Rhythm · Organising to Growing
A meeting that's about something
Your weekly meeting, team meeting and monthly meeting each have a fixed agenda with timings, and every meeting ends with decisions that have an owner, and with what you'll tell your people.
Worth reading first: The rhythm of a growing company
Does this sound familiar?
- The weekly meeting runs for two hours, and afterwards nobody's quite sure what was decided.
- In the same meeting you talk about yesterday's complaint, the holiday rota and whether you're going to build a second product.
- Everyone nods, and then in the corridor you hear what people really think.
- Every problem that comes up, you take away yourself. The others leave relieved.
- The leadership team decided something, and a week later it turns out the team knows nothing about it.
Who it's for, and when
For founders and managers who spend a lot of time in meetings and get little done. It starts to matter once there's a leadership team and a few people talking round a table becomes a standing meeting. In Proving, half an hour a week with whoever's there is enough; at that stage it's too early for the three agendas below.
The model
Lencioni says meetings are bad for two reasons. They lack structure: everything goes into one meeting, from tomorrow's planning to next year's direction. And they lack conflict: difficult subjects get avoided, so there's nothing to decide. That's why every meeting has one purpose and its own agenda, and whoever chairs it goes looking for disagreement. They ask who sees it differently and bring that person in by name.
A meeting belongs to everyone at the table. One person runs it and keeps time; that doesn't have to be the managing director. Whoever brings a point brings a proposal with it. Whatever's decided gets one owner from the group and a date. If you take everything away yourself, the team learns that problems belong to you, and next week you're back with the same list.
A meeting ends with the question: what do we tell our people afterwards, and who does it? Lencioni calls this cascading communication. Everyone tells their own team the same thing, within a day. Which meeting happens when is in the lesson The rhythm of a growing company. This lesson is about what happens inside the meeting; how you take a point through to a decision is in the lesson Solving problems instead of discussing them.
Patrick Lencioni, Death by Meeting (2004), on why meetings achieve nothing, and The Advantage (2012) for what you tell people afterwards. The fixed order of the weekly meeting comes from Gino Wickman's Level 10 Meeting, Traction (2007).
The leadership team's weekly meeting
An hour, every week on the same day at the same time. First the overview: a round of the table, the priorities, the scoreboard. Then the rest of the time goes on what's stuck. The agenda is below. What makes a good priority is in the lesson A rock you actually hit, and how to read the board is in A scoreboard the team keeps up itself.
The team meeting
Half an hour, with the team and its lead, after the leadership team has met. What has to get done this week, where's the team stuck, and what's coming out of the leadership team. Whatever the team can't solve itself, the lead takes to the leadership team.
The monthly meeting
Two and a half hours with the leadership team, for one or two subjects that are too big for a week: a new market, a price rise, a hire. With a paper everyone reads first.
Pitfalls
Everyone pulls up a chair
People who aren't invited feel left out, so the whole department sits in. The meeting gets slower and half the room says nothing. Invite the people who add something to the purpose, and let the rest hear the outcome from their own manager.
The team meeting as a copy of the leadership team's
The team gets the same hour-long agenda, with numbers that aren't theirs. A team needs its own week, its own numbers and its own sticking points.
A subject that comes back every week
It's been on the list for five weeks and keeps getting pushed back. It's too big for the week. Take it off and give it a slot in the monthly meeting, with a paper beforehand.
Watch and read
The man himself on Death by Meeting: why meetings are boring, and why every meeting needs its own purpose.
Watch on YouTubeGoes through the weekly meeting's fixed agenda item by item, with the timings. The agenda in this lesson is a shorter version of it.
Watch on YouTubeWhy a big subject starts with a memo everyone reads in silence first. That's how the monthly meeting below starts too.
Watch on YouTubeTo go further
The full talk on meetings: why they're boring (no conflict, no purpose), the comparison with a film, and how to separate the different kinds of meeting.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Death by Meeting
Patrick Lencioni · 2004 · ISBN 9780787968052
The model behind this lesson, told as a fable about a chief executive who sorts out his meetings, with the model set out at the back. Short, and you'll finish it in an evening.
View the bookTraction
Gino Wickman · 2011 · ISBN 9781936661831
The chapter on the Level 10 Meeting gives the weekly meeting's fixed agenda and how to work through the list of what's stuck. Read just that chapter if you don't use the rest of his system.
