How to Run Your Staff Meeting (Part 2 of 2)
May 28th, 2007Today, mark and I finish up our series on running your staff meeting. If you haven’t listened to last week’s show, you may want to do so.
During the show, we also allude once again to our previous podcasts on the Effective Meeting Protocol (or EMP). We did these shows back in August of 2005, so as we suggested last week, please visit our archives on the website if you haven’t listened to them.
You’ll find those shows here:
UPDATE: If you downloaded the podcast on Monday morning, it is likely you have a corrupted version of the podcast. Unless you like listening to the sound of chipmunks, you’ll probably want to re-download the podcast. If you are listening to the show in your browser and you previously downloaded the bad version, you must clear your browser cache, and in many cases, actually *close* your browser, restart it and then click on the play button. My apologies to all those impacted!
– Mike
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May 28th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I just slitedn to a few minutes of today’s cast. I got a kick out tof the MT new productivity tool - Speed Listening.
I was concerned I had a problem on my computer so I started another one. Same speed listening tool.
I hope you don’t have to rerecord the whole show just to get it slowed down a bit.
Larry
May 28th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Third word should be “listened.” Sorry for the typo
May 28th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I’ll look right into it!
May 28th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Larry,
Yep … I messed up! And no (luckily), we didn’t have to record the show again … I simply needed to do my job “properly”
I let the holidays get in the way of my standard process (stay up until after the show is posted and actually LISTEN to it to check for any problems). I went to bed all dumb and happy … and woke up to this! That will teach me! 
Should be good to go now … thanks so much for pointing out the problem.
best regards,
Mike
May 28th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Mark, Mike,
Once again, great stuff. Thank you. Keep it coming!
Question:
Should staff meetings and O3s be held on separate days?
For efficiency I am thinking to run my (soon to be started) staff meeting before my O3s on Thursday afternoon.
I am sure there are some compelling reasons why I should not do this.
Downsides I can think of:
Information overload. Not enough time to prep.
Upsides I can think of:
Team does not have to travel twice a week to the office (minimum 30 minutes each way). Costs to the business include extra mileage reimbursement and time away from on site support.
I have 3 directs, 2 who are field/home based. We support 20 business units across the UK, predominately within an hour drive of the office/home (M25/M4). The field role should be a minimum 60% on-site, and the remainder home-office based answering queries, project work and monthly reporting.
Suggestions, comments, queries, concerns?
Regards
Rowley
May 29th, 2007 at 1:56 am
Rowley-
Thanks for the kind words!
You can do it that way, in light of the logistics of coming in to the office. I might suggest doing them by phone every other week on non-staff meeting days…but it’s not critical. I generally don’t suggest putting O3s together with weekly staff…but it’s not a hard and fast rule.
Mark
May 30th, 2007 at 5:48 am
I have just an additional comment/suggestion: sometimes I see staff meeting performed with the “boss” at the desk and directs around it. It seems so bad ! I suggest to make it around a different table if possible or in a meeting room different from the manager’s office. This will facilitate communication. For the day it is clear what about timing ? my comment is that you can start or end the meeting with a cup of coffee asking about their families obvoiusly calling their kids by name….
Thanks and greetings from Europe !!
Fabrizio
May 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Fabrizio-
You’re right - NEVER in the boss’s office. Conference room!
Mark
May 31st, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Mark, Mike,
Great casts about staff meetings ! I am now earger to start.
Quick question : what about having a direct’s direct participate ? It would be a special case : a new recruit that need to be updated on everything. I am not sure about that, his direct could take it badly ?
I have another one, but it is not as quick, so it goes on the forum.
Thanks,
Cédric.
May 31st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Mike-
I’m surprised no one has commented on your remark about EMP. Oh no, NBC warfare! Don Anti-Cs! ( . . . and other memories of cold war military life).
regards,
Lou
June 1st, 2007 at 2:00 am
This was a great cast, guys. The second half of it was really gold - great advice, one thing after another.
I lead a virtual team - some folks (3) here in the US in my location, and a group (5) in India. We’ve really worked hard at creating a feeling of “team” across both locations, so we want to all have one team staff meeting.
Any specific tips for this sort of meeting dynamic? One of the things that’s hard to work out is just when to meet - we’re usually 12.5 hours apart, so the meeting time is either early or late for one side or the other.
Anyway, curious about your thoughts on this challenge.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:01 am
quindanna-
thank you for the kind words. We’re glad we’re helping.
Have you listened to our cast on virtual teams? We talk about this issue in there…
Mark
June 1st, 2007 at 11:05 am
Cedric-
For a special case, sure. Generally no, but every once in a while, completely fine.
Mark
June 6th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hello,
I run community of practice meetings that take place on a monthly basis. The meetings are all done via conference call & webex. Team members dial in from the US, Australia and parts of Europe. None of the team members report to me, nor to each other. Its a truly cross functional team meeting to share information on specific topics.
Do you have any advice on how to run these types of meetings? How would you address the starting on time issue given this type of audience?
Thanks
Gian…
June 7th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Mark & Mike,
Amazing show - I have all of them on my iPod for reference. Quick question about staff meetings. We solicit agenda items before the staff meeting and discuss them as a management team. These are often issues that require discussion, points that need to be clarifed and some updates. We don’t tend to roundtable update. How would you see management issues that require discussion being dealt with in your staff meeting model? As part of the person’s 10 minute update? Or as a separate item?
Thanks and once again great information. You should be very proud of your podcasts.
Simon
June 7th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
I have included WWW TALA in my staff meetings for several months and I recommend adding an Industry Rumours (IR) section to this as well.
My group is a support group for a large video game company and our service runs consistiently throughtout the year (i.e. is not project based). Without major projects wrapping up to do a post-mortem on, we need to regularly check-in to see what is going well and what we need to take a look at. Out of these discussions, came the idea to add Industry Rumours.
Adding Industry Rumours to WWWTALA has given people an opportunity to bring up company rumours, industry break-throughs, current news, competitor hiring etc… My staff have brought me all sorts of golden nuggets of information about the latest technology, which competitors might be trying to hire away my staff and I’ve been able to address rumours about the direction of the company.
I recommend WWW/TALA/IR.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Simon-
Don’t solicit anything… expect people to bring it up during their portion, and see how well THEY can lead a discussion about the issue.
Staff meetings ROCK to see who has skills around communication, collaboration, presentation, compromise….
Mark
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Need your advice on the “stand-up briefings for DR’s. I have been running my team meetings for 6 months now with 4 DR’s and setting time aside for briefings. The DR’s have been doing them but they are always ad-hoc and not planned through. I am thinking of putting together a template for them to fill out and share. Any thoughts on this step and do you have any advice of what to put on the template?
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Blueman-
You’re right to require structure and planning. The template is entirely dependent upon the type of work, so do what makes sense.
Mark