THE UNIVERSAL PROBLEM WITH MEETINGS?
INEFFICIENCY.
Does this sound like your company’s leadership team meetings?
• They’re distractions. They interrupt your real work and put you
behind schedule.
• They’re sporadic. You only meet when there’s a fire to put out, and it’s a
painfully chaotic meeting.
• They’re never focused. Meetings are filled with tangents, sidebar
conversations, and wandering discussions that never arrive at solutions.
• They’re filled with unnecessary people. There’s always at least one person
who didn’t need to attend, which adds to your operation costs and reduces
productivity.
We could go on. In fact, on average, business leaders rate the effectiveness of their
leadership team meetings as a 4 out of 10.
So how do you fix this problem
START LEADING WORLD-CLASSMEETINGS
It’s possible to hold better leadership team meetings that actually save time and
increase productivity. By leveraging certain key elements, you can put time back into
your schedule, have a more productive week, and raise the quality of your
company meetings from a 4 to a 10. In the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS),
we call this kind of meeting a Level 10 Meeting™.
The Level 10 Meeting is where all the magic happens. Most of the traction a company
gains is produced in the Level 10 Meeting. It’s incredibly effective because it’s a time
management tool. As you and your team come together for 90 minutes each week,
you’ll save time by avoiding miscommunication, preventing train wrecks, solving people
issues, and keeping key people accountable. You may even look forward to these
regular, weekly meetings!
This eBook will show you how to have productive meetings that increase
communication, accountability, team health, and real results.
THE WEEKLY MEETING PULSE™
Implementing a Weekly Meeting Pulse for your leadership team will create traction by
helping your team stay focused, solve issues, and improve communication. Bringing your
leadership team together each week for 90 minutes gives you an opportunity to make
sure everything is on track.
The Five Points of the Weekly Meeting Pulse
A productive Meeting Pulse should meet the following five criteria:
- Same day
- Same time
- Same agenda
- Start on time
- End on time
These points create a routine, optimize efficiency, and trim the fat from your meetings.
Holding the meeting on the same day and at the same time creates a routine. Starting on
time is key. A late start will eat into your issues-solving time, which is the most important
part of your meeting. Once you have an agenda that works, stick with it so that you’re not
reinventing the wheel each week. End the meeting on time so that you do not create a late
start for any subsequent meetings
The Level 10 Meeting Agenda is a meeting tool that helps your
leadership team run world-class meetings. It keeps you focused on
what’s most important, helps you spot developing problems, and drives
you to solve them. By using the Level 10 Meeting Agenda, everyone on
your team will start accomplishing more.
The agenda was created to optimize your meeting efficiency, eliminate
rabbit trails, and create a dedicated space for solving issues. It’s
important to go through all seven components of the Level 10 Meeting
Agenda in order. Veering from the agenda will put your team at risk of
falling right back into old habits.
Decide Who Will Run the Meeting
The Facilitator runs the meeting, leads the team through the agenda, and keeps everyone
on track. This person must be comfortable moving people along and pushing them
through the agenda when the team is getting off-track.
Decide Who Will Manage the Agenda
The Administrator keeps the To Do and Issues Lists updated during the meeting, and
makes sure the agenda and Scorecard are updated every week.
• Arrive 5-10 minutes early to make sure you’re ready on time, especially if
you’re using any technology during the meeting
• Set up the conference line if team members will be attending remotely
• Open the meeting agenda and Scorecard on your computer
• Open any other documents that will need to be referred to during the Issues
Solving portion of the meeting
• Each meeting participant should have printed copies of all necessary tools
and document
Segue:
Most meetings start late and attendees come into them distracted by the activities they
have just come from. It’s a bad way to start a meeting, and it sets a tone that carries
through. But the right start can make all the difference.
Arrive early, and start the meeting ON TIME with a quick sharing of your best piece of
personal news and business news since your last team meeting. Go around the table and
have each person share. This is a great segue to help you transition from working in the
business to working on the business. It also helps build team health
Scorecard:
This portion of the meeting is designed to keep everyone in the loop on your company
Scorecard numbers. Your Scorecard is a handful of weekly activity-based numbers that
you use to track your progress towards your quarterly goals.
