Weekly Leadership Team Meetings As a Source of Competitive Advantage
Weekly Leadership Team meetings are a massive differentiator!
We are seeing those who are able to hone their weekly Leadership Team meeting, create an even more powerful machine of focus and collaboration that helps propel their businesses to the next level.
I have been fortunate enough to sit-in on a number of our clients’ Weekly Leadership Team meetings. As with anything, I get to see the whole spectrum of performance and productivity in these meetings.
On one end of the spectrum, we have businesses who spend most of the meeting with their team producing long-winded, detailed updates for each of their priorities. It’s a reporting session, where there is minimal engagement or discussion. Team members are disengaged while others are talking, and just waiting for their turn to give an update. There isn’t a lot of querying and questioning, nor is there much driving for action and accountability.
On the other end of the spectrum are the businesses who are sharp, honed, prepared and focused, producing targeted, energetic updates regarding their Quarterly Priorities. Team members, not just the CEO are challenging progress and outcomes, and there’s a constant theme of collaboration and questioning as to how “can we get the outcomes we want, better and quicker”.
Where does your team sit?
The INTENT of a Weekly Leadership Team meeting (“Visage Growth Partners’ style”), it is all about FOCUS and COLLABORATION. This is centred around the most important things for your business for the current QUARTER ie. your ROCKS/priorities!
Best-practice Weekly leadership team meetings have an agenda that looks like the following, and lasts for between 30 and 45 minutes. Yes, even for a team of 8-10 people!
Good news, personal/professional
Key Metrics
Business Rock tracking (more detail covered below)
Customer Feedback
Employee Feedback
Major Activity for the week
Close
The "Business Rock Tracking” agenda item is the major area of focus for the weekly meeting. This should be performed as a honed, targeted, energised, insightful progress overview, NOT a long-winded, blow-by-blow, report-back type of approach.
To enable a productive, insightful and upbeat session, we suggest the following practices:
When the meeting commences, ALL updates to your Quarterly Priorities in your Strategic Planning “system” should be completed (using whichever platform you use...we strongly recommend Metronome).
All attendees should have read and reviewed "planning system" updates (focussing on the Quarterly Priorities), and be armed with queries they may have and/or insights they can contribute.
The accountable Rock “owner” should provide a succinct and targeted overview of the progress of the rock that covers the following:
Is it on-track or off-track? This should be represented by the red, amber, green traffic lighting system (although all attendees will already see this represented in the "planning system")
What is the rationale for this status?
If it’s ON track, they would simply articulate the key activities (only the critical few) that are planned for the next week, and what support, if any, they need from their teammates
If it’s OFF track, they should articulate, why it’s off-track, what they’ve done about, what they plan to do to get it back ON track, and what support, if any, they need from their teammates
4. Team members should be actively involved in the meeting. In high-performance teams, you would expect to hear challenges around the following:
How can we enhance the progress of priority "x"?
Seeking clarification as to why a priority has been deemed “on-track” if there are known barriers not identified
How can various Team Members provide action and support to the delivery and success of a given priority?
NOTE: points 1 and 2 are all about PREPARATION. A Team Member is not only responsible to provide an update of their priorities, BUT they must also have reviewed others’ priorities too. The greater the preparation, the greater effectiveness of your meeting, and the outcomes across a given quarter!
Whilst this briefing is about a seemingly sterile and boring topic of MEETINGS. We are of the opinion, that IF you can enhance the quality of your meetings, and in particular the WEEKLY MEETING, your business’ performance will thrive. In fact, if you can "perfect" the art of the WEEKLY meeting in your Leadership Team, imagine if all of the teams in your business have equally inspirational, productive, and honed meetings. That would be a major double-down!
If you need a reason to change, think about the alternative having lousy weekly meetings across your business
Please discuss this with your Leadership Team. As always, we welcome your insights and findings. Keep them coming!