Replace Weekly Status Updates with Meetings that Align, Educate, Energize and Unite!

 

 

 

 

 

 What Are People Thinking In Weekly Status Updates?

"I’m bored." "I've got real work to do that will move the KPI needle." "That's too hours of my life I'm never getting back!"

Too many status meetings get repetitive and boring. They can waste time. They often don't move the business forward.

I think weekly status meetings take root when new managers have a staff meeting (because they know they are supposed to have meetings), but they are not sure what to do in their meeting, so they ask each person to give a status update about their work. What ensues is basically a series of one-on-one meetings between the manger and each team member while everyone else is watching  (or checking their devices).

Many Status Meetings Create More Problems Than They Solve

Many status reviews are almost a form of anti-communication. They often do not foster a healthy sharing of knowledge, ideas, and risks. They choke the system with so much detail that the insights can never appear. There are three key problems that status/review meetings cause:

1.  You don’t gain necessary insights about risks and opportunities.
2.  You keep people from doing real work and waste a lot of time.
3.  You fail to discuss the things that would give you insights about risks and opportunities because you spend all your time and energy reviewing KPIs and/or project/task details.

What to Do Instead

There are two things that you need to rework once you decide to stop or reduce the frequency of status meetings:

1.  You need an alternate, effective plan to track status and keep score.
2.  You need to decide what else to do at your team meeting if you are not reviewing status. 

In the spirit of challenging the status quo and the relentless pursuit of a better way, I invite you to experiment with some of these ideas.

Find the Control Points 

The first step in improving your ability and effectiveness in tracking progress is to define the right control points. If you are measuring the right control points, you get very solid information about the performance of your business and team without wading through hours of status detail.
 
Create a Useful Tracking Framework and Process

Once you know what the key outcomes or control points are, and have them staged out on a timeline throughout the middle, then you can create a process and framework for each team to report ahead of time on those key measures.

Each team will still create and use their detailed project plans to do and manage their work, but what gets reported upwards will be a new communication-based, outcome-oriented  report. This report will contain insights about the key control points for each project and how you are performing on those.

Have a Different and Better Meeting

Then when you have the staff meeting or review meeting, reading of the new reports about the control points is pre-work. It gives you a chance to flag the issues, risks, and opportunities. Those become the things you talk about in the meeting. One company got the quarterly business review process down from five full days per quarter to two by doing this. And the quality of the insights and output was better. Everyone was happier.

Better Things To Do In Your Staff Meetings

Now that you have freed up all that status review time, here are some examples of more productive things you can be doing with staff meeting time. Start thinking about using your team when they are together to pursue higher value outcomes  as a team. This is also necessary for building the capacity of your team.

1.  What are the key outcomes we are on the hook for?   What control points should we measure? How will we know if we are achieving them?

It’s really worth putting the question of key outcomes and control points out there for team discussion, and aligning on both the control points and what the measures are. You will be surprised by how many different potential opinions exist if you haven’t had this discussion already. Going forward with dif­fering opinions on what is important and how you measure it results in low productivity.

2.  What are the risks we face? What should we do about them?

It’s always important to remember that everyone  has a different risk profile. You will find that some people are afraid of everything and others are afraid of nothing. When you talk about risks with your team, you’ll get critical insights on how aligned your team’s belief system is about what you are trying to do and how you need to manage the individuals on your team—and you may even learn about an important risk that you didn’t see before.

3.  What is the data we wish we knew about our business? 

Is it knowable? How will we find it? If it is not knowable, what scenarios should we plan for?

Make the list with your team. Get the data you can get and make explicit scenario-based plans for what you will all agree to do when there is no data.

4.  What stupid stuff are we doing?

I'd recommend having this as a team topic at least twice a year. This one never ceases  to pay off. Annoying, time-wasting stuff always creeps into the environment, and then teams just accept that as the new reality. Once or twice a year, talking about “what stupid stuff are we doing?” gives people the permission to not have to just accept the annoying, inefficient, ineffective stuff, but to highlight the issues causing them.  Then as a team you can choose one or two and fix them. Productivity always improves after this meeting.

5.  Question the habits

Habit is a very powerful force that makes organizations get stuck doing things the same way over and over again. Old habits become ingrained, and some lose their usefulness. And then everyone gets too busy to think about how there might be a  better way to do something. One of the most useful things I've repeatedly done in my business and life is to step outside of the my current habits—and  to really observe, question, and then improve them. I learned to always  ask  and investigate:

•  Why do we do this?
•  Who uses this? And what do they use it for?
•  Have we asked them if it is useful?
•  Would something else be better?
•  How much does this cost and why? What do we get?

6.  What has changed?

What has changed  in our market and business, or our customers’ markets and businesses? What does that mean for our plans?
Here again, you will find that some people care deeply and know a lot, and others are happy to just keep their head down plowing away at their former job descriptions. Find out. Discuss. Drive important change.

7.  What improvements can we make?

 What process or infrastructure  improvement would have the biggest impact on our ability to deliver? As the manager you are responsible  for  making improvements and increasing the capacity and capability of  your team over time. But you don’t have to think of all the answers yourself. Crowdsource it with your team. This question is actually important to ask everyone in the organization, not just your direct reports.

8.  What has become harder and easier in our work and business?
What should we consider changing?

At the pace technology and communication changes, something is now harder or easier in your business than it was before. If competition or margins  have become harder, shine the spotlight on it and discuss it as a team.  If technology advances could make things easier, don’t miss it. Don’t keep doing things the same old, slow, hard way because you never paused to think and talk about it.

9.  What should we all be learning?

What should we learn this year in addition to our core work? What do we want to be better at, or smarter about, next year?

Elevate the discussion about what we should all be doing (in addition to our day jobs) to improve. Make it clear that doing the job is only part of the job. Everyone should have goals to improve, and your team should be focused on “something we all need to learn or get better at” at any given point in time.

10.  Who should we thank? 

Who in our company has done something remarkable that we should recognize?
I find that if you don’t have this discussion at your regular team meeting, all kinds of great things happen in your company and they go unseen and therefore un-thanked. Not recognizing exceptional efforts destroys trust. Talk about this so you don’t miss it! 

11.  Who are the stars?

Who are the high potential people in our organization that we should be investing in developing?

Always have a short list of high potential people who should be getting extra exposure, bigger challenges, and introductions to mentors. One of the best things you can do as a leader is to grow top performers in your company It’s good for them, for you, and for the company, and ultimately for the world!

12.  What is our team brand?

Who/what groups should our team be communicating, networking, or improving our brand with? How should we do it?
 
This is a topic that always brings  a lot of energy when discussed in off-sites. Who are the stakeholders  that your team serves? How do they perceive you? How do you need them to perceive you? Do you have any detractors? Do any departments currently have a  wrong assumption about your team or what it does? What is your team brand? What do you want it to be?

Laughter 

*I read once that people are more productive after they have been laughing.  I started opening my team meetings with casual conversation, telling or inviting jokes, and getting people laughing (Now it's a central part of my leadership training classes). 

In the beginning everyone was concerned that I was wasting time, but I was amazed at how quickly we could get down to business and start working on hard problems together after the fun. Once I told them that I was doing this on purpose, everyone recognized how well it worked and appreciated being allowed to be less robot-like.

*Click here to read a related post. Cultivate Laughter at Work to Boost Well-Being and Performance

Meetings don't have to waste time. If run properly they can align, focus, raise energy levels, motivate, inspire, educate, unite and provide a much needed break during the week.

To your greater success and well-being,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

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