Where to begin?

March 13, 2007 10:07 AM

StaffMeetingFilter: I'm the original employee in a growing company. Over the past few months we've hired a number of new employees. Now my boss wants to hold weekly formal staff meetings.

I'm to make up the agenda for these meetings. It's been years and years since I've even attended a formal staff meeting and I'm at a loss for what topics need to be covered.

I've got the standard "project review" for each person to discuss what they've got on their plate and to update the group on what's going on company wise, but after that...?

Help me make these meetings interesting and maybe even a little bit fun!

posted by SoftSummerBreeze to Work & Money (22 answers total)

Have staff meetings on Friday afternoon, when everyone's too tired to launch into long descriptions of every detail of their project, and have beers available when the meeting is officially "over". That way people will stick around and have the informal conversations that are usually more valuable than the formal meeting.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 10:22 AM on March 13, 2007

eh, don't worry about it too much. The agenda is just whatever needs to be discussed. So, aside from the round table everyone gets a chance to speak, you have news from the management, an official welcome to anyone new, and that's pretty much it. if you want to make it go over well, make it casual and as short as possible. and bring donuts.
posted by PercussivePaul at 10:24 AM on March 13, 2007

I think you've about covered it - no need to drag the meeting out unnecessarily. If there are any additional announcements that need to be made or interoffice issues that need to be addressed at a particular meeting, they will be self-evident.

Serve food. Donuts and bagels, assuming it's a morning meeting. That will encourage attendance and put folks in a better mood.
posted by amro at 10:27 AM on March 13, 2007

One way to keep people feeling positive about these meetings is to keep them as short as possible. That way if it's not fun or interesting, it's at least short. People dread meetings because they drag on and on. If you let people know "we will be meetin from x time to y time"-- and then stick to it-- then they will be grateful and more involved.

As soon as the finishing time is reached, cut the meeting off. If there is more that still needs to be done, then adjourn for at least an hour and ask only those who need to be present to return for the rest of it. If that's everyone, then at least they've had a chance to move around and address their other work.

If you set a precedent that these meetings are brief, meaningful, and (relatively) painless, people will look forward to them.

From the get-go, you should also make it clear to people that you reserve the right to move things along if things are dragging, and ask people to try not to get their feelings hurt if you wind up asking them to continue their thoughts either at the next meeting or just to you personally.
posted by hermitosis at 10:27 AM on March 13, 2007

I know this isn't quite what you're looking for, but how about useful and brief, as opposed to interesting and fun? Your staff will almost universally appreciate the former, while it's hard to please everyone with the latter, and it can make people feel as though you're taking time away from things they ought to be doing (see the Office for some extreme examples).

Your project review plus company news agenda sounds good. Keep it fifteen-twenty minutes-ish (depending on the size of your staff, of course), with the option for the new employees to stick around afterwards if they have questions or need more direction. I think that's probably the best way to keep everyone happy.
posted by AV at 10:29 AM on March 13, 2007

You might want to consider Scrum or parts of it. Formal staff meetings can be a real drag. Since we adopted that, we know that our status meetings will last no more than 15 minutes. Each person basically follow a script:
"Yesterday, I did [foo], today I'm going to do [bar], my impediments are [baz]." The process is meant to be streamlined and not caught up in details (details are meant to be moved to two or three person meetings). Consequently, our higher level staff meetings are shorter and very big picture and much more tolerable.
Our agenda for a typical staff meeting is more along the lines of:
1. Here's what engineering has accomplished
2. Here's what engineering will do
3. Here's what marketing/sales has accomplished
4. Here's what marketing/sales will do
5. Here are the upcoming shows
6. Here are HR things you need to think about
7. Smoke 'em if you got 'em
posted by plinth at 10:32 AM on March 13, 2007

Agenda: Don't sweat it. Issues will reveal themselves as they crop up. If it's a Friday morning meeting, it should be clear to you on Thursday what you need to talk about.

Skip the food. It's not your responsibility to feed your employees. They should be coming to this meeting because it's part of their job, not because there's food. If people aren't coming to your meeting, run it up the chain to your boss.

Above all, meetings should be short. Everyone's got work to do, and it's annoying to have to give "face time" to a meeting where you're just treading water. Unless you've got a specific thing to discuss that takes a long time, meetings should not run over 15 minutes.
posted by mkultra at 10:35 AM on March 13, 2007

I've got the standard "project review" for each person to discuss what they've got on their plate and to update the group on what's going on company wise

Thats pretty much all you need to do. One thing you do not want to do is go on and on about something that nobody cares about and waist people's time.

We do our meetings on Monday morning which works good for us. We just run through what all projects we are working on and when we anticipate being finished on them. Then we stake our claims to what coops and technicians are available to assist our projects. Sometimes that turns into fist fights j/k.
posted by nickerbocker at 10:42 AM on March 13, 2007

This is from Guy Kawasaki:
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How to run a meeting. Hopefully, you’ll be running meetings soon. Then you need to understand that the primary purpose of a business meeting is to make a decision. It is not to share experiences or feel warm and fuzzy. With that in mind, here are five key points to learn about running a meeting: (1) Start on time even if everyone isn’t there because they will be next time; (2) Invite the fewest people possible to the meeting; (3) Set an agenda for exactly what’s going to happen at the meeting; (4) End on time so that everyone focuses on the pertinent issues; (5) Send an email to all participants that confirms decisions reviews action items. There are more power tips for running good meetings, but if you do these five, you’re ahead of 90% of the world.
-----
posted by avoision at 10:47 AM on March 13, 2007 [3 favorites]

Food is good. As quick as possible is better. Ours (of a company of ~15) are on Monday mornings and are basically a quick summary of the status of each project we're working on, who's doing what, and an opportunity to discuss issues and/or problems people are having.

