Meetings don’t have to suck. Discover how to run effective meetings and make your meetings the best part of your working day.
If you’re in an organization, you’ll be turning up to meetings.
Are they good? Are they effective? Are they worthwhile?
Being busy does not equal being effective. To be effective you must be hitting goals.
Therefore, if time is being spent in meetings, those meetings ought to enable people to hit their goals and deliver on their objectives.
In 2021 we recorded a podcast unpacking the four meetings every organization must master.
They are:
- The Leadership team meeting
- The one-one-one
- The daily huddle, and
- The sales meeting.
Now in 2022, we’ve re-recorded a new episode with updated information based on the new module in Waymaker.io – Meetings
This podcast draws on some of the content from our Waymaker Academy course and playbook on “Running effective meetings“.
How do other business leaders run their meetings?
Jeff Bezos has a diligent and unique approach to internal meetings.
The Amazon founder requires the leader to write a good memo with clarity of recommendations and supporting documentation.
At the start of the meeting, participants are given 30 minutes to read and think about the content – in silence. Then discussion can be explored and decisions made.
Bill Gates famously said, “You have a meeting to make a decision, not decide on the question”.
Peter Drucker brutally observed the ideal number of meetings in an organization is zero and an overabundance of meetings is a symptom of a sick organization.
How many meetings do you turn up to in a week? Too many?
Ask yourself and your colleagues which ones add value, for whom and why.
The four fundamental meetings to master
In our podcast and related playbook we explain the four meetings to master and why.
Here’s a summary of the four, who they are for and the benefit they bring.
The four effective meetings
Run an effective leadership team meeting
In the podcast we explore the Leadership team meeting and unpack the basic structure.
Too many meetings talk about what has happened or what you’re going to do.
This creates a problem.
The real benefit of a group of leaders meeting is to isolate roadblocks to goals and spend time solving problems together removing roadblocks.
With that in mind, we’ve set up the leadership team framework to leverage the data insights of Waymaker.io with a simple leadership team agenda.
You can use this as is or choose to modify for your organization.
A great leadership team meeting does four things:
- Shares the wins and positive progress from around the business
- Stays on top of business health
- Creates accountability for individual goals
- Removes roadblocks for individuals to reach those goals.
Item 3 is actually the most important part of the meeting and most time should be spent on that.
Now let’s deep dive into what a simple and effective leadership team meeting can look like.
The Leadership team meeting
Purpose
The purpose of this meeting is for a leadership team or a functional team to build alignment, focus and remove roadblocks.
Time
It should be around 90 minutes. At least one hour and no more than two.
How
This meeting would ideally be face to face but this will not be possible all the time, so use MS Teams, Zoom or Google Hangouts.
Set a recurring meeting invite and include a link to the agenda or notebook containing the agenda and notes. This will track discussed actions.
Content
If the team have developed their quarterly Goals , this meeting is not about ‘what to do’ or ‘how to do it’ but rather, ‘how to remove what’s in the way of getting things done’.
If there are no roadblocks, share the good news and get on with your day.
Do not talk about work that is progressing well or has a high confidence score of achieving the objective. Spend most of your time on the roadblocks and how to remove them.
That’s why you’re all there.
There is nothing better than a group of smart people working together to remove the roadblocks for of an individual.
The agenda template
| Agenda item | Explanation | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Wins | Share the good news from across the team. Ensure each person has a good news item. This not only shares information that may not be known but also builds optimism and strengthens the growth mindset. | 15 |
| Goal and task review | Review team goals, identify any roadblocks. If there are any roadblocks, create them on the roadblock list. | 10 |
| Roadblocks | Problem solve your roadblocks in order of priority. Any roadblocks identified during Goal/task review are on the list for discussion. Spend the time here as a team removing roadblocks. This is why you're here. | 60 |
| Actions | Confirm any actions, update any tasks, mark up any notes. Hit 'End' meeting and watch the magic unfold as your meeting minutes are sent to your meeting attendees. | 5 |
Get this meeting framework and three more in our Waymaker Academy course, Effective Meetings, free to all users of Waymaker. Sign up here for a free trial of Waymaker.
Use Waymaker Dashboards for business and team goal health
As each team member has their own goals being tracked in Waymaker, you can use the Dashboard to explore goals and outcomes by role, team, user, function and status.
In one click you can be viewing a slice of the organization, the progress to goal and the confidence of delivery.
Use Waymaker Tasks to track and deliver strategic actions from leadership meetings
As each team member manages their Goals (OKRs) and tasks in Waymaker, it’s easy to create, edit, complete and collaborate on goals.
Either create a task direct from your home page, Goal detail page or in the Task module.
Get the Leadership team meeting and 3 more meeting frameworks in Waymaker Academy Effective Meetings.
Use Waymaker to run effective meetings
Waymaker enables strategic alignment on teams of 2 to 2,000+.
Waymaker is the intelligent business strategy platform that helps you build the organization of the future, today.
Find your growth gaps, build your roadmaps, align your team with OKRs and see exactly what is needed to win your quarter.
Sign up for a free 30 day trial of Waymaker.io
Find out even more about the Waymaker Meetings module in our most recent podcast here.
