We recently changed our “Monthly Team Meeting” to a “Monthly Team Huddle,” and the reason why is more than semantics.
If you know us or have been on our blog for a bit, you know that Openness is one of our company values. It’s part of our DNA to be open to new ideas and concepts and we put it into practice by being avid readers and sponges for compelling thought leadership and research on management, processes, and leadership.
Recently, we’ve been putting into practice the Meeting Model presented in Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Advantage. The book’s focus is on organizational health and how leaders can put in place just enough structure to reinforce clarity among a team. Throughout the book, a few different models are presented but we dare to say the Meeting Model is one that any organization can learn from.
As office environments evolve with employees in-and-out and virtual, clarity with a meeting model can go a long way for time management and expectations. The Advantage: Meeting Model provides a structure that helps clarify frequency, length, and topic of meeting structures. You’ll see that the shortest are dailies, followed by weekly, and then strategic meetings are ad-hoc or quarterly and require more prep, but open discussion.
This is why we now have a Monthly Team Huddle instead of meeting. This monthly time has always been a chance for everyone to sit at a table together and share wins, learnings, and what’s on the horizon – and also to just see each other’s faces instead of email and phone communications. They are important to our culture and ensure we are all living and breathing our values and mission, and “team huddle” reflects that. We always have an agenda, often an administrative item, and a topical conversation in 45-90 minutes that is relevant to the entire team. It is just enough structure to provide clarity and efficiency.
Before you schedule your next team meeting, take a look at the Meeting Model and see if there might be a better format.