By Eric Horwitz, CEO of Net Profit King
Here’s a funny idea: If you run a business and want LESS meetings, LESS interruptions each day (from all those random and sometimes pesky calls and texts from all your staff!) and MORE free time…you’ll get there faster by ADDING several important meetings to your calendar.
I have a lot more free time than most entrepreneurs because I have installed key meetings that run regularly, without fail.
Even if I’m not there to lead them they will run like clockwork. Also I typically don’t lead them because I delegate that to other managers.
There’s a phrase from Jocko Williams, a famous Navy seal who consults with businesses and has blown up in popularity that’s quite simple: “Discipline Equals freedom”
If you want to be more “free” with your mind, then you have to be more disciplined about things that could improve your well being like meditation, journaling, or even therapy.
If you want to be more “free” with your health, then you have to be more disciplined with your diet, sleep and exercise.
If you want to be more “free” during your work week, then you have to be more disciplined with your meetings and weekly calendar setup.
If you run a sizable company with at least a 2-3 person Operations team and a 2-3 person Sales team, then these meetings will be essential. The meetings that I run every week are:
Operations Meeting – 60 minutes: Led by the Operations Director and is attended by the Operations team
Sales Meeting – 60 minutes: Led by the Sales Director and is attended by the Sales team
Daily Huddle – 10 minutes (daily): Attended by everyone
Leadership Meeting – 90 minutes: Led by the CEO and attended by the Operations and Sales Directors, plus any other Mid-level managers
I don’t care what industry you’re in, you need all of these meetings. They will take up SOME time but save you LOTs of time during the week.
If you’re a dentist looking to better manage your practice or you work with schools teaching cooking or you provide transportation for shipping companies…these meetings will aid your efficiency and capacity to grow.
Let’s dive into each one
The Operations Meeting – 60 minutes
This meeting is for anyone in charge of client support, recruiting, account management, data, logistics, administration, etc.
The structure of this meeting (and all of the meetings are):
- 5 min: Share 1 Business Win and 1 Personal Win
- 5 min: Scorecard Review
- 5 min: Quarterly Rocks Review
- 45 min: Issues Solving and Conclusion
A few key principles:
– The meeting starts on time and ends on time, no matter what. Arrive 5 minutes early if it’s on zoom and 10 minutes early if it’s in person.
– The meeting time doesn’t change. Even if the leader is out of the office, then he or she will assign someone else to run it. The time never changes
– The leader of the meeting keeps everyone on track and focused. This includes interrupting or redirecting conversations if someone goes on a tangent.
– Everyone must come prepared and fill out their scorecard, wins, etc.
Here are the individual pieces
Share 1 Business and Personal Win: We’ll start with a quick roundtable in a specific order where everyone shares a business win and personal win from the past week.
Example:
– Business win: We had a great meeting with a new prospective client!
– Personal win: I planned an upcoming trip to Dubai.
Scorecard Review: Next we look at a shared google sheet and go through our Scorecard. Each person on the team has 3-7 numbers they are in charge of each week. These are called “KPI”s or Key Performance Indicators.
Numbers are highlighted green if they’re on track and red if they’re off track. We don’t dive into the “why” behind the number. We just read them off. Any discussion behind a number is saved for the “Issue solving” part of the meeting to keep everyone on track.
Here are some examples of Weekly KPIs. Each has a “goal” and then you’d write how many you did last week.
Sales /Marketing KPIs:
– Outbound calls. Goal 200 (40 per day)
– First Time Appointments with new prospects. Goal: 2
– Email Newsletters Sent Last Week. Goal: 1
Operations KPIs:
– Customer Scores from Surveys. Goal 8 (on average)
– Interviews completed last week: Goal 30
– Successful workshops completed last week: Goal: 200
If someone gets a “red” one week, that’s not a big deal. But if we see a few reds 2-3 weeks in a row, then it’s a definite subject of conversation to fix the problem.
