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Weekly Team Meetings…we’ve all got them. Conventional business wisdom has 
proclaimed since the beginning of time that the weekly staff meeting is a necessary evil. Lately, ditching the time you spend in meetings is a popular productivity hack, but without the regular time to collaborate with your team, you miss valuable problem-solving time and run the risk of everyone working in a silo—potentially on the wrong things.
The question is, are your weekly staff meetings drab—or fab? Are they an anchor around your team’s neck or the wind in your sails? Do you spend the time on alignment, collaborative problem solving and necessary discussions to get the real work done? Or, do you spend torturous hours staring at the clock while your coworkers mindlessly blab about each and every minute thing they’ve done in the last week (with slides and a printed report)?
Stop having meetings like that - your are creating meeting madness! Status update meetings are a huge waste of time and a drain on your team’s productivity. Interrupting them from their real work to spend hours per week preparing for and participating in a mindless exercise like this is more costly and damaging to their morale and productivity than one should bear. So, stop it! Make sure that your meetings support the outcomes from your strategic planning session.
That being said, don’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Team meetings can also be tremendously valuable. This is your opportunity to gather the brain trust and really help each other with the obstacles that inevitably crop up as you are executing your company’s plans and goals. Rather than ditching the weekly meeting completely, consider a much-needed meeting makeover and can be started with your management meeting.
Here’s a bold comparison of effective vs. ineffective staff meetings:
Start today - change the name of your weekly team meeting, and reset the expectations. Let everyone know that they should share their status updates in advance of the meeting, read each others’ updates and come prepared to have meaningful discussions to solve one or two problems or opportunities each week.
Let me know your best meeting makeover tips, and good luck transforming that boring weekly burden into a fabulous weekly necessity.
Additional Rhythm Systems Meeting Resources:
4 Easy Steps to Fix Your Weekly Staff Meetings [Video]
Download Our Weekly Meeting Agenda
Are You Having Weekly Meetings with Yourself?
8 Ways to Make Weekly Meetings Strategic vs. Tactical (Video)
Weekly Adjustment Meetings vs. Weekly Status Meetings (Infographic)
Meeting Suck! Let's Fix Our Weekly Staff Meetings
Consider using Rhythm Software to run your weekly meeting, where the status and agenda are automatically created every week to keep you on track!
Photo Credit: iStock by Getty Images