March 19, 2020 • 10 mins
It's not surprising that leadership teams abandon weekly meetings—it's so rare to see teams running these meetings effectively! In this episode, Margot and Jim present the framework which leans on the Thematic Goal and gives leadership teams the ability to run productive, energized weekly meetings together in just 90 minutes. We'll take two episodes to cover this topic, so make sure you listen in for both!
What you’ll learn:
- What is a weekly tactical meeting? [00:00:57]
- What’s a thematic goal? [00:02:37]
- How do you run a tactical meeting? [00:04:17]
- What’s the “lightning round”? [00:05:07]
- How do you use the tactical meeting scoreboard? [00:05:41]
- How do you set the agenda for a tactical meeting? [00:08:20]
Download a free tactical meeting scorecard template to fill and use for your leadership team at www.orghealth.coach/tools.
- - -
Let us know if you have follow-up questions about this episode or other leadership team and organizational health topics! We will plan them into future episodes.
Subscribe for new episodes every Thursday.
Connect with the hosts:
Jim Brown’s LinkedIn – http://bit.ly/2Fqs9LU
Margot Thompson’s LinkedIn – http://bit.ly/2FvFJh2
Listen at:
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Google Podcasts – http://bit.ly/3ca0nT0
Spotify – http://spoti.fi/36xgtlp
Stitcher – http://bit.ly/2O6DCVo
As always, you can listen to more and read more at www.orghealth.coach, subscribe to our email list, or follow us on social media.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
JIM (00:04):
Welcome to the OrgHealth Podcast
organizational health.
I'm Jim Brown.
MARGOT (00:10):
And I'm Margot Thompson.
We're consultants and coaches toleaders who are creating healthy
organizations.
JIM (00:15):
We talk about leading at the executive level, not just
the key points, the highlights.
We like to go deeper.
MARGOT (00:22):
Under the surface.
We like to talk about what isn'tobvious.
JIM (00:26):
And maybe what isn't comfortable!
MARGOT (00:28):
Right.
And we come at these things withvery different viewpoints, easy
because Jim and I are very, verydifferent from each other.
JIM (00:35):
That's true.
But the good news is we'veworked together long enough that
we see our differences asstrengths.
MARGOT (00:41):
In fact, they actually allow us to create more health
in our team and the teams thatwe help.
And we're going to do some ofthat right now.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
[inaudible]
MARGOT (00:57):
This week we're tackling what we call the tactical
meetings.
So every week the executive teammeets for about 90 minutes to
make sure that the essentialcritical work needing to be done
is going to move forward withthe best impact for the company.
JIM (01:11):
Right.
And it's actually a bit radicalbecause it turns out that, well,
every leader knows these kindsof meetings should be happening.
Most of them kind of give up tothe idea that we're all so busy
that we can't quite fit them in.
So weekly meetings, as good asthat idea sounds actually aren't
that common in lots ofcompanies.
MARGOT (01:33):
So you mean that everybody ends up working in
silos, so they're just lookingat their own area of
responsibility.
So they're not even realizingwhat the big picture is.
JIM (01:42):
Sadly, yes.
They're, they're so focused on,here's my job description,
here's my kind of bonuscriteria.
I'd better keep my nose to thegrindstone, so to speak.
And they're oblivious to whateveryone else is supposed to be
doing or is doing.
MARGOT (01:57):
So one of the best pieces of this is the company
leaders are brought together bya weekly meeting so that they're
all on the same page.
They're all working on solvingthe most important issues of the
day or of the week or of themonth, helping each other make
the best things happen,reinforcing the big picture...
(02:18):
Just, rather than being justsucked into the minutia.
JIM (02:21):
Right.
And that's so good.
Now, these big picture goals arereally at the heart of this and
we need to make more sense ofthat because it turns out that
our weekly meetings surround orcenter on what those big picture
goals are.
MARGOT (02:37):
So weekly tactical meetings typically springboard
from the thematic goal.
Jim, you want to talk about whatthe thematic goal is?
JIM (02:43):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the big picture goalthat we're talking about, and
the clarity that this team,every team, needs to create for
the company is expressed througha number of factors, but one is
the thematic goal.
