Making Leadership Team Meetings Effective - Episode 11

Transcript:

Lou Quinto:
Hi. Welcome to today's episode of Q & A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Luke Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.

Lou Quinto:
Today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about a topic that differentiates a little bit. We call it the leadership team-

Craig P. Anderson:
Right.

Lou Quinto:
... meeting, and it's different from other regular meetings that we have. And so we're going to talk about how often should you have a leadership team meeting, whether it's either executives or it's a project lead, rules of engagement, how are they different from the normal meeting that we would have on a day-to-day basis, and then lastly, the follow-up. How it's different, and how it's probably more important as far as meeting our objectives and everything. So if we've got a leadership team meeting, whether it's executive or whether it's project, what are you find in the trenches is the best frequency for those meetings?

Craig P. Anderson:
I think it's as much as you need to. I mean, I think-

Lou Quinto:
That's a scary thought.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah. Well, and but I say need right is. Do I just... am I having a weekly meeting because I feel like I should have a weekly leadership team meeting or am I having them... What is the right frequency for it? It could be a monthly meeting that covers a deep dive into where you're at against objectives, and maybe one other meeting during the month where you're checking in on projects. Right?

Craig P. Anderson:
It's the leadership team meeting, whether it's of the product team or leadership team is what's the purpose of it? And the purpose of it is a very high level, the pulse of the business at this, the top level of things like your vision and your mission, how you're executing against top objectives. And I think where people end up having a lot of them, if you start having weekly two-hour leadership team meetings, you're diving down into the weeds at that point, and that's where you really want to come back and say, "What's the purpose of these leadership team meetings?" It's where we on in this project or where are we on the larger scale of the business? I think that's what drives how often you want to have a meeting.

Lou Quinto:
So what you're saying is frequency really depends on the team.

Craig P. Anderson:
The team. Yeah. And avoiding... and the purpose of the meeting, right? If you're meeting once or twice a week as a leadership team?

Lou Quinto:
Right.

Craig P. Anderson:
Maybe you should because the place is on fire and you need to be checking in on those issues, but those aren't leadership team meetings.

Lou Quinto:
Right.

Craig P. Anderson:
This is where are we at on if you keep it up to the high level, that's what your leadership team meeting is focused on. I think the danger is you start diving into the weeds without all the people who live in the weeds at the table, and you start making crazy decisions without that input. So I think it's important.

Lou Quinto:
And in my opinion, it's something that can change. So initially at the beginning of the project, maybe it may be a weekly meeting, but as the project goes on, the group should really ask themselves, "Do we need to be meeting on a weekly basis? Can we push it out to every two weeks?" And so I would see this constantly question your frequency. Just don't accept it as, well, that's the way we always do it because then you're going to start getting into the weeds as you talked about.

Craig P. Anderson:
Are you suggesting we should actually ask ourselves if meetings are valuable to do because that's crazy. That's crazy talk.

Lou Quinto:
I know, I know. And that's why people hire me because I'm crazy. So, okay, next. Rules of engagement. In a previous video we talked about rules of engagement for what I'll call normal meetings where we're solving problems, making quick decisions on daily issues that are happening. Are the rules different at that level, leadership level is to the associate level?

Craig P. Anderson:
Well, one, I don't know if they're different because I think all the rules we talked about in the other video still apply at a leadership team meeting.

Lou Quinto:
So there should be in the agenda.

Craig P. Anderson:
Right, there should be an agenda. There should be facilitation.

Lou Quinto:
Right.

Craig P. Anderson:
We should have things like don't talk over one another because at that point the egos in the room are even higher at the leadership team meeting, right?

Lou Quinto:
Right. Courtesy cursing. What was it?

Craig P. Anderson:
Oh, respectful cursing.

Lou Quinto:
Respectful cursing.

Craig P. Anderson:
Which is the greatest rule you can ever have in a meeting. But I think you also have to talk about what are the outcomes of the meeting? Well one is what's the level of the meeting? Let's agree, this is a 30,000 foot level meeting where we're looking at mission, vision and high level objectives of the business, right?

Lou Quinto:
Sure.

Craig P. Anderson:
So that's a big one. I think another one to look at is when you walk out of that meeting, what is the message to the troops? When we come out of the meeting, I can't have my director of marketing saying the place is on fire and my operations person coming out and saying everything was awesome. What is the message coming out of the meeting? What are we all agreeing to on here? And so I think you need to kind of address those things as you go through the meeting. And some other meeting, what are some other rules of engagement you think are going to be critical for that level of meeting?

Lou Quinto:
Well, I think going back to the definition of the meeting, we're not solving problems here,

Craig P. Anderson:
Right.

Lou Quinto:
We are looking at milestones. We're looking at progress, and we may identify problems or identify decisions that need to be made. But one of the rules is we don't solve problems here.

Craig P. Anderson:
Right.

Lou Quinto:
We point them out, and then someone from this group may go to another group and help solve that problem. But at this level we're not solving problems unless they have to do with the progress of the plan itself.

Craig P. Anderson:
Right.

Lou Quinto:
So not dive into that. And I think keeping that perspective, I think that would be the number one rule is keeping that perspective otherwise your leadership meeting turns into a typical project meeting.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah, and it's a huge temptation to want to fix issues in that meeting.

Lou Quinto:
We're natural problem solvers. We like to solve problems quickly and make decisions quickly.

