In my last blog, I talked about how most meetings suck. Now, I want to focus our energy on ways to fix them and have effective meetings. One of the biggest complaints that I hear about bad meetings is the need for an agenda or getting it two minutes before the meeting. While having a meeting without an agenda is horrifying, I have attended several bad meetings with a detailed agenda sent well ahead of time! The problem was that the agenda didn't cover all of the areas that the company needed to discuss to grow its business. It isn't just about having an agenda; it is about having a suitable management meeting agenda template focused on solving your organization's problems.
At Rhythm Systems, we have an agenda that we use weekly and share with all of our clients so that they can get the most out of their meetings. You can use this agenda with or without our excellent strategic execution software. In fact, it is built right into our software so that your Weekly Management Meetings are as easy to run as they are productive - just like our perfect executive team meetings. The software is a great way to collaborate, review KPI dashboards, track, and seamlessly collaborate on all of the many adjustments required to keep your company on track. Ensure you are ready to start the meeting at the scheduled meeting time and recap the action items from the prior week.
1. Always start with good news.
This can be personal or work-related. Starting off with good news sets the right tone for an effective weekly meeting and gets the creative juices flowing. This agenda item is a good time to praise other team members who went the second mile for a client or displayed a fundamental core value of your company. You can mix this up with some of our expert Zoom icebreakers.
2. Go through the company's KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.
These are the vital metrics that tell the story of how your company is doing. The proper dashboard should be a good mix of lagging indicators and leading indicator KPIs to gain insight into the metrics that influence future performance.
3. Talk about the team's progress against the company's priorities and goals.
Priorities are the specific actions that you are taking as a company to help it increase revenue, improve efficiency, or help conquer your market. Your company should be working on three to five priorities for each 13-week Race to have enough team energy to see them through to completion.
4. Share your individual focus for the week.
What does a successful week look like for you? Do you need any other team members' assistance to accomplish that? Is your focus aligned with the business objectives for the week?
5. Discuss your customers, both internal and external.
What type of feedback have you received? Are there victories and bright spots that can be shared across the company? Are there any customers that need a follow-up from a manager? What are they dealing with that you can solve for them?
6. Review your parking lot.
A parking lot is a storage area for items that need further exploration but weren’t germane to the topic being discussed at the time. Parking lots are an effective way to keep meetings on track and should be used by your weekly meeting facilitator. Keeping a spot for these items and ensuring you go back to them to resolve them is a key strategy for keeping weekly meetings focused.
7. Assign a scribe or note-taker.
This person is taking the meeting minutes for the management team. They will distribute the notes at the end of the meeting with action items clearly marked. If you use Rhythm software to run your weekly meetings you can enter them directly in the software for transparency and team accountability.
Use the weekly management meeting agenda shared above to make sure that you keep focused on the critical issues affecting your company. I recommend using a business dashboard for your priorities and KPIs so that you can effectively track your progress toward these goals. A large amount of time, money, and resources go into your weekly meetings. Using this recommended weekly management meeting agenda will help you get the most out of this significant investment and allow you to solve problems during your meetings. To ensure that you are focusing on all of the challenges facing your organization, make sure that you allow all management team members to add agenda topics that are facing their department to their team meetings.