View the bookApply it
- 1
Choose who runs it and who keeps time
Preferably not the founder: they'll talk the most and decide the fastest. Whoever runs it sticks to the timings and asks, at every decision, who sees it differently.
- 2
Put the agendas in the Meetings screen
One agenda per type of meeting, with the timings. Use the three below to start with, and after a month adjust them to what works for you.
- 3
Have the scoreboard and priorities updated before the meeting
Every owner puts in their numbers and the status of their priority before the meeting starts. That leaves the meeting time for what the numbers are telling you.
A scoreboard the team keeps up itself - 4
Work through the list until there's a decision
Pick the three most important points, even if they're at the bottom. For each one: what's the real cause, what do we decide, who does it and by when.
Solving problems instead of discussing them
Examples
Ready to use: the leadership team's weekly meeting (60 minutes)
Who: the leadership team. One person runs it, one writes down the decisions. Ready beforehand: the scoreboard and the status of the priorities are up to date, and what's stuck is on the issues list. 0 to 5: round the table. Everyone names their most important work of the week in one sentence. 5 to 10: the priorities. For each priority the owner says on track or not. Anything not on track goes on the list. 10 to 15: the scoreboard. For each number, on track or off track. Anything off track goes on the list; you don't discuss it here yet. 15 to 50: the list. Pick the three most important points and work through them to a decision with an owner and a date. 50 to 55: read the decisions back out loud. 55 to 60: what do we tell our people, and who does it? Then everyone gives the meeting a score. Settled by the end: every decision with an owner and a date, and what each person tells their team today.
Ready to use: the team meeting (30 minutes)
Who: the team and its lead. The lead runs it the first few times; after that it can rotate. Ready beforehand: the team's KPIs and the team's Week sprint are up to date. 0 to 5: what's coming out of the leadership team? The lead says what was decided there and what it means for the team. 5 to 10: round the table. What has to get done this week, and where are you stuck? 10 to 15: the team's numbers. On track or off track. 15 to 27: what's stuck. Solve what the team can solve itself, with a name and a day attached. 27 to 30: what goes to the leadership team? Only what the team can't solve itself. Settled by the end: who does what this week, and the points the lead raises in the next leadership team meeting.
Ready to use: the monthly meeting (2.5 hours)
Who: the leadership team, and whoever's needed for the subject. Ready beforehand: for each subject, one paper of no more than two pages, written by the subject's owner, with a proposal in it. Sent round two days in advance. 0 to 15: the month in numbers, and what the monthly reflections showed. 15 to 25: subject 1, silent reading. 25 to 70: discuss subject 1. Whoever runs it asks who sees it differently, before anything is decided. 70 to 80: break. 80 to 90: subject 2, silent reading. 90 to 135: discuss subject 2. 135 to 150: read back the decisions, what we tell people and who does it, a score. Settled by the end: for each subject a decision or the next step with an owner, and what the team hears about it.
An online shop
The leadership team decided that a return is only refunded once the warehouse has checked the parcel. Customer service heard about it from an angry customer. Now the weekly meeting ends with the question of what each person tells their people, and customer service hears it the same afternoon from its own manager.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- Go to Meetings. Choose Weekly meeting or Monthly meeting and, if you use teams, the team. Set the timings for each item with Edit agenda, then begin with Start meeting. Put what's stuck on the issues list; when you Close out an issue, you write down the outcome: who does what, and by when. End with Finish meeting and a score.
- You look back on a situation from your own work. Only you can read what you write.
- You set a date with yourself, and on that day the app asks how it went.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
6 situations. You need 5 of 6 right. You can try again at any time.
1.Your weekly meeting has next week's planning, a complaint, and the question of whether you'll open your own workshop. What do you do with the workshop?
2.On the scoreboard in the weekly meeting, revenue is off track. The leadership team starts discussing it straight away. What does the agenda say?
3.At the end of the weekly meeting there are six action points, and five of them have your name on them. What's the best next step?
4.In the team meeting a point comes up that the team can't solve itself: another department keeps delivering late. What does the team leader do?
5.The leadership team decided that from Monday there'll be no more rush orders under €500. Two days later the shop floor knows nothing about it. What was missing at the end of the meeting?
6.In the monthly meeting a price rise goes through in ten minutes, without a single question. In the corridor you hear that two members of the leadership team disagree. What could the person running it have done?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- Solving problems instead of discussing them · You put whatever's stuck on one list, find the real cause, and close every issue with a decision and an owner.
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