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Liane Davey
April 20, 2016
I am frequently flummoxed by the complete misalignment between a team s mandate
and the agenda for their meetings. My favorite example was a Corporate Affairs
team that had an ambitious agenda to work collaboratively to transform the
perception of the organization among members of the public, the regulator, and
three levels of government. Yet they had only allocated 30 minutes per week to
the task!
They aren t the only ones. Inevitably, teams fail to link the structure (i.e.,
content, frequency, and duration) of their meetings with the job that needs to
be accomplished in those meetings. A one-size-fits-all team meeting rarely
works.
There are a few simple steps that will help you build a better meeting
structure. I ll use the example of a leadership team of a manufacturing plant
to demonstrate the process.
First, define the work of the team. Exclude topics where one person has clear
accountability and can proceed without input. Instead, focus on the items where
the team s input will change the trajectory of the work. The manufacturing
leadership team would emphasize issues that cut across the plant and parse out
topics that can be addressed by individuals or subgroups of the team.
Second, parse the items into different categories so meetings can be tailored
to the content. Meetings become ineffective when they combine different types
of discussions, because we aren t good at changing the pace or tenor of a
conversation once it starts. Make things easier by splitting discussions into
categories. The manufacturing team could split operational discussions about
issues on a line or scrap rate concerns from discussions about progress on the
introduction of a new line.
Third, determine the frequency with which you need to discuss each category.
The short time horizon topics (e.g., revising projections for the coming month)
need to happen frequently. Less urgent topics and can be discussed less
frequently. In a manufacturing operation, that operations meeting might even be
a daily huddle, whereas the big projects could be discussed bi-weekly or
monthly.
Fourth, set the length of the different meetings. Each type of meeting needs a
very different feel. A regular operational meeting needs to be crisp and
therefore as short as possible. Strategic meetings need more time because the
topics require space for people to explore and dissent. The manufacturing team
could start the morning with a 30-minute huddle and reserve a half-day for more
substantive bi-weekly meetings.
Fifth, plan for overflow. If I could choose one meeting effectiveness tip that
would make almost all teams more efficient it would be to schedule a regular
overflow spot on the calendar. Having a receptacle for the overflow prevents
cramming at the end of meetings and also reduces the likelihood that people s
time will be wasted on issues requiring only a small subset of the team. Those
items naturally move to the overflow spot when needed.
Breaking out of the one-size-fits-all approach is the secret of effective
meetings. The result should be a set of meetings tailored to the mandate of
your team and differentiated in frequency and duration to suit the content.
That will go a long way toward setting your meetings up for success.
For most leadership teams, a weekly operational meeting, a monthly business
builder meeting, and a quarterly strategic directions meeting works well. Let s
look at each of those in greater detail:
Effective operational meetings
There is a significant amount of information to process to keep a department
running smoothly (e.g., emerging issues in service delivery or trade-offs in
resource planning). These topics are time-sensitive and require a forum where
they can be efficiently raised, discussed, and resolved. That s what the
operational meeting is all about.
Be very clear about the objectives of your operational meeting and don t let
other topics on the agenda. The meeting is to provide team members with
up-to-date information to run their own departments effectively, to identify
and gain diverse perspectives on emerging cross-departmental issues, to align
around action plans, and to create clear accountability for action. Nothing
else.
Start the meeting with an introduction from the team leader that provides
context, including any direction from above. Next, include a roundtable on
emerging issues and priorities. During the roundtable, chart the issues that
need team discussion. When you re done with the roundtable, quickly prioritize
the issues that were raised and use the prioritized list as the agenda for the
remainder of the meeting. Work through the issues and agree on the action plan.
Set a timer and stop when 10% of the time remains. Use the remaining time to
review the action items, set the agenda for the weekly overflow meeting, and
get aligned on communication messages. The discipline at the end of your
meetings will support better execution.
Business builder meetings
On a regular basis, your team needs to pull out of the operational detail of
working in the business and spend some time working on the business. The
objectives of a business builder meeting are to identify opportunities to
increase the capability or capacity of the team, to address any barriers to
successful execution, and to monitor progress and course correct on ongoing
projects. In the manufacturing example, this is the ideal place to talk about
the introduction of a new line or the adoption of a quality management system.
