April 14, 2024
April 14, 2024
In order to make meetings interesting and effective, Patrick Lencioni, the author of Death by Meeting proposes 4 different types of meeting depending on the context. These meetings are also a way to zoom-out from a ground-level view with daily/weekly check-ins to a bird's-eye view with the off-sites.
Some of these meetings have direct parallels in the world of Agile Methodology the meetings that are part of that.
The Daily Check-in requires that team members get together, standing up, for about five minutes every morning to report on their activities that day. The purpose of the Daily Check-in is to help team members avoid confusion about how priorities are translated into action on a regular basis.
Despite this proposal by the author, I strongly believe daily check-in meetings (or daily standups) are a waste of time, leads to too much micromanagement and shows a lack of trust in the team.
The author proposes this meeting for tactical issues of immediate concern. A Weekly Tactical meeting should last between forty-five and ninety minutes, depending on its frequency. It should include the following critical elements ...
The Lighting Round
A quick round where everyone shares their 2-3 priorities for the week. It gives the team a sense of actual activity. It also makes it easy for the team to identify potential redundancies, gaps, or other issues that require immediate attention.
Progress Review
This is a routine reporting of critical information or metrics related to revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction etc. The purpose of this is to ensure movement and progress towards the goal and to check if everything is on track.
Real-Time Agenda
Counter to conventional wisdom about meetings, the agenda for a weekly tactical should not be set before the meeting, but instead based on what everyone is working on in the upcoming week. During the Weekly Tactical, there are two overriding goals: resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity. Obstacles need to be identified and removed, and everyone needs to be on the same page.
Monthly Strategic meetings allow executives to dive into a given topic or two without the distractions of deadlines and tactical concerns. It is advisable to schedule at least two hours per topic so that participants feel comfortable engaging in open-ended conversation and debate.
Its also essential to avoid putting too many items on the agenda to make sure each topic gets enough time to reach a resolution. And the executives should not be afraid of conflict and strong opinions and disagreements.
Effective off-sites provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so they can review the business in a more holistic, long-term manner.
Comprehensive Strategy Review:
Executives should reassess their strategic direction, not every day as so many do, but three or four times a year.
Team Review:
Executives should regularly assess themselves and their behaviors as a team, identifying trends or tendencies that may not be serving the organization.
Personnel Review:
Three or four times a year, executives should talk, across departments, about the key employees within the organization. Every member of an executive team should know whom their peers view as their stars, as well as their poor performers.
Competitive and Industry Review:
It is useful for executives to step back and look at what is happening around them in a more comprehensive way so they can spot trends that individual nuggets of information might not make clear.
