Structure: Build Muscle on Strong Bones – Part 6

A well-run meeting is a beautiful thing.

Last post about meetings. I promise. Today I’ll close out our discussion about meetings. Hopefully, something has resonated with you – maybe a starting place or point to build upon. After our set of block meetings, we hold three more every week.

Marketing Meeting. This is a Zoom call with our marketing manager for a status check on marketing projects, advertising campaigns, digital marketing, and PR. We always work through an agenda. We follow an established schedule which is updated weekly. Once a month, we change this to a 90-minute, in-person meeting to handle bigger-picture marketing efforts.

Safety Committee. This small group meets in person. We call this the Safety Steering Committee. Most of us work in the office or come racing in from remote locations to plan future safety training and look at details about incidents that have happened in the past. Also, using GPS-enabled devices in the trucks, we look at the safe-driving habits of our employees. We have a formal agenda but can accomplish the meeting quickly, unless a safety-related incident has occurred. We have an additional, full committee meeting with the field managers, the COO, the steering committee, and Hernan, the safety manager, on the second Wednesday of each month. At that time, we go into further detail about upcoming safety issues and training.

CEO Prep. Once a week, I meet with Jon, who will take over the company someday. I want him to learn the skills of a CEO. To me, that means having your hands on everything without micromanaging anything. It means a lot of other things, too. We review all the committee agendas and discuss what we want to do for strategy in some of these committees. I mentor him.

Phew!

That ends the typical weekly meeting routine. We do have other ad hoc committee meetings occasionally, like a Compensation Committee Meeting or a more extended meeting on SEM marketing. Finally, Friday is a free day to get stuff done, get caught up, return phone calls, or plan for next week – maybe even take a day off once in a while!

This structure has proven to be remarkably effective for us. Problems are dealt with in a focused, systematic manner, and everything is categorized. We don’t have discussions about HR in the hallway, or lengthy phone calls about customer complaints, or even long meetings, for that matter.

Every session starts on time, has a PAL – a purposeful agenda with a set length. Meetings are safe; nobody is called out or embarrassed or yelling. Each person has action items at the end. Good-natured fun is encouraged, and sometimes we have food. I think people like coming to our meetings. They feel purposeful and engaging. I know this is a bit much if you are just beginning to build your business. Start small, choose what you need the most, and look to build muscle-supporting structure into your organization. A well-run meeting is a beautiful thing.

See you Thursday. Build muscle.