We fix meetings.
In conversation today with startup consultant Isaac Krasny, (and, in full disclosure - my brother) we were discussing the ubiquitous challenge of meetings (Yes. We are business nerds).
I was telling him about the program that Melanie Boyd Brown and I have launched called Team Kickstarter which is designed to support leaders and teams in building highly effective, valuable teams. One aspect we look at in our work is how meetings are run. In fact, we have been known to sit in on business-as-usual meetings, sometimes to observe and sometimes to interject.
Isaac remarked. “Oh, so you fix meetings?!“ He shared an example from his startup experience where it was so clear that the meetings became the culture. New folks starting in the org were part of the ‘no agenda, no attending’ school of thought, but eventually had to capitulate to the norms of the organization. For example, that showing up to meetings was the only way to find out what was going on.
Through our kickstarter program we help you define what a successful meeting looks like for your organization, we audit your existing meetings, and look at closing the gap between your current reality and the ideal. One tool we use is the Team Function Model designed by Peter Hawkins.
The team function focus model divides team functions into seven categories:
Coordinating - organizing how the team will operate; deciding who will do what; allocating time, people, roles, resources, etc; agreeing on priorities.
Briefing - communicating to the team updates on important news from other parts of the organization or the stakeholder context.
Informing - communicating to the team updates on important news from other parts of the organization or the stakeholder context.
Decision Making - making proposals, debating them, deciding. Planning - planning how decisions will be communicated, implemented, monitored, and evaluated.
Generative Thinking - jointly creating new thinking and approaches that are more than the sum of individual team member’s previous thinking.
Team cohesiveness - any activities that helps develop the commitment, loyalty, morale and relating within the team.
If you look at a sampling of your organization’s meetings - what percentage of time do you spend in each of these categories? What percentage of time should you be spending in each of these categories?
To find out more about our Team Kickstart program email me at andria@peoplelab.ca!
Our Team Kickstart program is led and developed by Mel Boyd Brown of Elevate Performance and me, Andria Gillis of People Lab. Our partnership consortium is called MAP.
