By Dave Fellman
The prevailing wisdom in American “big” business is that too many companies hold too many meetings without getting too much of anything done. That viewpoint has been shared by a wide range of prominent business figures, from Tom Peters and Steven Covey to Mike Doonesbury and Dilbert.
I remember some of the meetings I attended during my own apprenticeship in Corporate America. As clichéd as it probably sounds, I have actually attended a meeting to plan a meeting to cut down on the number of meetings that people had to attend.
Having said all of that, though, I think small companies probably don’t hold enough meetings. And that’s a significant contributing factor to the “communications gap” that keeps many small businesses from realizing their full profit potential.
Last month I wrote about sales meetings. This time I’m talking about full team meetings, and I think you should get together with your entire team at least once each month. I think the right length for this meeting is probably half an hour. At that length, you should be able to hold these meeting either before opening in the morning or after closing in the afternoon.
Within that 30 minutes, I think your agenda should have five components. First, I have always felt that your team should be aware of your sales goals, operational goals and certain components of your profit goals. During the first few minutes of each monthly meeting, I would let my team know how we performed against those goals over the last month, and where we are for the year-to-date.
The second component of each meeting should be about policy and/or procedure, perhaps a discussion of a new policy or procedure you want to implement, or a reminder regarding a policy or procedure that isn’t being followed as well as you want it to be. This is your opportunity to resolve any problems that develop, or maybe better still to head off a problem before it becomes a critical issue!
The third component of the monthly meeting should be the opportunity for your employees to bring up problems that they’re seeing in the operation. This may be the most important part of the meeting, because it’s been my observation that employees often have a better grasp of the problems in a printshop than the owners do. What they don’t always have, though, is the experience to know how to solve the problems, or the feeling of empowerment to try to solve them in the first place.
The fourth component of a monthly team meeting should be an educational component, and the material presented can reflect either product knowledge or operational knowledge. Over the last three months, another of my clients has three different staff members speak for 10 minutes about various “knowledge issues” in their departments.
The fifth and final component of a monthly team meeting should be a reading of the goals for the coming month. In that way, you close every meeting with an understanding of what you want to accomplish over the next month, and you start the next meeting with a look at performance against those goals.
In terms of the time allocated to each agenda item, I think the first and last components should take about two minutes each. The policy/procedure segment should take perhaps 5-6 minutes. That leaves 10 minutes each for the discussion of problems that your employees are seeing and the educational component. If the problems discussion needed more time, I might take a little out of the educational component, but it might be a far better idea to say: “OK, let’s end this discussion for now and move on with our agenda. I’ll talk with (several of) you more later on and report back to everyone at or before next month’s meeting.”
The bottom line here is that well-run meetings are a great form of communication and communication is essential for success. Do you agree?
Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, Cary, NC, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact Dave by phone at 919-363-4068 or by e-mail at dmf@davefellman.com. Visit his website at www.davefellman.com.