Do This One Thing in Your Business Every Week
Episode 502: Show Notes
Today we get to talk about one of our favorite things — meetings the Traction way! While most people hate meetings, we are going to share a few things that might change your mind. Meetings are notorious for consuming a lot of time, often with little real progress, but we will present you with an outline that will make your every meeting from here on out a super productive, efficient one. We’ve spoken about the book Traction many times, but we want to remind you once more to go read it because this is where this outline and our guidelines around meetings come from.
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Sometimes a meeting is not necessary and a Slack message or quick update will suffice, but other times having a meeting makes sense, and therefore it’s important to know how to approach them. Having a weekly meeting keeps all parties fully informed on decisions that were made, as it can be easy to think that everybody is in the loop when they’re not. If you are someone who has little patience for inefficiency and is always looking for the quickest, most productive ways to communicate and do things, this outline is perfect for you! This is as applicable to small teams as it is big ones, and don’t hesitate to ask your contractor to attend these meetings. Be sure to tune in to this episode to get the best strategy for efficient meetings!
The Ideas Behind the Outline
The idea behind this outline is that you should be able to have the meeting in 30 minutes. We admit our meetings often run to 45 minutes, but it is still a lot shorter than meetings with no structure and time cap. Each item on the agenda should only be given about five minutes and it’s all about updating your to-do-list in one go and letting everyone in one their role. This allows for greater focus, because now you are not constantly going back to your list during the week, but rather getting it finalized at once, with all the role players present. These weekly meetings also help you to see the potential pitfalls and problems that might turn up during the week, and therefore you are better prepared and more proactive about dealing with them. The various sections of the meeting are as follows: segue, scorecard, rock review, customer headlines, to-discuss, and writing down your to-do-list.
Doing the Segue Section in a Team Versus by Yourself
In the context of a group, be a human! If this is the only time you are interacting with your team in a week, spend a minute to ask them how their weekend was. If something comes up, be sympathetic toward what they’re going through. This is not only about your running an army-like professional meeting, but also about connecting with the people in your tribe. This sets the tone and culture for how things are done in your business. If you are by yourself, writing down things you are grateful for or your wins and losses the previous week can be a healthy exercise. We don’t always make time for such moments of self-reflection, but they are important nevertheless.
A Breakdown of the Scorecard Section
Whether you have a team or are by yourself, you can implement the scorecard section meaningfully in your meeting. What you want to do is set measurable things you can track, things you can review regularly to ensure you are staying the course for your quarterly and annual goals. The idea is to quickly check in on your progress weekly, and move on. We have measurables for all aspects of our business, and these have to be in the form of numbers. The outcomes are thus very specific and the scorecard simply asks you whether you achieved your goal: yes or no. Whether your goal for each measurable is expressed in dollars, numbers or a percentage, it doesn’t matter. It is useful to have a column to write down the figure you achieved so that it can be referred back to, and it will be easier for you to recognize patterns. You could also color the “pass” cells green and the “fail” ones red, for example. By reviewing your measurable goals weekly, you keep on track with your progress and are able to adjust certain things so that you still reach the bigger objective at the end of the quarter or year. The scorecard also helps you to establish whether your goals were realistic in the first place.
What the Rock Review and Customer Headlines Sections Entail
The rock review is similar to the scorecard in that you review your objectives, but the former is more broad while the scorecard pertains to smaller tasks. Go read more about the rock review in the book Traction. The customer headlines section should give you opportunities to celebrate as a team, but also to identify certain issues that are happening behind the scenes. Our team is amazing about not informing us about all the small hiccups that come up in our inbox or DMs, but when something happens repeatedly, they let us know. Maybe there is a tech problem that many have run into or something might be unclear on the website. These are the kind of things that come up in the customer headlines section. If it is just you, we suggest that you think about trends such as seeing the same question pop up and then investigating whether there may be a problem somewhere. But this is also a time to celebrate the positive feedback you got!
Moving Into Your To-Discuss and To-Do List Sections
It’s important to have someone to organize and put the to-discuss list in the right order, especially if it’s a long list. Sometimes you might not even get through all your items, but that’s fine. As long as you prioritize them so the crucial ones get ticked off. The items to discuss might be the “fail” items on the scorecard, something that popped up during customer headlines or simply something that needs to be talked about. This is the time to dive in and look for solutions. Sometimes the solution is talking it out; sometimes a specific decision should be made. It’s about finding a way forward then and there and not saying things like, “I will look into it”. See what you can resolve in the meeting. Items that go on the to-do list need to be things that can be done during that week or at maximum, in the week after that. Items that cannot be done in two weeks should not be added into this section, it might need some time in the to-discuss list first. The idea is that the solutions you come up with are broken down into actionable steps that then get put on the to-do list and are assigned to specific people in the meeting. We suggest that one person be put in charge of the to-do list, and items on there translated into whichever project management software you are using.
Quote This
This is as applicable to small teams as it is to big ones, and don’t hesitate to ask your contractors to attend these meetings.
Highlights
The Ideas Behind the Outline. [0:06:47]
Doing the Segue Section in a Team Versus by Yourself. [0:10:34]
A Breakdown of the Scorecard Section. [0:11:47]
What the Rock Review and Customer Headlines Sections Entail. [0:19:06]
Moving Into Your To-Discuss and To-Do List Sections. [0:24:11]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Meetings, Efficiency, Traction, Teams, Reviewing, Customer feedback, Priorities