It's kind of the centerpiece ofclarity.
What's the big thing that weneed to make sure happens in the
next 6 to 12 months?
(03:04):
That's the thing that's going tocatapult us forward as a
company.
MARGOT (03:08):
So this is really powerful because it's the
executive leadership team'scollective goal.
It comes with supportingobjectives.
And it really breaks down theidea of working in silos.
It prevents it.
JIM (03:20):
Yeah, those supporting objectives, we call them
defining objectives.
There's typically three to sixof them.
Those are the areas that need tobe worked on to move the
thematic goal forward.
If we are doing that every week,looking at those defining
objectives every week, then weare constantly moving the ball
(03:40):
down the field towards that bigpicture objective.
MARGOT (03:44):
Right.
And meanwhile, I mean, there arestandard operating objectives.
So this is the kind of thingthat like the metrics that any
company is always tracking andthat the executive team is
looking at closely stuff liketotal revenue.
JIM (03:58):
Right, and profit, and employee satisfaction...
MARGOT (04:01):
Market share...
JIM (04:03):
Yep, customer satisfaction.
And there's, there's a long listof what might be the standard
operating objectives for yourcompany.
We're not saying these are theones that they have to be.
You figure out what the thingsare that you're watching closely
all the time.
MARGOT (04:17):
Okay.
So what does the weekly meetingactually look like?
JIM (04:20):
Okay, well, we'll get there, but let's first highlight
how these are different thantypical meetings.
The big difference is there's noagenda.
Ooo! What a thought! Well,there's no agenda because
there's a system, there's aprocess of how we do every one
of these meetings.
We don't need an agenda.
(04:40):
There's no pressure to preplan.
People know that typically youdo need an agenda, but they
don't have time, so they show upand maybe put something on the
table that they printed out orwrite something on the
whiteboard.
This takes all the pressure offthat.
There's no agenda for the weeklytactical meeting.
MARGOT (05:00):
Yeah, and I think that's right, and a lot of people would
think that that was really,really weird.
So let's just talk about howthat meeting does work.
JIM (05:07):
There are six stages.
Let's start with the first one.
We call it the lightning round.
It's very similar to the dailystandup, and we've just talked
about that last week, butthere's a bit of a twist.
There's a special emphasis onmaking sure that roadblocks get
shared and where, instead ofasking what's most important
(05:28):
today, we're saying, what arethe big three things you're
working on this week?
We just simply get everyonearound the table to go through
three big things this week andany roadblocks.
MARGOT (05:37):
So then you just jot them down as potential topics
for discussion.
JIM (05:41):
Right.
So then the second one, thesecond stage is the scoreboard.
Talk about that.
MARGOT (05:48):
So everybody on the team, preferably before they
actually even arrive at themeeting, decides on a color code
for each of the definingobjectives and the standard
operating objectives.
So I like to think of it like astoplight.
Like red is trouble.
This is not going ahead as wethink it should.
So we need to take a look at it.
JIM (06:05):
Mhm, and then yellow is concerned.
Maybe there's just questions wegot about this or we're not even
informed about it.
So we should talk about this asa team.
MARGOT (06:14):
Right.
And then if you've classified itas green, it's good to go.
Everything is going along asit's supposed to, as you've
expected, and you don't evenneed to discuss it.
JIM (06:22):
Right.
So this scoreboard stage isabout seeing where everybody
stands on the progress thatwe're making towards the
defining objectives and thestandard operating objectives.
MARGOT (06:33):
And it informs the team about what the meeting agenda
needs to be.
So the things that are ratedred, they need some discussion.
So, the highest number of redsmake it the highest priority on
the agenda.
And then you interweaveroadblocks with the same ranking
based on urgency and importance.
So for anyone who is havingtrouble visualizing exactly what
(06:53):
this looks like, if you go toOrgHealth.Coach, we'll have a
sample scorecard there for youto look at.
Jim, you want to talk about whatthat is?
JIM (07:00):
Yeah, so let's say the thematic goal is double
production.
It's a company that has beenworking on a new product and
they've got the productionworking, but now they need to
scale.
So they've identified threedefining objectives: refine the
production system, catch andlearn from flaws, ramp up
distribution.
