarterly topic.
- Check out – I prefer a Plus/Delta check out for these meetings which can either be a round table or open forum. Create a table with two columns labeled Plus and Delta. Ask the participants: What provided value today and what could have made today more valuable? The items that provided value go in the Plus column and the ideas for improving value go in the Delta. This feedback is a gift to you as the leader. Listen and seek understanding, but do not debate the value of the feedback.
CHALLENGE & RESPONSE
Time
Create the space and time, getting everyone focused in the meeting. Require everyone to put down their email, phones and to-do’s. Lead by example and demand focus. Your team members can only focus if they do a good job of planning and delegation ahead of the meeting. These are great skills to teach anyway. Dedicate the time that you can ensure the focus happens. Find the right physical or virtual space and take breaks to keep team members fresh.Focus
Regardless of whether you set aside 4 hours, 8 hours or 12 hours you will not be able to address every single topic relevant to your business. Prioritize, stay focused on the topic at hand, create your parking lot and setup ad-hoc meetings for other topics that must get attention outside the meeting. Still you can’t solve everything. It takes discipline to choose what to work on and to stay focused on it.
Ad-hoc Meetings
Again, stay focused. You can’t meet and work on everything. There will be more items on your parking lot than can be given priority in a month or a quarter. Choose wisely what additional items you select for ad-hoc meetings.
Balance As you can see the monthly meeting is the crux of your regular rhythm schedule. You can get out of hand with working on too many things or not give enough attention to the items that need it. Stay disciplined with your approach.
Receiving feedback
When receiving feedback from your group on how the meeting went you must resist the desire to explain why the meeting went the way it did. Inevitably at some point you will spend too little time on the right thing or too much time on the wrong thing. When this happens, recognize the mistake and make your pivot next time. You might not be able to get time back, but you can better use your time in the future.
References:
I have had the good fortune to be exposed to some of the teachings of great leaders on the topics of leading and meeting rhythms. These are a few of my favorite resources that helped shape this model.
- Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni, available from your preferred book retailer
- Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish, www.gazelles.com
- Jim Alampi – Alampi & Associates, The Execution Maximizer, www.alampi.com
- Mike Richardson founder of Agile Consulting – http://agilityconsulting.com/
- Vistage: An international organization that supports business executives in becoming better leaders. www.vistage.com