Unlike the ad hoc operational meeting, the secret to having a highly productive
business builder meeting is to be prepared. First, create an agenda with the
topics, owners, and the required value add (e.g., identify issues, develop
solutions, make decision, etc.) I highly recommend that you assign one team
member to be the sponsor for each agenda item. Make the sponsor accountable for
the quality of the discussion, including getting the facts and information
required to support an effective discussion distributed in advance.
Start the agenda with a roundtable. In contrast to the discussion in the
operational meeting, use this roundtable to highlight mid- and longer-term
priorities, opportunities, and concerns. After the roundtable, review ongoing
projects, stopping only on issues where the team needs to weigh in. Next,
devote time to the enabling functions. This is the appropriate home when Human
Resources wants to do a talent review or when finance wants to share a new
budget process. Make the sponsor accountable for the value of these
discussions.
Once those topics are addressed, the remaining time should be devoted to issues
that your team needs to discuss to enhance the efficiency or effectiveness of
the department. Topics might include: how do we evolve the forecasting process
to improve accuracy; what can be done to improve scrap rates; or how do we
reduce lost-time on the line? This section is the guts of the business builder
meeting as the team brings its full value on how to make the organization
stronger. Again, wrap up with a review of next steps and communication
messages.
Strategic directions meetings
Between two and six times per year, your leadership team needs to lift your
eyes to the horizon and re-evaluate your strategy. This should be a lengthy
meeting that provides ample time to meander. In my experience, one strategic
directions day per quarter works well. I often pair this day with one on team
effectiveness, which makes a productive two-day offsite.
This meeting should have a very different feel from the operations meetings
(where you re managing the operations) or the business builder meeting (where
you re improving the operations). The strategic directions meeting is more
about where you re going and less about your progress in getting there. The
manufacturing leadership team might consider important questions about how to
optimize capacity and how to trade off efficiency and flexibility.
The objectives of your strategic directions meetings should be to highlight
changes in the external environment and their potential impact on your
organization, to monitor longer-term performance indicators and proactively
identify issues and opportunities, to generate new insights about how to
achieve your vision and/or goals, and to initiate further investigation.
As with the business builder meeting, it s critical to prepare so that the time
in the meeting is focused on high value discussions. In contrast to the
business builder meeting, the strategic meeting is less about decisions and
actions and more about expanding the team s thinking. To that end, pre-reads
should be thought provoking, often emphasizing information from external
sources or internal metrics that aren t examined frequently.
Where possible, start the meeting by blowing people s minds. Find something
fascinating, inspiring, or perspective altering that will shake them up and
change the tone of the conversation. Once everyone is sitting up and paying
attention, solicit different perspectives on what s going on in the outside
world. Only then should you turn your attention to your own business. Start
with leading indicators of the business health. Have your margins been
declining? Is your supply chain performance worrisome? How well are you driving
organic growth? Ultimately, you re trying to determine whether your current
trajectory is sustainable and whether it s steep enough.
Distill the internal and external information into a short list of imperatives
for your business and then identify the work that would need to be done to make
meaningful progress on each imperative. The idea is not to build a full-fledged
plan in the room (you don t have the information you need). You just want to
generate ideas, define them, and identify a champion to do further research and
come back to you with a recommendation. You will likely generate many more
ideas than you can reasonably execute, so be sure to winnow the initial list
down before leaving the room. Again, close by summarizing the action items,
owners, and follow-up plan.
The communication out of the strategic directions meeting is particularly
important (and often high impact), so get aligned on what is ready to be shared
and what isn t and then come up with a plan for how you ll get the message out.
Most people bemoan the number of meetings on their calendars. You would be
justified in worrying that introducing new meetings might start a revolt. But
what people are tired of is bad meetings: boring, circular, unproductive
meetings. They long for valuable discussions that move the business forward.
You ll greatly improve your discussions by tailoring your meetings so that
their objectives are aligned with the content, frequency, and duration of your
meetings.
Liane Davey is the cofounder of 3COze Inc. She is the author of You First:
Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done and a coauthor of
Leadership Solutions: The Pathway to Bridge the Leadership Gap. Follow her on
Twitter at @LianeDavey.