Quarterly Rocks: Each person has 1-3 quarterly rocks, which are 90-day projects. Everyone provides a quick update and notes if there project is “on-track” or “off-track” Projects could include things like:
- Hire a sales director
- Create a new software to track clients
- Hire and train a marketing manager
- Attend a dental conference
Issue Solving and Conclusion: An “Issue” is a question, opportunity or challenge that is best addressed in the weekly meeting. It’s typically one that impacts the entire department. It’s best to write these as questions. Some are more important than others. The goal is not to solve them all, but instead just do the important ones each week, which will make big changes over time.
Examples of Issues are:
– “How can we get better replies with our 2nd and 3rd follow up sales emails?”
– “A client did XYZ, how can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
– “We worked with vendor XYZ, but it’s not moving forward like we thought it would. What can be done?”
As a group we brainstorm solutions, and the leader of the meeting chooses the best one. We’ll write down some To-Do items and then move on to the next issue.
Finally, the meeting Concludes on time. Everyone rates the meeting 1-10 and their participation 1-10.
Sometimes this means we don’t get through all the Issues. That’s ok. I want to be respectful of everyone’s time so we can get back to the work that moves the needle.
Note: The Operations meeting might be a bit longer if there are other items to look over. These could include clients that we’ll begin work with in the next 30 days. Or errors that happened the week before.
Sales Meeting – 60 Minutes
This meeting follows the same structure as the Operations meeting with Wins, Scorecard, Quarterly Rock and Issues, but it might also add some key sales elements like
- Looking at prospects and where they are in the pipeline. It includes reporting on happened last week
- Reviewing invoices that need to get paid
- Examining upcoming meetings with prospects that are on the calendar
Leadership Meeting – 90 Minutes
The Leadership meeting is for when you have department heads that run each meeting. It follows the same format but it has more time for Issue Solving.
Also the scorecard is very Macro-oriented so we look at the 10-15 key numbers to determine the health of the business. If you’re interested, drop me a comment and I’ll share this in another post.
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With all of these meetings, I don’t have to attend all of them, unless I am the head of the department. These days, I attend the leadership meetings, but not the Operations or Sales meetings.
The Daily Huddle – 10 Minutes
The Daily Huddle is a quick all-company meeting. It starts at the exact same time everyday, Mon-Fri.
It could be at 11:45 AM and is typically a phone call that everyone dials in on. Or you could use zoom.
There is a “Huddle Master” that leads the call. This rotates every week. The Huddle Master welcomes everyone to the meeting and each person takes their town.
There is a pre-set order and everyone shares:
- Priority for the Day: The most important thing this person is going to get done today. It’s gotta be specific, and ideally include numbers. “Make sales calls” isn’t a good to-do item. “Make 40 sales calls” is very clear.
- Challenge: This is a quick 1-2 sentence description of a challenge someone is having or something they’re stuck on. It could be something like: “I’m having trouble getting everything on the project manager.” Or “I made 10 calls but everyone hung up.” Or “Indeed is giving me some issues with job postings.”
- News To Share: This is a quick 1-2 sentence item to share with the team. It could be something like “I met with a new marketing manager that could work out yesterday.” or ‘I updated this SOP about XYZ”
If everyone is prepared, they go through these 3 points, and the person says “That’s it” and the next person begins.
At the end of the call, the Huddle Master asks “Does anyone need to stay on the line?”
People reply yes or no. It helps the team communicate with each other daily, even if they are miles apart.
Finally, the meeting ends.
As a manager, I like this meeting because I can see what people are prioritizing, where they need help with and much more.
If someone can’t make the huddle, they can share their Daily Huddle on our project management software.
It really helps people stay connected, share wins and help each other out. Very often people say “Hey George, let’s hop on zoom afterwards and I can fix XYZ”
Also there are no interruptions, so you can go through this huddle QUICKLY. My main company LIFT Enrichment has 25 people on the call and it takes about 10-12 minutes in total.
All of these meetings are mandatory. Especially the Daily Huddle.
If a staff member calls me a lot, I can encourage this person to save their idea for the upcoming weekly meeting.
Interruptions cost a LOT of time. One study showed how each interruption takes 20 minutes to get back on task.
If you called me right now for a “quick chat” it would ruin my state of flow for writing this.
This is why my phone is off most of the day.
And I’m in Dubai, so everyone is asleep right now as I write this.
Try out these meetings, they will change your business…and maybe even change your life 🙂
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