Weekly Staff Meetings That Don’t Make You Want to Gouge Your Eyeballs Out

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

George Will

There is little more dreaded in corporate America today than the weekly staff meeting. Below you will find out how to make this meeting something that your team looks forward to, to be inspired, engaged, uplifted and motivated!

Before we get started I must state a disclaimer about the effectiveness of your weekly meetings. They are dependent on the effectiveness of your daily huddles. The daily meetings keep the “road clean” and get the smaller obstacles out of your way so they are not bunched up and all need to be addressed in your weekly meeting. If you have not established a daily meeting schedule and you find that your weekly meeting is being overrun by issue resolution, know that you need to have a daily meeting!

Now, how to make a weekly meeting engaging, inspiring and effective.

  1. Gotta Have Rhythm – Like we discussed previously the rhythm of a meeting is the key to keeping people’s attention and engagement. This requires a timed agenda (more on that later) and a “conductor” who will hold the team to the meeting agenda. The person in the conductor chair will have to be comfortable enough to call the President of your organization out if they are getting off topic or going long. It is best if the leadership introduces the conductor for the meeting before each and empowers them to keep the meeting on track.
  2. No Distractions – If a person in the room finds some portion of the meeting so useless that they should check out, check email and distract the rest of the team – they should not be in the meeting. “Multi-tasking” while in meetings occurs for two primary reasons: 1) the person multi-tasking should not be in the meeting, or 2) the meeting stinks. Therefore, the two solutions to the problem are to excuse the multitasker so they can focus on whatever is so important to them or make the meeting so great that they will want to stay focused. A fast paced meeting will keep your team focused.
  3. Same Time, Every Week – Speaking of rhythm there is a rhythm to your team’s week as well. Your meeting structure drives that rhythm. Scheduling your meetings on the same day and the same time each week shows that these meetings are important. If someone has to travel, they can phone in. People will get used to not accepting overlapping meetings during this time. Trust me – stick to the schedule and people will get on board.
  4. Agenda – Your agenda is the sheet of music for your meeting rhythm. If an orchestra does not follow the sheet, your tuba player is chiming in when it was time for the drums. It sounds horrible and most people would rather leave the room than listen. Same goes for your meetings.

Patrick Lencioni suggests you create a “real time” agenda at the beginning of each meeting. I find that leaving the entire agenda up for grabs is a little loose. I prefer a stated agenda with specific times for each agenda item. To allow meeting flexibility to meet the current needs of the workplace, you can save the “Rock” or single big issue of the week to be decided or changed at each meeting.

Below is a sample agenda based on a model by Verne Harnish and changed a bit based on my experience that I find very effective:

–         Good News (5 mins) – Everyone in the room takes less than 30 seconds to say something great that is or has happened to them in their personal or professional lives. This immediately elevates the mood of the meeting and brings everyone’s brains into a positive state. Every organization needs to be more positive.

–         The Numbers (10 mins)– Your organization must be tracking 2-3 companywide measures that are driving the company towards your vision. Display these numbers graphically and discuss your performance.

–         Customer and Employee Feedback (10 mins) – You really should be getting this information daily and tracking it. If you do not have these mechanisms in place yet, get started. Check out my blogs on Listening to Your Customers or How to Implement the Net Promoter Score for some tips on how to get started. Don’t skip this part of the meeting while you are waiting to get your listening posts in place. Talk through some customer and employee experiences and how the organization can improve.

–         Core Values (10 mins) – You always hear me talking about the importance of core values to an organization. The problem is that far too few organizations spend time discussing the core values and how they can be implemented in your workplace. Take a few minutes in each meeting to discuss a core value. Key questions to answer are: How are we doing great at exemplifying this value? How can we improve? Is this really a core value of ours?

–         The Rock (30 mins)– The rock or the single issue is a problem or a goal or a roadblock that the organization is dealing with. As mentioned earlier, the topic of this section of the meeting can be decided in the meeting or changed if it was already set. This is your time to point the collected intelligence of the team towards a major goal, issue or obstacle. Use it to solve the most pressing issues you have.

–         Closing (5 mins) – Have each person sum up the meeting or just say something in a word or two to close the meeting out and send everyone out in the world to make a “dent in the universe.”

What about you? How do you do your weekly meetings?

Thank you for being a part of our values driven community!

Image courtesy of Office Space.

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