Always close your staff meetings with this simple question: “Who’s doing what, and by when?”

Have each person in the meeting acknowledge what they’re committed to doing, and by when. This ensures that people don’t start projects based on items that were merely being discussed in the meeting. You also make it nearly impossible for people to leave the meeting without outlining their next steps.

After you’ve closed the meeting itself, you need to make sure that you know if another meeting is necessary, and when, and if any other participants should’ve been present. The process can always be refined, and it’s important you remain open to that.

NEVER close a meeting without everyone knowing their exact deliverables.

You want people leaving the meeting like this

Do you clarify or classify the style of your meeting in advance so participants are prepared before they walk in the room?  There are basically three different styles of meetings: ‘information share,’ ‘creative discussion,’ and ‘consensus decision.’

An ‘information share’ style of meeting consists of information flowing in one direction only, either ‘up’ to leadership from employees, or ‘down’ from senior management to employees. Requests for clarification can be entertained during this type of meeting, but there’s no real debate or discussion.

‘Creative discussion’ meetings revolve around the process of brainstorming, and getting ideas out on the table without making any decisions about the feasibility or validity of what’s produced. During this style of meeting, it’s critical employees understand that at a later date, key stakeholders will make decisions using the information collected.

When decisions need to be made, ‘consensus decision’ style meetings should be held. These types of meetings tend to get pretty heated, and passionate feelings will almost certainly be expressed. Despite any conflicts that may arise, all participants must reach consensus. Once you’ve concluded the meeting, all feelings and conflicts should be left in the meeting room. Never continue the discussion outside of the meeting.

Curious if you’ve ever seen meetings that fall outside of these three styles ?

‘GS&R’ for short is perhaps the most high impact meeting type I’ve used. I started using them in 1986 when I worked with College Pro Painters, and over the years I’ve learned how to make these meetings extremely effective.

GS&R is a one-on-one meeting that you have with each person who reports directly to you, and so on down the line. It’s when you set goals with your direct reports for the week coming up and ensure their goals are aligned with the objectives of your team and the company. I’ve even used this meeting very successfully in coaching franchisees.

These meetings are meant to be a blend of direction, development and support—it’s not an opportunity for task or project follow up.  This is a weekly thirty to sixty minute meeting during which you coach your team one-on-one, demonstrating to them how to be more effective in their roles. It’s also when a ton of ‘situational leadership,’ an idea developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, gets used.

Done right, GS&R will eliminate 80% of the emails between you and your direct reports during the week. How? Instead of emailing each other with random questions and ideas, you add those to a list to be discussed at GS&R, saving you both tons of time during the week.  Needless to say, it also saves a lot of frustration caused by the miscommunication that occurs in email.

If you’re not routinely meeting with your direct reports on a weekly basis in a format similar to this, start today and you’ll see improvements quickly.

pic: from the movie ‘Fracture’ with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins (I hope your meetings go better than theirs)

Every meeting should have a Chair, a Timekeeper and Participants.

The Chair classifies the meeting type upon invitation to the meeting, announces it at the start of the meeting, and guides the agenda. The Chair also closes discussion five minutes before the end of the meeting to ensure that people can get to their next one, and take care of any other responsibilities along the way.

The Timekeeper role is rather self-explanatory. Timekeepers make sure everyone stays on schedule and that all points in the agenda are covered. They prevent the Chair and the Participants from lingering too long on any one point.

The Participants in a meeting are not passive observers. They need to arrive to meetings prepared to contribute and stay interested throughout the meeting. Participants may also be responsible for maintenance of what I like to call ‘The Parking Lot.’ This is a repository for all ideas that may come up during the meeting, but don’t necessarily need to be handled during it. At a later date, the issues stored in the Parking Lot are addressed.

A company’s leadership teams need a weekly meeting structure to update each other and stay on the same page. ‘Weekly Action Review,’ or a WAR meeting is a weekly ninety minute meeting that each department holds for their entire team. The format is based on a process called ‘Forum Meetings’ used by Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) and Young Presidents Organization (YPO).

For the first thirty minutes of WAR, each person give a quick three to five minute update that answers these questions:

► What went well last week?

► What didn’t go well last week?

► Where am I stuck?

► What are the TOP three things to work on this week?

Having each person follow this system keeps each team aligned with what their working on.

The second thirty minutes is when the team reviews the metrics on the dashboard for that business area, looking for areas of concern as well as bright spots. By reviewing the key numbers for their business area every week, people start holding each other accountable, and realizing their key metrics roll up to the leadership team, so they must figure out the answers before they are asked.

