Developing a Structured, Well Planned Meeting Framework

How often does your team meet with a clear agenda and purpose?

These days we have so many meetings throughout the day that sometimes I find myself wondering ‘Is this useful?’. I really believe in the importance of setting a clear agenda for every meeting, so that we all know what we’re walking into, and have real expectations of the outcome of each meeting.

Have you ever heard of ‘The Meeting Cycle’? The Cycle includes four main meeting types:

  • Annual Team Planning Meeting

  • Quarterly Alignment Meeting

  • Monthly Goal Update Meeting

  • Weekly Team Meetings

PM genius @adam actually wrote a fantastic blog post all about The Meeting Cycle and the importance of having a clear purpose to each meeting on the LPMA Blog. Check it out here: https://lpma.com/blog/how-often-does-your-team-meet-with-a-clear-agenda-and-purpose

And let me know, do you have a strategy around making sure your meetings have structure?

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Hi @ashley.giles I am a firm believer in regular meetings for the team, particularly a Weekly Team Meeting and a Monthly 1-on-1 where KPI’s can be reviewed.

There is a great book called “Meetings Suck” by Cameron Herold which you may find helpful. It does come on Audible if you prefer that way of learning.

Setting timeframes around agenda items is super important too.

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For me, the key to the meeting cycle is how they all link together. They aren’t isolated meetings, they all share a theme which is most likely driven by the business plan or action plan.

Interesting post. I just read a book on productivity that advocated a 40/20/40 continuum.
-40% of attention on the preparation of the meeting
-20% of attention on the meeting itself
-40% of attention on the follow up and follow through after the meeting.

More info here on this. I found that this was a great way to plan meeting so that they are kept on purpose and have a purpose afterwards.

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Nice blog article. This article caused me stop and think the following phrase:

“with agenda”

This was immediately followed by the thought:

:poop: I have work to do here. :man_technologist:

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Is anyone doing a “Stand up” or similar with their teams, or sub teams daily… We have just started with Letting as its busy season and we have gone from 4 listings to 26 in 2 days…

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I agree that regular meetings are vital.

One issue I come across is a lack of imput from the team. I feel I tend to talk a lot but don’t get much discussion back. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions how you can improve team involvement and discussion in meetings?

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Hi @kimberley.yeeles it depends on the context of your meeting. My weekly format would look like this:

  1. General business and KPI reviews including some minor weekly awards: Mainly me talking (15mins)
  2. Using mistakes/complaints/procedural pitfalls as a learning opportunity: The people involved will present and facilitate with the team to discuss solutions. I just sit at the back of the room and offer advice where needed (10 mins)
  3. Review 1 existing procedure or implement 1 new one: The team facilities and takes turns in whiteboarding this out. Again I just sit at the back of the room (30 Mins)

@glenn you will probably find the agenda is similar in most meetings. It is also about sharing, collaboration and learning so you don’t have to do or the hard work. The team may have things to prep and present {see my post above}.

Love this! Esp the %!!!
We have a topic each meeting & the team need to answer & send back questions related to that so we can go through eg “Routine Inspections” then bounce back ideas. We cut up the answers and hand around for people to read because we found it hard to get them involved,
We start with a icebreaker game and also have a new person each week bringing in food! Its amazing what that does haha!
Getlighthouse is an amazing 1on1 meeting tool also, logs evertying great for KPI & montlly 1on1 meetings!!

Anyone doing stand up meetings? Love this idea!

We have a topic each meeting & the team need to answer & send back questions related to that so we can go through eg “Routine Inspections” then bounce back ideas. We cut up the answers and hand around for people to read because we found it hard to get them involved :slight_smile:

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for sharing they are brilliant ideas, especially the food idea :joy:

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I shared an office with a girl about 15 years ago. Every time we had a meeting with our boss she would complain that we did not have an agenda. I would kind of say he did okay though, even though it was not written and handed out. you could tell he prepared in his mind.

Fast forward I ended up working for her at a different company where she was the boss. Every meeting we had she would come in and apologize directly to me for not having a written agenda. Her meetings tended to wonder.

My insight from this story, before it can hit paper the meeting organizer has to have the agenda in their head. I have been to and held the Monday morning meeting that went like this:

Good morning!! it is so great to see everyone for our Monday morning meeting!!! These meeting are vital opportunities for us to improve a s a company.

(Pause for team to respond with loud applause, hoots and shouts for rock star team - specifically for the exciting opportunity to get together on Monday morning)

Does anyone have anything we should discuss this week?

:cricket::cricket::cricket::cricket::cricket::cricket:

Well great to see everyone. GO TEAM!! :partying_face:

Lets sing the team song (Meetings do have to last more then two minutes)

:musical_note::musical_note::musical_note::musical_note:

Some of you just don’t seem excited to be here!

Okay next week we will work on the team song again - please keep practicing you guys are great!!

See you next Monday! These meeting are very important!

Sounds leaving the meeting: :roll_eyes::sleeping::angry::sauropod::sailboat::scream::laughing:

Meeting is a failure. if I do not have time as the meeting organizer to prepare an agenda for a meeting I should cancel the meeting.

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Hi @glenn can I just say, your posts has me rolling around on the floor sometimes :rofl:

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Hi Kimberley,
I’m asking my team to bring a case study each week. We’ve found that great - the team gets involved and thinks through what we could have done differently or how we could improve the processes. It’s important to me that they’re open to their mistakes as well as the team learning from each other. At first it was hard for the person being critiqued but now we look forward to it.

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You’re a hoot Glenn! Hilarious!

Really looking forward to reading @terrihandy book suggestion - Thanks Terri!
I have a team of 10 from 10 different offices and our meeting schedule looks like this:
Monday: 8.30am - 8.45am goal setting and predictions (online - not compulsory but you need to write your goals in teams if you don’t attend to keep transparency of everyone’s goals). This makes up our weekly goal and starts the countup.
Tuesday: 9.30 - 10.30 - team meeting (at HQ) with set agenda 10.30 - 11.30 1 hour team prospecting with data ready
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 8.30-8.45 online (How did our prospecting sessions go? What’s working, what’s not?).
Thursdays 20 minute 1-1s online mostly. (How are we going with regards to our predictions, any issues, anything they need from me? How many calls have their made, how many appointments set, missed listings discussion etc.
I’ve asked the team what they’d like to change, but they seem to like it at the moment and it seems to be working for us.

This is a typical agenda:
image
All of the action items, notes etc are recorded and the team can access them from teams where all our information is. I’ve left off the bottom of this photo, but it says, “Next Weeks Agenda” - I tend to find it helps me to write my next weeks agenda while going through the meeting. Then we just add as we go.

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This is great @jodie.stainton Thank’s for sharing. This is a similar approach in a Trello Card where we have some guidelines around time frames and the action points. Whatever tool you use, it is important to have it available to the whole team to be able add in items they want to discuss.

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That’s an interesting way to use Trello @terrihandy…cool! I like that it’s then easy to make ‘cards’ out of the checklist items. Way easier than what I’ve been doing. Will implement asap!

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I like this idea, well done.

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