Simply report the numbers and state if they are on track or off track.
The biggest pitfall with most teams is that they launch right into discussing and trying to
solve an issue related to the Scorecard. You must fight that urge and be disciplined: Don’t
discuss anything during this section. If any number isn’t where you expect it to be, drop it
down to the Issues List.
Rocks/ 90 Day Tasks:
Rocks are the three to seven most important objectives for the company and each person
for the quarter. Reporting on the Rocks keeps everyone apprised of your progress toward
achieving your quarterly priorities. It also helps people focus on the ultimate purpose of
the meeting—to work toward achieving those priorities.
Go through the list of Rocks and ask each Rock owner to simply state if they are on track
or off track.
Customers/ Employees:
Share any customer successes or concerns that the team should know about. Next, share
any good news (or any bad news) about individual employees. This is a great place to
recognize employees who have exhibited (or breached) the company’s core values.
Encourage team members to keep their headlines to one sentence to maintain focus and
efficiency. If any action needs to be taken to share the news more widely or resolve issues,
drop it down to the Issues List and reserve discussion for the Issues Solving section.
Any other issue that affects the business should be uncovered here and dropped down
to the Issues List. For example, “The network is slow” or “There’s a big pothole in the
parking lot.”
To Do List:
One of the greatest frustrations of bad meetings is that nothing gets accomplished.
People make commitments to following up on an item or solving a problem, but no action
takes place.
This portion of the Level 10 Meeting Agenda is designed to eliminate that problem by
creating accountability for commitments that were made in the previous meeting.
Review your To Do List to make sure that every action item from last week’s meeting was
accomplished. If something hasn’t been completed, drop it to the Issues List to decide how
to remove any obstacles standing in the way.
This is where TRACTION is produced on a weekly basis. When team members commit
to getting a To Do done in 7 days, and they honor that commitment, progress is made.
Issues Solving:
This is where issues are solved and To Dos are created. Your Issues List will shrink and
your To Do list will grow. As you’ve gone through your reporting, you’ve probably identified
several issues that need to be discussed and solved. You were efficient in updating the
team on the numbers, and now you can focus on solving issues.
Before you begin, give everyone one last chance to think about and add any issues to the
Issues List before you start prioritizing and solving. The list will already include any issues
from last week’s meeting that you couldn’t get to, and the issues you added earlier during
this meeting.
In less than 30 seconds, the Facilitator should identify the three most important issues by
picking Numbers 1, 2, and 3. Never start at the top and work your way down. It’s vital to
solve the most critical issues first, because you don’t want to spend the bulk of your time
discussing less important matters.
Follow the Issues Solving Track™ on the next page to work your way through each issue.
Step 1: Identify
Dig into the issue and make sure you have identified the real issue. What’s really going on
here? What is the root of the problem? What question are we trying to answer?
Step 2: Discuss
In an open and honest environment, everyone must share their thoughts, ideas, concerns,
and solutions regarding the issue.
Step 3: Solve
Commit to what the team believes is the best answer as quickly as possible. In most cases,
the end result is one or more To Dos that need to be completed in the next 7 days by
specific team members. Indecision is not an option.
Before moving to the next issue, recap the To Do and make sure the owner is clear and
committed to completing it within 7 days. Put it on the To Do list with the owner’s initials
and move on to the next issue. Each To Do can have only one owner.
Conclude:
With five minutes left in the meeting, conclude with three things:
1.Recap the To Dos and make sure each one has an owner who will be
accountable for it.
2.Determine if there are any cascading messages to share with others in the
organization, and add these items to the To Do List to ensure completion.
3.Rate the meeting on a scale of 1 to 10. A 10 doesn’t mean you had a perfect
meeting, or a conflict-free meeting. It means your team accomplished what it
needed to, you got what you needed from the meeting, and the process was
followed well.
You should always be averaging an 8 or better. If someone rates the meeting 8 or below,
ask what would have made the meeting better. End the meeting ON TIME
After the meeting
Each person who owns an item on the To Do List is responsible for completing their
items before they are reviewed in the next meeting. The Administrator should update the
agenda for the next meeting by removing solved issues and completed To Dos.
You got this! Maybe give this meeting agenda a try starting next week!