In my first controllership position, I replaced both the controller and the CFO. If you think that’s a big deal, I never got a big head because my salary was not the combined wages of the two I replaced. Accordingly, I remained humble (or should that be humbled?).
I attended two of the controller’s staff meetings before I officially took over. Previously, the CFO attended too, but he has already been let go before my new assignment to replace both executives–the controller was being moved into a new, one-person department that was tailored to her unique capabilities.
Sharon was the accounting manager, and she took about 30 minutes to go through everything she was working on with her small group of five or six team members.
Fran was the closest role we had as the administrator in our department, and we tasked her with fixed assets too. She needed about 20-25 minutes to discuss her work from the prior week.
Joan ran AP, and we could always count on at least one good story a week from her. Joan took about another 30 minutes. In the 1990s, we had a term for Joan–the corporate mom. I have no problem with that term because everyone loved Joan, and she was the heart and soul of our department.
In my first thirty days on the job, I immediately promoted Debbie as our cost accounting manager because she was a get-things-done person. “Debbie, we need to do this; here is how to do it, and here’s where you’ll probably get stuck.” She’d take the idea, maybe ask one question, and then run with it until the job was done. Debbie didn’t take too much time in the meeting because she was so succinct with her comments.
Last but not least was Cindy. She ran the store help desk with her team of six people. Cindy usually needed 15 to 30 minutes each week to discuss what her team was doing.
Let’s stop right here. As a recap, the meetings started weekly at 9:00 a.m. They lasted nearly two hours. We went around the room with each manager or supervisor, explaining what they had been doing the past week. Occasionally, others would ask questions.
What do you think of this meeting format? Do you like it? Would you change it? If so, when and how?
The Almost Perfect Weekly Meeting
I had never been taught how to run meetings. Previously, I had given my share of presentations to small groups of about 12 to 15 people at the most. But that’s not the same as running a meeting.
In my prior role, I directed a small internal audit team. Our meetings were informal. Plus, we’d do lots of sidebars on an as-needed basis. I loved those ad hoc meetings because they were productive and effective.
However, I had never inherited a situation where the weekly staff meeting was so edged in stone. And I hated it. I cannot begin to tell you how boring these meetings were.
I still remembered Barry, our Chairman of the Board, telling me, “Mark, don’t change anything.” That’s because I loved changing things, even if it meant hurting the feelings of others. In this case, I listened to his voice repeating that message over the first month of those staff meetings.
We kept this cadence with no changes in the first two meetings I was in charge of. I then introduced a small but subtle change by my third meeting. In advance, I already knew the big issues of each manager and supervisor because we talked frequently. In our third meeting, I started with those hot points first and opened the meeting for discussion by going through the list that had five to six items on it.
Then, we allowed each person to go through their list of things they were doing. One of the outcomes was a meeting that was about thirty minutes shorter.
I did that for one more week. After that, we only focused on the ‘issues’ list. Generally, those meetings lasted from 20 to 35 minutes.
At first, Sharon was unsure of this approach. She told me she liked learning what everyone else was doing. “But isn’t that what you’re learning from others when you go on your walking breaks with them or eat lunch with them?” While I valued bonding and friendships in the department, I valued another limited resource more–time.
I cannot tell you when, but I’d say it was around week three of this new format that I could tell everyone liked the new format. I also loved the fact that someone in cost accounting could offer ideas to our help desk manager. There was a ton of creative collaboration happening in that room each week.
Was I an expert in meetings? No, I was bored with the old format, and there had to be a better approach.
In my old life, I was a newswriter on small-market radio. No story was generally more than 30-45 seconds, and that even included an audio byte from a source. We had to get to the point in the first sentence, explain the lead in the next two, and wrap it up in the last sentence. In writing upwards of 120 stories a month, I got good at getting my point across quickly and clearly. Couldn’t a staff meeting follow suit?
The Weekly Meeting Format
I started my weekly meeting format with a soft agenda, but the focus was on issues and problems or big projects on the horizon.
Accordingly, you may not need an agenda. I know of some managers that never use agendas, nor do they have a ‘problems list’ prepared in advance. I can imagine Alan Mulally doing that.
That’s not my personality, and I’m going to leave that up to you whether you want to have some structure or have a purely ad-hoc format. I don’t believe there is a right way, just a ‘your’ way, until you get the format dialed in.
The beauty of having an issues list prepared in advance made note-taking easier and tracking pending and to-do items for the next weekly meeting. Each week, I’d bring my list from the prior week to see how we were doing. We also left time for items not on the list.
I didn’t realize this, but we were loosely following an After-Action Review (AAR) format where the first part of the meeting is going over what was supposed to have happened and what did happen. Those questions are followed by addressing the gap between the first two questions and wrapping up with what we’re learning.
My issues approach was a blend of the first two questions in the AAR. Regarding the last question on continuous learning, looking back, we were unwittingly growing our intellectual and human capital without realizing it. Over time, we were becoming better problem solvers without realizing it.
The 5-Part Meeting in Bullet Points
I will never write a book on meetings. If I did, I’m not sure my family members would even buy it. Plus, it would only be about ten pages long. But if I did write one, I’m sure my editor would require me to provide in bullet points the format of the meeting. Well, here goes:
- Quick icebreaker – keep it fun and light (around 5-8 minutes)
- Quick overview of the company financials and the good/bad/ugly (5 minutes)
- The issues list ranked from very to moderately serious (20 to 30 minutes)
- Upcoming projects (5 minutes)
- Wrap (1-2 minutes)
Item number two was important to me. I believed in transparency. Accordingly, I shared important and relevant content from my weekly senior leadership team meetings (I was on two, one for the company and one for the holding organization). My managers and supervisors loved this feedback because it make them feel important, and I sensed they understood their roles in a much bigger cog.
The purpose of the issues list was more about collaboration, not problem-solving. That’s because each manager had her own project management tool they were using to get these issues resolved (two of our team members were certified in Microsoft Project, and that was our project management tool of choice). I have always hated the terms ‘stuck’ and ‘slow’, and those weekly meetings were a tool to help others to gain useful feedback to speed up their projects.
Upcoming projects were important to me. I’m hot-wired to get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I’m the guy who starts working LOC and insurance renewals six months in advance. The better we could prepare for new projects (examples include sales tax audits, financial audits, and vendor reviews), the faster the turnaround. While only a few minutes were dedicated to new projects, there was a high return on that part of the meeting.
Meeting Wrap
Now it’s your turn. What does your weekly staff meeting look like? Is it effective?
The best way to gauge the effectiveness of a meeting is to continually monitor the company’s progress over the 160-something hours between these meetings. Is critical work getting done at an acceptable pace, and is the culture continually improving, one of the by-products of effective staff meetings?