Meetings are an important element in team management. But collective meetings can become a burden in a company that does not understand how to conduct them. Herein identifies four basic types of meetings and explains what issues should be discussed at them.
Meeting #1: Five Minutes Daily
Such meetings are not suitable for all organizations. However, if you manage to implement the daily five minutes, it will be a very powerful tool. Understanding their meaning is useful even for those who cannot conduct them.
Participants gather every morning and, without even sitting down, report on their affairs for the day.
Five minutes. Standing. That's it.
The purpose of such a daily reconciliation is to ensure that the team clearly understands what is in priority and what the team is working on on a regular basis. This quick discussion ensures that nothing is missed during the day, no one steps on each other's feet.
At the same time, for many organizations, daily five-minutes can be inconvenient, especially if participants work in different locations and time zones. Of course, you can hold such a meeting by phone, but it is not always reasonable to arrange them at any cost.
Inevitable difficulties
One of the common difficulties in implementing daily five-minutes is getting participants to stick to them regularly so that they get into a routine. It is extremely easy for busy staff to lobby for the cancellation of such meetings without giving them a chance.
To overcome this stage, it is necessary to be consistent with regard to the time and place of meetings.
In addition, it is extremely important not to cancel them, even if only two participants come.
To ensure that the meeting does not drag on, make sure that no one sits down. Source Quite often, during daily checks, it is difficult to limit yourself to five minutes. If the meeting slightly exceeds the time limit due to informal communication, this is even a good thing. However, it is impossible to prolong the conversation every morning due to the fact that the participants are trying to deal with topics that need to be discussed at the weekly tactical meeting.
Meeting #2: Weekly Tactical Meetings
Every team needs regular meetings focused solely on pressing tactical issues. In fact, it is not so important how often they are held - once a week or twice.
The main thing that needs to be achieved: attendance, discipline and consistent structure.
Weekly tactical meetings should last from forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the frequency of their conduct, and include a number of critical elements, including the following.
Blitz
This is a quick report, during which participants take turns naming two-three of their priorities for the week. Everyone has to keep within one minute and quickly describe what they have to do.
Performance Overview
The next key element of weekly tactical meetings is a report on the most important parameters and data: revenue, costs, customer satisfaction, material inventory, and so on. Of course, its content will depend on the industry and the situation in the organization. The point is to develop a habit of doing an activity review with key success parameters (but not all possible). Such points can be, for example, four or six. The review should not take more than five minutes, even if short explanatory questions are taken into account.
Real-time agenda
When the blitz and performance review are complete (usually no more than fifteen minutes after the start of the meeting), you can talk about the agenda. That is how, contrary to popular belief, the agenda for weekly tactical meetings should not be drawn up in advance, but only after a blitz and a report on the results.
Even small companies need meetings. Source
This makes sense, because it should be based on the real current concerns of the team and the performance of the company in relation to the goals set, and not on the assumptions of the presenter two days before the meeting.
Trying to guess priorities before reading this critical information is unwise.
Meeting #3: Monthly Strategic Meetings
This is the most interesting and in many ways the most important type of meetings in any team. And it's also the most entertaining. It is in strategic meetings that executives scratch their heads, analyze, debate and solve critical issues (just a few) that will fundamentally affect the company. Monthly strategic meetings allow managers to dive into one or two topics without worrying about time and short-term problems.
The duration of strategic meetings varies depending on the topics covered, but it is better to allocate at least two hours for each to make it easier to engage in an open conversation and debate.
It is not as important as often how often the team holds such meetings: once a month or every two weeks. It is more important that they take place regularly, as in this case they will be able to transfer critical strategic issues that arise at the weekly tactical meeting.
Meeting No. 4: Quarterly field visits
Executive retreats have earned a reputation for empty, idle pastime, and in many cases quite rightly so. Executives play golf, climb trees, study the collective inner child, and do other interesting things, and there is little sustainable benefit to the organization.
This is totally unacceptable, not only because time, money and credibility are wasted, but also because in the context of all the other meetings that support the work of the organization, retreats should play a crucial role.
The purpose of quarterly meetings is not to have fun, but to deal with work issues. Source
Topics for consideration
Effective retreats give executives the opportunity to regularly distract from the daily, weekly, and even monthly issues that consume their attention and take a more holistic look at the business and its long-term prospects. At a quality quarterly retreat, the following topics can be raised and discussed, for example:
- Full strategy assessment. Managers should periodically assess the directions of strategic development: not every day, as many do, but only three or four times a year. The industry is changing, new competitors are emerging, different approaches are required. As a rule, reviewing the strategy once a year or once every six months is not enough to be aware.
- Evaluation of the management team. Top managers and high-level managers should regularly evaluate themselves and their team behavior, identifying trends and tendencies harmful to the organization. To do this, it can be useful to change the scenery, to communicate less formally, as well as to remember your obligations as a team.
- Evaluation of the team. Three to four times a year, executives should talk about key employees in different departments of the organization. Everyone should know who colleagues consider stars and who is lagging behind. Thanks to this, it is possible to learn other points of view and change perception, relying on someone else's experience. More importantly, it will be easier to direct and retain the most productive employees together, as well as to work more effectively with the laggards.
- Evaluation of the activities of competitors and the industry as a whole. Information about competitors and trends in the industry leaks into the organization little by little, gradually, so it is useful for managers to step back a little and see what is happening around. Thanks to this, trends will become noticeable, which are not always visible in individual grains of information. Even the best leaders in the sea of daily worries do not always see the main thing.
The proper implementation of effective quarterly field reviews can be hindered by a variety of obstacles. Although individually they do not pose a particular danger, together they can undermine the effectiveness of these important activities and eventually lead to defeat.
One such difficulty is the tendency to overload and over structure meetings.
This usually manifests itself in the form of highly regulated slide presentations and drawn-out, tedious information reports. The purpose of quarterly field reviews is to reflect on and discuss the state of the organization, not to provide managers with booklets and presentations.
Another difficulty is the temptation to make meetings too idle: to hold them in exotic places that still need to be reached, and to overload them with informal events. The purpose of the trip is not to have fun, but rather to give participants the opportunity to eliminate interference that distracts them from day to day. To do this, as a rule, it is enough to go to a comfortable hotel or conference center in an hour's drive from the place of work.
And if you fly to Hawaii, distractions will not disappear: just one of their types (interference in the workplace) will be replaced by another (for example, snorkeling and golf).
Companies spend a lot of time on team meetings. Improving the effectiveness of meetings will enable people, managing organizations and teams, not only to improve performance, but also to positively influence people's lives. Including his own.
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