Craig P. Anderson:
And unfortunately, you may just make some pronouncements in that meeting that's don't really pass the objectivity test or the test of the people who are on the front line. So I think you're right. It's a pretty big rule is we don't solve problems here. I like that rule a lot.

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, because we don't have the data. Good.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah.

Lou Quinto:
Okay. Obviously in a leadership meeting, follow-up is a lot more important here to make sure that the progress is continuing, and that the issues that are preventing us from progressing need to be resolved and everything. And so talk to me about after a leadership meeting, what would your plan, what would your follow-up be?

Craig P. Anderson:
Well, I think some of the things we just talked about, right? That there are... this isn't a problem solving meeting. It may be a problem identified meeting though.

Lou Quinto:
Sure.

Craig P. Anderson:
So I think a big piece of when you start talking about follow-up is you're going to identify issues. So if you're looking at your high-level vision and you're looking at your annual objectives, and as you're reporting out on that, you see, hey, we've got a problem here. It's not let's dive in and spend the next 25 minutes of this meeting on that problem. It is to say let's get that up on the board as a problem. One, that needs to be followed up on. Two, who at this table owns it to report back on we're up or down or what we need to do. And then that person is who are you going to pull in and pull that together. And really clearly identifying, keep that. I mean, in my last company we actually had a big white board where those issues that came up we kept them up on the wall, and who was going to follow up on them, and so we could check in and see what was going on in those meetings.

Lou Quinto:
Right.

Craig P. Anderson:
And so if you don't have kind of a conference room assigned to that, at least get it on a sign on some sort of computer or electronic place where you can track what those issues are. So I think follow-up is not just saying, "Hey, these are the things that are hanging out after this meeting is who's responsible, what's the outcome we're trying to get." You can come back-

Lou Quinto:
And potential resources that may be needed-

Craig P. Anderson:
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Lou Quinto:
... to solve that problem.

Craig P. Anderson:
Absolutely.

Lou Quinto:
So that if you're picking a problem or a situation that needs to be resolved, pushing it down to the next level of the people who are going to be actually doing the problem solving. Giving them a budget, so to speak, of resources. Not just financially but okay, we know this is major issue because according to the plan if this doesn't get resolved, we're going to be two weeks off of our deadline or we're going to go over budget, so we're going to say that we can allocate up to this three people, 12 hours a week to be able to do that. I think that needs to be part of that as well.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah. For one of my meetings for my leadership team was a quick check-in meeting where we just had kind of a big board of all the major projects in the company and they were either on target, off target or danger zone, and we didn't talk about anything that was on target. We only talked about off target and danger zone, and those are the ones we checked up in and then checked up on. So we always kind of knew visually when we talked about mission and some the collaboration discussions, we could visually see where are we in trouble, where aren't we? And before the meeting, everybody had moved the posted notes to the appropriate column.

Lou Quinto:
Right.

Craig P. Anderson:
And we only talked about those we had to talk about. We didn't waste time with a 25 minute check-in on a project we know about. We know what the outcome was supposed to be. Why do we have to spend time knowing it worked?

Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And if colors are alarming, you could have green for those that are on target. Yellow for those that are whoa, we're getting close here, and then red for we're in trouble here.

Craig P. Anderson:
Absolutely.

Lou Quinto:
We need to solve those.

Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah. Perfect.

Lou Quinto:
And again, it goes back to collaboration, being visual. I see a red problem. I know that needs to be addressed real [crosstalk 00:08:52].

Craig P. Anderson:
Absolutely. Perfect.

Lou Quinto:
All right. So key takeaways for today. Easy for me to say. Key takeaways for today. I've picked up that the leadership meeting is definitely different than the everyday meeting.

Craig P. Anderson:
Right.

Lou Quinto:
You're not solving problems. You're not making decisions in this meeting. What you're doing is you're identifying the problems and the decisions that need to be made in order to maintain progress. And the primary responsibility of a leadership meeting is to watch the progress of the project, the company, whatever it is based upon the mission and the vision that has been put forward.

Craig P. Anderson:
And the big milestones. Yeah, that's a big piece of it. And I think the one thing is things are going to come up in that meeting, and you have to have the rule that says we're not going to chase down that rabbit hole here. But the secondary rule to that which is who is going to chase down the rabbit hole, and when are they going to report back? And so I think it's really important to say we're not just going to let those things die off. We're going to keep them identified. We're going to keep on track, but we're not going to spend time in this meeting on those kinds of [crosstalk 00:09:54].

Lou Quinto:
Yeah, and that brings up a good point is that your follow-up from the leadership meeting is more of a... It's a living document. It's not an email you send out and say, "Here's what we talked about," and everyone reads it, and puts it away. This is something that lives somewhere visual where it's either a conference room whiteboard that's dedicated to the project. It's the project manager's office.

Craig P. Anderson:
Right.

Lou Quinto:
Or the executive's office that it's something that's up there that's constantly being watched.

Craig P. Anderson:
Absolutely.

Lou Quinto:
So, good.

Craig P. Anderson:
Perfect. Great.

Lou Quinto:
All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed this video on team leadership, and what we would like you to do is if you like this video, go ahead and click on the like button down at the bottom, and subscribe to Q & A on Breakthrough Leadership so that you know when the next episode is going to come out. Hope you enjoyed today. I hope you learned something. I'm Lou Quinto.

Craig P. Anderson:
I'm Craig Anderson.

Lou Quinto:
Thanks for joining us.