So, yeah, the team would cometogether and before they even
(07:23):
get there, they're thinking, howare we doing on refining the
production system?
Well, the guy who is leadingproduction, he will have a very
strong opinion about that basedon his experience doing that
every day.
The person who happens to be onthe leadership team who's from
the legal department, you knowthe corporate counsel, they
(07:43):
might not have a clue.
So she says it's red, and hesays it's green, and someone
would argue, well, he's rightbecause he's the one that's
there.
And what we're trying to helpthe whole team realize: great
that it's refining—that theprogress is being made, but
terrible that the team doesn'tknow about it.
MARGOT (08:05):
Yes.
JIM (08:05):
And it's very appropriate that she would flag it with a
red category code because, forwhatever reason, she hasn't been
updated about where things areat.
They have to solve that problemas a team about team
communication.
MARGOT (08:20):
Right.
So the third stage of themeeting is to set the agenda and
it's the meeting leader whoactually does this.
Now the meeting leader will wantsome input from members of the
team.
It's not a debate though, and itshouldn't take more than a
minute to put this together.
JIM (08:36):
It's really that these points have already been
recorded, and now it's justabout numbering.
Here's the order (08:41):
we're going to talk about refining the
production system first, becauseof the reds that were on that
one.
Then we're going to talk aboutthis other problem with morale,
which was one of the roadblocksthat came up.
And then we're going to talkabout catching and learning from
flaws because there were somereds on that, and maybe there's
another roadblock.
MARGOT (09:00):
Yes.
So at this point we're about 15minutes into the meeting,
JIM (09:05):
Right.
It shouldn't take long to getthis kind of groundwork
established so that you can havea productive tactical meeting.
MARGOT (09:13):
Yeah, and we've covered what the team typically spends
about 10 minutes doing in thedaily standup meeting and we've
got a time sensitive agendaestablished.
JIM (09:22):
Right.
So, very fruitful.
Nobody had to do specialpre-work to come.
They just show up at the meetingand dive right in.
And within 15 minutes nowthey're ready to really talk
about the meat of the issues.
Well, we've got a nice startinto the conversation about
weekly tactical meetings andthere's a lot more to talk
(09:44):
about.
That's what we're going to bebuilding on next week.
So remember, as long as you'vegot the groundwork of having a
thematic goal, definingobjectives, standard operating
objectives, you've goteverything you need to be able
to hold very fruitful meetingsevery week to keep moving the
ball forward.
MARGOT (10:03):
So go and set the groundwork to make your weekly
meetings better, and we'll diginto them further next week.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Okay.
We want you to go out and trywhat we've talked about today on
your own leadership team.
You can ask us questions ordownload notes from this episode
at www.orghealth.coach.
We'd love for you to join usnext Thursday on The OrgHealth
Podcast.
Welcome to the OrgHealth Podcast
organizational health.
I'm Jim Brown.
MARGOT (00:10):
And I'm Margot Thompson.
We're consultants and coaches toleaders who are creating healthy
organizations.
JIM (00:15):
We talk about leading at the executive level, not just
the key points, the highlights.
We like to go deeper.
MARGOT (00:22):
Under the surface.
We like to talk about what isn'tobvious.
JIM (00:26):
And maybe what isn't comfortable!
MARGOT (00:28):
Right.
And we come at these things withvery different viewpoints, easy
because Jim and I are very, verydifferent from each other.
JIM (00:35):
That's true.
But the good news is we'veworked together long enough that
we see our differences asstrengths.
MARGOT (00:41):
In fact, they actually allow us to create more health
in our team and the teams thatwe help.
And we're going to do some ofthat right now.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
[inaudible]
MARGOT (00:57):
This week we're tackling what we call the tactical
meetings.
So every week the executive teammeets for about 90 minutes to
make sure that the essentialcritical work needing to be done
is going to move forward withthe best impact for the company.
JIM (01:11):
Right.
And it's actually a bit radicalbecause it turns out that, well,
every leader knows these kindsof meetings should be happening.
Most of them kind of give up tothe idea that we're all so busy
that we can't quite fit them in.