During the final thirty minutes the group tries to “un-stick” some of the areas that team members were stuck on earlier. The group works together to share experiences and ideas to help out their teammates.  This simple sharing process is really impactful in building a team versus allowing the creation of silos, which prevent unification.

Read the info on Huddle below – then watch the video

‘Huddle’ is a Verne Harnish concept based on his Rockefeller Habits program. When we ran it at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, it was a seven minute, all company, stand-up meeting that started at 10:55 and ended at 11:02.

Implementing this will change your company.  Period.

Everyone I’ve taught this too has benefitted greatly from better internal communication and company morale.  It unites the team like nothing else can.

Here’s the format for a Huddle:

Good news. The first couple of minutes, anyone can share good news or praise other business areas, work with customers, fellow employees and so forth.

Numbers. Review and post the key metrics from your sales funnel so everyone has a window onto the key numbers for the business.  If Rockefeller looked at the numbers daily from his oil fields using the world’s first Telex, why wouldn’t we share the key numbers with our employees?

What Does it All Mean? Do a daily forecast on the monthly (and yearly) revenue versus budget.  It was awesome to show the team how we were doing on a daily basis versus waiting until the end of the month to add it all up.

Department Update. This is a glimpse into each business area.  It’s also a way to systematically ensure that business areas were always focused on their quarterly TOP 3 projects.

Missing Systems/Frustrations.  Anyone should share these and do it in a no-blame environment.  After each frustration, have someone take ownership of the problem to make sure it gets fixed.  No debate or discussion should happen at Huddle—issues are raised and someone offers to resolve them.

Cheer. This will be dorky at first, but everyone will grow to love it.  It works well at sporting events.  Try it and you’ll see your staff leave the Huddle pumped and on a positive note.

Lastly, Huddle is a great daily meeting to keep your team focused on your Quarterly Theme too.

Have you been doing huddle at your company yet ?  Comments ?

I dare you to try it.  Hell, I dare you not to.

As a Business Mentor & CEO Coach to growing companies I recommend that companies that want ot grow quickly should have Board Of Advisor meetings at least four to six times a year.  Each meeting should be three to four hours in length.  Meetings should cover questions sent out at least a week in advance to board members.

After roughly one hour, effective board meetings should shift into creative discussion, insight gathering and debate around two to three critical areas the company is working on. If the meeting is run properly, it should be less like a presentation and more like a group discussion. Challenge each other in a constructive way in order to gain the best possible insights and a sound consensus.

As a business mentor, I teach CEOs that reviewing financial statements are also worthwhile at these meetings as board members tend to ask stuff that employees do not.  Reviewing financial statements with your board WILL save and make you money long term.

Lastly, each member should be adding to all topics and not just giving advice from their area of specialty.  Desire everyone’s experiences and questions on all topics being discussed.  If the marketing person only chimes in during marketing discussions then you will miss out.  Encourage people to speak beyond their area of specialty to maximize their perspective.

Even if you have a CEO Coach or Business Mentor like me helping you grow – you absolutely should be building out a proper Advisory Board too.

When I lectured at MIT at the Entrepreneurial Masters Program, I promised the CEOs in the class that we’d start on time.

When I actually delivered on that promise, they were dumbfounded.

If CEOs weren’t present at the start of class, or hadn’t returned to the class after a break, we shut the door and started without them.

A gesture this simple respects people’s time and helps you stay on course.

I coach and mentor CEOs to try to also ’compress time’ when you are booking meetings.  When you are thinking of booking a meeting if what ever time amount you first think you’ll need to have the meeting in – reduce it by fifty percent and book it for that shorter period of time.  So instead of booking it for one hour, book it and finish it in thirty minutes.

Like so many other obligations, meetings tend to fill the space you give them. By compressing the time of meetings, you increase everyone’s productivity, and implement a highly profitable system of time management.

If I asked everyone reading this blog if you’d ever been in one of those meetings where people say a lot and nothing gets resolved, virtually every hand would go up. If you make decisions for a company, this shouldn’t be the norm.

Getting to a place where your meetings mean something once again is a process, but they will help you build a stronger company and a culture of accountability.

Every successful meeting starts with a clear purpose, and it needs to be stated in one sentence and added to the meeting’s agenda. With every purpose, there is a maximum of three possible outcomes. You must include these possible outcomes with every meeting request so people know why they’re attending and what they’re getting done in the meeting.

“No agenda, no attenda.”
If you don’t have one, you shouldn’t be having a meeting. Create a bulleted list of action items in every invitation to a meeting so that people can figure out what’s going to be covered, and in what order.

Meetings without clear agendas go off track and include people whose time would be better spent getting other important projects completed.