Too many or poorly executed meetings are a waste of time. Your organization and participants will gain little. But a well planned meeting offers the advantages of multiple brainpower and produces many valuable results.
In a previous column, I mentioned that we hold a monthly meeting to bring together the managers from all 11 of our locations. Those meetings have proven to be a effective (and at times fun) means of improving our business.
We hold the half-day meetings mid-month, after each manager has reviewed and accepted their location’s financial numbers for the previous month. We rotate the meetings among our locations. Those attending also include our comptroller, our marketing and operations managers and me.
Throughout the month, I gather news, information and ideas (from conversations I have or things I read) that I want to share at the meeting; I then build a Powerpoint presentation. I start with a quick summary of the previous meeting as reinforcement and a way to re-engage everyone.
Here are some of the other key elements of each meeting:
- Safety committee meeting. Though we hold safety committee meetings at each location, we also hold a corporate safety committee meeting during the managers’ meeting, using a conference call with our safety consulting firm.
- Guest speaker. These half-hour presentations can be vendor updates about new products or service; information from our medical or business insurance providers or brokers, or tips from a human resources specialist. The key is to provide useful information to help our managers personally or professionally.
- Internal updates. We review our overall performance numbers, any changes to insurance programs, and our current and upcoming marketing and social media efforts.
- The “Quick View.” We also do a run-through of each location’s key stats (sales, cost of sales, gross profit, overhead and net profit) compared to last year and to the other locations.
- The “Forecast.” We ask each manager where they are in terms of monthly goals, analyze data pulled from our management system, and discuss projected sales for the coming two weeks. We monitor how close managers were on their projections for the previous month. We’ve held these meetings for years, so the managers understand the expectations for their participation. The meetings provide a forum for praise when they exceed their own projections, but the group also is good at catching when someone is “sandbagging,” projecting too low just to look good when they beat the number. Everyone calls them out. It’s pretty animated and interactive, but it’s friendly competition.
- Facility inspection. Midway through the meeting, we do a walk-through at that location, using a checklist to score it on everything from the landscaping and availability of current magazines in the customer area, to the cleanliness and organization of the production area and consistent use of our “vehicle report card” system.
- “Lunch Wars.” Our guest speakers sponsor part of the tab for lunch, and it’s turned into a bit of fun competition among our locations to out-do each other. Last November, for example, the manager of the location where the meeting was held brought in a complete turkey dinner. Another location did steak and lobster, cooked right at the location. For another meeting, an employee hired a friend who had competed on “Master Chef” to do the cooking – and the food was phenomenal. You just never know what to expect.
- An upbeat conclusion. We always end each meeting with a motivational or funny video.
Because they know the date and location of the managers’ meeting a month in advance, we rarely have a manager miss the meeting. And interruptions from their location are minimal; what I tell the managers is if their location cannot run for half a day without them, they’re not running it properly.
The meetings are typically on a Monday, and each location holds its own meeting later that week, to convey to employees the key information discussed. Each manager sends me a copy of the agenda and notes from those meetings. It’s an effective a way of getting consistent information out to everybody on our team, and that consistency leads to cohesiveness throughout the company.
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