So weekly meetings, as good asthat idea sounds actually aren't
that common in lots ofcompanies.
MARGOT (01:33):
So you mean that everybody ends up working in
silos, so they're just lookingat their own area of
responsibility.
So they're not even realizingwhat the big picture is.
JIM (01:42):
Sadly, yes.
They're, they're so focused on,here's my job description,
here's my kind of bonuscriteria.
I'd better keep my nose to thegrindstone, so to speak.
And they're oblivious to whateveryone else is supposed to be
doing or is doing.
MARGOT (01:57):
So one of the best pieces of this is the company
leaders are brought together bya weekly meeting so that they're
all on the same page.
They're all working on solvingthe most important issues of the
day or of the week or of themonth, helping each other make
the best things happen,reinforcing the big picture...
(02:18):
Just, rather than being justsucked into the minutia.
JIM (02:21):
Right.
And that's so good.
Now, these big picture goals arereally at the heart of this and
we need to make more sense ofthat because it turns out that
our weekly meetings surround orcenter on what those big picture
goals are.
MARGOT (02:37):
So weekly tactical meetings typically springboard
from the thematic goal.
Jim, you want to talk about whatthe thematic goal is?
JIM (02:43):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the big picture goalthat we're talking about, and
the clarity that this team,every team, needs to create for
the company is expressed througha number of factors, but one is
the thematic goal.
It's kind of the centerpiece ofclarity.
What's the big thing that weneed to make sure happens in the
next 6 to 12 months?
(03:04):
That's the thing that's going tocatapult us forward as a
company.
MARGOT (03:08):
So this is really powerful because it's the
executive leadership team'scollective goal.
It comes with supportingobjectives.
And it really breaks down theidea of working in silos.
It prevents it.
JIM (03:20):
Yeah, those supporting objectives, we call them
defining objectives.
There's typically three to sixof them.
Those are the areas that need tobe worked on to move the
thematic goal forward.
If we are doing that every week,looking at those defining
objectives every week, then weare constantly moving the ball
(03:40):
down the field towards that bigpicture objective.
MARGOT (03:44):
Right.
And meanwhile, I mean, there arestandard operating objectives.
So this is the kind of thingthat like the metrics that any
company is always tracking andthat the executive team is
looking at closely stuff liketotal revenue.
JIM (03:58):
Right, and profit, and employee satisfaction...
MARGOT (04:01):
Market share...
JIM (04:03):
Yep, customer satisfaction.
And there's, there's a long listof what might be the standard
operating objectives for yourcompany.
We're not saying these are theones that they have to be.
You figure out what the thingsare that you're watching closely
all the time.
MARGOT (04:17):
Okay.
So what does the weekly meetingactually look like?
JIM (04:20):
Okay, well, we'll get there, but let's first highlight
how these are different thantypical meetings.
The big difference is there's noagenda.
Ooo! What a thought! Well,there's no agenda because
there's a system, there's aprocess of how we do every one
of these meetings.
We don't need an agenda.
(04:40):
There's no pressure to preplan.
People know that typically youdo need an agenda, but they
don't have time, so they show upand maybe put something on the
table that they printed out orwrite something on the
whiteboard.
This takes all the pressure offthat.
There's no agenda for the weeklytactical meeting.
MARGOT (05:00):
Yeah, and I think that's right, and a lot of people would
think that that was really,really weird.
So let's just talk about howthat meeting does work.
JIM (05:07):
There are six stages.
Let's start with the first one.
We call it the lightning round.
It's very similar to the dailystandup, and we've just talked
about that last week, butthere's a bit of a twist.
There's a special emphasis onmaking sure that roadblocks get
shared and where, instead ofasking what's most important
(05:28):
today, we're saying, what arethe big three things you're
working on this week?
We just simply get everyonearound the table to go through
three big things this week andany roadblocks.
MARGOT (05:37):
So then you just jot them down as potential topics
for discussion.
JIM (05:41):
Right.
So then the second one, thesecond stage is the scoreboard.
Talk about that.
MARGOT (05:48):
So everybody on the team, preferably before they
actually even arrive at themeeting, decides on a color code
for each of the definingobjectives and the standard
operating objectives.
