Having the Right Kind of Meetings!

Having the right kind of meetings is critical. Without getting this right, what I call Strategic Integration cannot work. Strategic Integration is when everyone in an organization knows the goals of each business unit and works together. The result is that individual business unit goals are met while aligning with the uber strategic goals of your organization. One of the main ways to ensure excellent Strategic Integration in your team is to have the right kinds of staff meetings.

·?????Healthy and productive meetings where strategies are debated, formulated, and approved.

·?????Healthy and productive meetings that provide a safe and constructive forum for disagreements between team members.

·?????Healthy and productive meetings that allow for exchange of information between team members.

?

Notice I prefaced all the above with “healthy and productive meetings.” Many meetings in business are not healthy or productive, nor do they promote teamwork and Strategic Integration. There is an excellent book called Death by Meeting by a leadership guru I follow and admire, Patrick Lencioni. In my years at Microsoft, especially when I was grooming my leadership team, I would regularly buy them leadership books. One of them was Death by Meeting … one of my favorites. I have been a fan of Lencioni’s for years and have tried to implement much of what he teaches in his books within Global Security.

The gist of the book is that most business meetings are boring and have no specific goals in mind. They are a mixture of up-to-dates, some strategy, some operational issues and not a lot of coordination, meaning no Strategic Integration. Lencioni recommends breaking up meetings into two types: “tactical” and “strategic.” Tactical meetings, held once a week, are designed to keep everyone on the team coordinated with each other. Strategic meetings, held once a month, are designed to tackle the more complex issues facing the organization. Guess what? He was right!

After reading the book, we started implementing this meeting strategy. Every Monday morning at 9 a.m., we would gather either physically or virtually as a leadership team. This was our tactical meeting. My team and I would each talk about what we were doing that week. I would discuss major meetings I was having, engagements I was doing, or any budget/HR issues that I was working on. Each of my direct reports would then discuss their major activities for the week. This accomplished a couple of things:

·?????It gave transparency as to what each team in my organization was doing.

·?????It provided a perfect forum to find areas of cooperation.

·?????It set the agenda for future strategic meetings.

For instance, there have been many times when during the tactical meetings, one of my direct reports would say something like “I’m meeting with so and so from the Business Continuity organization regarding an issue.” Another direct report would chime in that they wanted to talk to the same person about an issue. The meeting then gave both of my direct reports the ability to discuss and see if they needed to join forces on the meeting or if one of them could carry the water for the other. Stuff like this happened all the time in these tactical meetings. It kept the “surprise factor” to a minimum. It seems so simple but surprisingly, meetings like this don’t happen often in business. Having a weekly tactical meeting got the week started off right and kept us as a properly coordinated organization.

?

The next meeting, we implemented was a monthly strategy meeting lasting between 2-4 hours. Per Lencioni’s example, these meetings were designed to delve into the most strategic issues facing our organization. Much of the agenda came from discussions started during our weekly tactical meetings. During the weekly meetings, we became good at flagging items needing to be discussed in more depth during strategy meetings.

·?????We would discuss budget issues. Who needed how much and why?

·?????We talked about HR issues. Who was looking for head count and why?

·?????We discussed the status of the major projects in our organization. Where were we in the process? Any potential snafus to be aware of? And were we on track for implementation?

·?????We also used the meetings as forums for team members who had disagreements with each other. Sometimes these disagreements were about resources and funding. Sometimes they were more personal in nature, but we had the time to deal with such problems and mitigate them.

?

Going back to the India HR head count example, unbelievably, things like that happened fr

?

We also had twice a year strategic offsites. This is where my leadership team and I could take stock of where we were strategically during mid-year and plan meaningfully for the next fiscal year. I loved these meetings. It is fun to see the progress you are making on your organization’s strategies while planning for the future!

?

In the end, these strategic meetings were very productive!

·?????Everyone was eventually on the same page. No one could claim they were surprised about decisions or the direction of our organization.

·?????People knew where everyone stood on issues. No hiding behind bureaucracy or passing the buck. Passive/Aggressive types need not apply!

·?????We didn’t just say the words Strategic Integration, we lived those words by our actions and decisions made in these meetings.

·?????We actively killed silos in our organization thereby giving us a greater chance for success major business strategies.

?

We took this meeting methodology one step further. We implemented this meeting strategy (tactical and strategic) in each business unit in our organization. This drove transparency and coordination throughout the organization. We weren’t perfect by any means, but I guarantee that by disciplining ourselves to follow this meeting methodology, we had a leg up on many organizations. We walked the talk!

So the next time you think about how to break down silos in your own organization, think about holding the right kinds of meetings. If done properly, you will reap the benefits of a closely coordinated team/organization and Strategic Integration. You'll be moving in one direction as a team and working together for a common business goal. Let me know how it goes!