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We would like to plan a staff meeting more or less like a One-On-One.
2 times a mont

10 minutes for each partecipant to share what he wants
5 minutes for his projects status meeting
5 minutes for presenting new projects/ideas/processes/...

20 minutes for 9 people (the staff team) = 3 hours

Suggestions? Ideas?

PierG

Anonymous's picture

Hi,
the evidence in your post indicates that this will be a very long information meeting. For people to sit in on such a long meeting and really only get 15-20 minutes of "airtime" it would mean that they would have to listen in and not discuss during 2 hrs and 40 minutes.

I run 40 minutes long sales meetings this way and the agenda is very strict.
1) how many calls last week
2) how many calls next week
3) upcoming cases in the quarterly forecast.

The feedback I've received on these meetings is just what I am describing above, people like to discuss and this is more of an information (one way).
The employees does not like these meetings to be to long in my experience, hence the "bashing on three hours".

A suggestion is to get 2-3 minutes for standard for everyone and let people tell you if they want to share something more. Make notes of the topics you want to address in the group during the meeting and use the techniques described in running effective meetings.
This way only 20 minutes will be status/information sharing (so you get the effect of one-on-ones) and after that you can use the dynamics of the group, which is really powerful.

Mark's picture
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PierG and Jonas-

Great question, PierG.

I want you to know that I will respond shortly. I'm on an exceptionally full trip right now, and don't get back to the office til Thursday night. I will post fully on Friday.

Mark

Todd G's picture

Generally, we hold staff meetings once monthly. They are scheduled for two (2) hours and each team member is given the opportunity to present their respected areas. Most are updates on committees that each of us are responsible to attend and report back from. Alot of the time this doesn't take the whole time because, through out the month, we do utilize e-mail to pass on new important messages.....

I chair an education committe and have utilized the outline from Mangager-tools.com for effective meetings. I like the "time frame" (e.g., 0800- Welcome, 0810 - Outreach teaching agenda, -vs- Welcome - 10 min, Outreach teaching agenda - 20 min. etc..) People are well aware of my expectations now especically for starting meetings on time!

One of my pet peeves is not having an agenda prior to the meeting so I know what to expect. I have provided feedback to other committees in which I attend that it is important to have the agenda, items to be discussed and minutes from the previous meeting to review before attending. I have made it my goal to supply the agenda for an up coming meeting 2 weeks before and request for addtional agenda items up to 1 week prior to add. After this, the agenda is re-sent for their benefit. This model really works for me and I'll keep you all posted.

I also participate in 2-3 conference calls annually as part of an advisory team. These work well, and generally we have the information about 1 month in advance to review. The good thing about this team is that we are constently in communication with each other throughout the year via e-mail as well. These typically last 2 hours so there is a lot of dialouge. I would have to say that the majority of this team are High "D"s or C's. We are all in a leadership role on this team, and utilize the DISC model well.

Pier, I think if you could back up and offer 10 min per person, then you cut your meeting to 90 min plus maybe 5-10 min for the "Welcome". I think personally, 90 min to 120 min tops is very reasonable for any meeting.

Mark's picture
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Thanks guys for your thoughtful comments to PierG!

PierG, FYI - I am sending you an article from Harvard Business Review with your HR executive in it. Pretty good stuff about Ferrari and creativity.

Here are my thoughts on staff meetings (do not assume these are all true for all meetings):

NO MEETINGS LONGER THAN 90 MINUTES. Everybody hates them. They're sloppy. Just don't. Even biologically, your brain and body can't take it.

NO COMMITTEE UPDATES. Send those out by email. If people aren't reading email, that's a whole different problem.

WEEKLY. The team needs to see each other. This meshes well with one on ones. Otherwise, if you do it every other week, you start loading up your one on ones in off weeks.

The BOSS gets some time, more than others, to waterfall some things (sharing what PierG has heard/learned from above). Maybe it's 15 minutes.

An agenda goes out in advance, and it ought not to change too much week to week.

Each attendee puts their weekly "update" in the AGENDA in ADVANCE.

In a 90 minute meeting, if the boss takes 15, and everyone has put their routine updates into the notes, and you've had 5 minutes of welcome and admin, that means 70 minutes left over.

The boss then reserves 20 minutes to discuss any BIG stuff that isn't an update, that having the whole team together is helpful with (maybe it's his idea, maybe a member presentation). New planning, strategy ideas, cost savings, hiring plans, etc. This is a discussion, idea exchange, etc. Watch out for long briefings, though they do have a place.

Then, each attendee gets 5 minutes to ASK FOR HELP, insight, people, resources. In other words, they look at their updates and pick one or two things that REALLY need TALKING ABOUT as opposed to BRIEFING (which is boring).

That leaves 5 minutes for parking lot.

Yes, the boss has work to do each week, deciding and getting ready, and he ought to, spending all his folks time for 90 minutes. ;-)

Can you do it differently? Yes, but this is the way I've seen that blows all others away.

Hope this helps!

Mark

esanthony's picture

Mark,

Here is my weekly staff meeting agenda:

1:00 Customer Service
- New Orders
- Customer Complaints
- Other Customer Service Issues
1:05 Sales Manager
- New Dealers
- Opportunities
1:10 Plant Manager
- Production #'s
- Quality Control Issues
1:15 Finish Manager
- Productions #'s
- Quality Control Issues
1:20 Action Item List
- We go over the action items coming due in the next week or two
- Assign new action items
1:35 Waterfall Updates
1:40 Parking Lot
1:45 Adjourn

OK, you are asking yourself why the CIO is running this staff meeting. Well, in this instance I am the team leader for this manufacturing group in addition to being the CIO for all the companies under our umbrella.

Any comments?

Thanks,

Eric

Mark's picture
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Eric-

Seems fine to me! Nice work.

Mark

esanthony's picture

Thanks Mark, I based it on the podcasts you did in the past and so far it is working very well. I give ownership of the different sections to the respective people. I am having a little trouble with them getting their agenda items to me on time to be published before the meeting but I just started them doing that 2 weeks ago.