How cutting down on company meetings is boosting our business

But surely a business needs regular staff meetings?

When I did my degree in Business 20 years ago there was an emphasis placed on the importance of organisational structure, company architecture, hierarchy and departmentalisation. This was something I brought into Emtek in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, it was the logical next step for a fast growing young business. By 2008/9 my week was jam packed with meetings, all in line with the model I’d learnt at Uni (and what I’d seen and benchmarked against other firms in the sector). From meeting with the company board, department heads, finance, operations, production, sales, marketing, the list went on. By 2010 the market had shifted so much and we’d had to engage in so much change within the business, I began to realise that meetings were either to sort out a problem or else they were a drain on our staff, they’d become flat, stale and so difficult to have meaningful outcomes. We were meeting for the sake of meeting because we always met. Now, we operate completely differently.

Team time is fun

In the last 4-5 years we have scrapped nearly all staff meetings within the business. Yes, we meet as directors to plan, review and set targets, but we don’t spend endless hours at this. Instead, we have breakfast with our core management team on a Friday and don’t talk about work! This might sound strange, but we’ve found that when we hang out for 15-20 minutes with fresh coffee and good food, get to know each other better, talk about our families, compare who’s doing the quickest 5k run times for the week or who’s been smashing it at the gym (or trying to!), we end up feeling encouraged, positive, refreshed and having laughed and had fun together. It makes the bigger companywide plans and objectives flow into place with ease because we know each other better, we understand how we all click and how to get the best from each other. By having less formality we gain more trust, drive and ownership of the business overall. I love this

Business briefings

Ok, so we do meet sometimes! Each quarter we hold a Business Briefing meeting. It’s an opportunity to take some time out, review the last few months trading, set out the next 3 months objectives and share key business, product and market information with the staff. I put a lot of time into preparing for this, why? Well, within Emtek we collate data on a daily basis, it helps us track the market, the sales, the flow of stock, our margin, how each sector is performing. It therefore gives us the key information we need to properly inform staff and build realistic, attainable targets – because we can pin it on solid data that we’ve been tracking and capturing over long periods. What I like about the quarterly business briefings is that we set out a crystal clear picture of what we’re aiming to do for the next 12 weeks at Emtek. It’s detailed, everyone is included in the meeting, I identify areas for development, I intentionally highlight and praise staff for their achievements in the business and then close the meeting and allow our teams to get on with it. We try to cap the meeting to 75-80 minutes.

Being accessible

Throughout the course of each week I dock-in with staff, over a coffee, on our way to a site meeting in the car, walking back from the gym together at lunch break, or chatting through a project we’re tendering for. I’ve come to realise that short, clear conversations are all that is needed to help our staff tackle a query, drive a project forward, figure out a solution; always trying to equip them to learn and know this for the future. I have an open door policy in my office, i.e. staff can come in throughout the day and run things past me, or call me on my mobile if I’m out and about. It has meant that we are able to cut our formalised meetings and free up this time for the business to push ahead. 

Every company has different approaches and there are many that work, this way happens to work for us, we’ve plenty to keep working on, learning and developing as a business, but for now I thoroughly enjoy seeing our teams flourish in this way.

Have a great day, take care. Neil