So I like to think of it like astoplight.
Like red is trouble.
This is not going ahead as wethink it should.
So we need to take a look at it.
JIM (06:05):
Mhm, and then yellow is concerned.
Maybe there's just questions wegot about this or we're not even
informed about it.
So we should talk about this asa team.
MARGOT (06:14):
Right.
And then if you've classified itas green, it's good to go.
Everything is going along asit's supposed to, as you've
expected, and you don't evenneed to discuss it.
JIM (06:22):
Right.
So this scoreboard stage isabout seeing where everybody
stands on the progress thatwe're making towards the
defining objectives and thestandard operating objectives.
MARGOT (06:33):
And it informs the team about what the meeting agenda
needs to be.
So the things that are ratedred, they need some discussion.
So, the highest number of redsmake it the highest priority on
the agenda.
And then you interweaveroadblocks with the same ranking
based on urgency and importance.
So for anyone who is havingtrouble visualizing exactly what
(06:53):
this looks like, if you go toOrgHealth.Coach, we'll have a
sample scorecard there for youto look at.
Jim, you want to talk about whatthat is?
JIM (07:00):
Yeah, so let's say the thematic goal is double
production.
It's a company that has beenworking on a new product and
they've got the productionworking, but now they need to
scale.
So they've identified threedefining objectives: refine the
production system, catch andlearn from flaws, ramp up
distribution.
So, yeah, the team would cometogether and before they even
(07:23):
get there, they're thinking, howare we doing on refining the
production system?
Well, the guy who is leadingproduction, he will have a very
strong opinion about that basedon his experience doing that
every day.
The person who happens to be onthe leadership team who's from
the legal department, you knowthe corporate counsel, they
(07:43):
might not have a clue.
So she says it's red, and hesays it's green, and someone
would argue, well, he's rightbecause he's the one that's
there.
And what we're trying to helpthe whole team realize: great
that it's refining—that theprogress is being made, but
terrible that the team doesn'tknow about it.
MARGOT (08:05):
Yes.
JIM (08:05):
And it's very appropriate that she would flag it with a
red category code because, forwhatever reason, she hasn't been
updated about where things areat.
They have to solve that problemas a team about team
communication.
MARGOT (08:20):
Right.
So the third stage of themeeting is to set the agenda and
it's the meeting leader whoactually does this.
Now the meeting leader will wantsome input from members of the
team.
It's not a debate though, and itshouldn't take more than a
minute to put this together.
JIM (08:36):
It's really that these points have already been
recorded, and now it's justabout numbering.
Here's the order (08:41):
we're going to talk about refining the
production system first, becauseof the reds that were on that
one.
Then we're going to talk aboutthis other problem with morale,
which was one of the roadblocksthat came up.
And then we're going to talkabout catching and learning from
flaws because there were somereds on that, and maybe there's
another roadblock.
MARGOT (09:00):
Yes.
So at this point we're about 15minutes into the meeting,
JIM (09:05):
Right.
It shouldn't take long to getthis kind of groundwork
established so that you can havea productive tactical meeting.
MARGOT (09:13):
Yeah, and we've covered what the team typically spends
about 10 minutes doing in thedaily standup meeting and we've
got a time sensitive agendaestablished.
JIM (09:22):
Right.
So, very fruitful.
Nobody had to do specialpre-work to come.
They just show up at the meetingand dive right in.
And within 15 minutes nowthey're ready to really talk
about the meat of the issues.
Well, we've got a nice startinto the conversation about
weekly tactical meetings andthere's a lot more to talk
(09:44):
about.
That's what we're going to bebuilding on next week.
So remember, as long as you'vegot the groundwork of having a
thematic goal, definingobjectives, standard operating
objectives, you've goteverything you need to be able
to hold very fruitful meetingsevery week to keep moving the
ball forward.
MARGOT (10:03):
So go and set the groundwork to make your weekly
meetings better, and we'll diginto them further next week.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Okay.
We want you to go out and trywhat we've talked about today on
your own leadership team.
You can ask us questions ordownload notes from this episode
at www.orghealth.coach.
We'd love for you to join usnext Thursday on The OrgHealth
Podcast.
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