The good meetings last 15 minutes. The crappier ones drag on for an hour. These long ones generally suck because the people not involved in the project being discussed at any one time get bored, have their minds wander, and generally become resentful when they have deadlines they could be working to make instead.
posted by cgg at 10:53 AM on March 13, 2007

Managers start weekly meetings because they feel they don't have a firm grip on what is happening with the project or company. Try to aim at fulfilling that need.
posted by smackfu at 11:30 AM on March 13, 2007

You might want to take a look at Death by Meeting. It proposes a hierarchy of meetings to keep things running smoothly.
posted by jefftang at 11:31 AM on March 13, 2007

Don't be afraid to simply cancel the meeting in a given week if there's nothing to discuss. OK, whether you can actually do that or not will depend on your boss's attitude, but that would be ideal. A significant fraction of our weekly staff meetings are cancelled due to lack of an agenda, and having the extra time to do actual work is infinitely preferable to meeting because of some vague sense that we ought to be meeting.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:07 PM on March 13, 2007

Don't be afraid to simply cancel the meeting in a given week if there's nothing to discuss.

I STRONGLY disagree with this one. At the very least, make everyone come to the meeting place, then cancel it. In my experience, cancelling regular meetings is always a death knell. It leads to continual questioning of "whether we should have it this week or not", and everyone coming up with excuses not to.

Have the meeting. Make it routine. Keep control.
posted by mkultra at 12:16 PM on March 13, 2007

We have weekly staff meetings on Monday mornings, before lunch. They last about 15 minutes - what projects are in the pipeline? What documents/deliverables are due this week? Who will be out of the office? Any announcements (new hires, people leaving, promotions, org changes, etc). That's pretty much all we can tolerate.
posted by muddgirl at 12:52 PM on March 13, 2007

Also try holding short meetings with everyone standing up; I saw it described at 37Signals and at Lifehacker, and I've had good experiences with this method (though it may vary by group)
posted by mikeyk at 12:54 PM on March 13, 2007

I highly recommend the guys at Manager-Tools.com for any kind of management related advice. (I subscribe to their podcast, in fact). They have a great series of podcasts about running effective meetings that start here. They can be a little militant about their methods, but I am a total convert.

P.S. They even have a sample meeting agenda to download.
posted by misskaz at 1:27 PM on March 13, 2007

It leads to continual questioning of "whether we should have it this week or not", and everyone coming up with excuses not to.

I'm suggesting that SoftSummerBreeze unilaterally cancel the meeting if there's nothing to discuss, or make the decision to have the meeting if there is. I'm not suggesting he should engage everyone in discussion in order to build some consensus of whether to have the meeting or not. "Whether we should have the meeting or not" doesn't enter into it. Everyone else's excuses are irrelevant. If there's at least one agenda item, have the meeting. If there's no agenda items, don't make people waste their time. (Maybe the nature of the business is such that there's one or more agenda items which do need to be discussed every single week. In that case, by all means, have the meeting every week. But don't have the meeting just for the sake of having a meeting.)

At the very least, make everyone come to the meeting place, then cancel it.

Because making people do useless, time-wasting things is good for morale?
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:02 PM on March 13, 2007

I work for a small company, and while I'm very anti-meeting in general, I do find that the weekly meetings are useful for having everyone understand what's going on at any given time. Otherwise we all tend to do our own thing and not share information outside of our respective projects. So the point of *our* meetings is to share information and give a quick update on the status. This may seem obvious, but every few months I notice that people are on the defensive...instead of saying "here's what this project is about and here's where it stands," it turns into "my projects are all in good shape, thanks." So...be sure your meetings are really about sharing information. Otherwise there's not much point, and it's just about patting everyone on the back.
posted by hsoltz at 4:03 PM on March 13, 2007

I must disagree with mkultra: food always perks up a meeting. People stay awake if they're stuffing food into their faces, and it gives them something to do. I have my regular office work meetings at 8 a.m., so food is very much appreciated. We also do the monthly "birthday" celebrations then, so there's cake to look forward to. My other regular monthly meeting is held after lunch and is foodless. God, it's dull.

If you have no reason to meet that month, cancel the meeting at the latest early in the day of (but don't make people walk down there) if there's nothing to discuss. This cheers people up because then they've got a free hour, and making people walk down there is kind of stupid anyway.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:17 PM on March 13, 2007

Frankly I'm not sure I want to see most of my coworkers putting food into their mouths, especially if they're doing it just to stay occupied.

I'll second on the Guy Kawasaki advice above. I always worked for small companies in the past who invariably were terrible with meetings (and in hindsight were really more top-down informational than a meeting of coworkers). Now I work at a large company and I've been a part of meetings that are run exceedingly well. Have someone lead and keep the structure going, don't fall too far into chit-chat or brainstorming, and send out a followup just so that everyone in attendance has something to refer to in the future (with action items if people are directed to accomplish something as a result of the meeting). Don't be afraid to move on to the next agenda item once there's a lull or to cut short a digression, and keep the individual status reports short.

In short, have a reason for the meeting, have the meeting, then end it and let people get on with their days. "Meetings...it beats workin'!" and all that.
posted by rhizome at 4:49 PM on March 13, 2007

We've had some good success using the minutes from last week as the agenda for this week.
posted by smackfu at 6:12 AM on March 14, 2007