When you start your startup you will be sitting with a small number of people everyday. You will discuss everything and information will flow naturally.
At some point (usually post 10 people) you will find yourself having “meetings”.
Now, meetings are important, I love a good meeting myself, but if not approached thoughtfully you will find that at best they decrease productivity, and at worst, they destroy things.
As a general rule if you find yourself arranging a meeting with more than 3 people then consciously ask yourself if it’s absolutely necessary.
Start ups are small and every hour counts. If someone arranges a “brainstorming” session for 10 people and your company only has 15 people then think of the impact of taking two thirds of the workforce away from doing work for an hour. Could the same meeting be done with 5 people? Could someone send round a skeleton proposal in a Google sheet and invite comments upfront. Do you even need the meeting? etc…
That said, anyone that suggests its possible to run a company without meetings is mad or lying. There are, in fact, a few meetings that are essential and should be rigorously stuck to.
The best way to do this is make Monday meeting day.
At around 20 people you will need to implement a more formal reporting structure (more about this to follow in later posts). You may have plans to keep it “flat” because you want to be different, but by doing this above 20 people you create confusion and uncertainty and frankly reduce your slim chances of success even more.
The good news is if you implement the right framework it will scale as you pass 50, 500 or 5,000 people. Its a little formal and may feel strange but it is completely necessary.
Here is what you should do…..
1. Make Monday the day where everyone is in the office. No external meetings. Be very disciplined about this.
2. Start your day with your “all hands” around 10am — don’t do earlier as people need time to settle and discuss the weekend.
Use the “all hands” as an opportunity to update the company on any weekend events or issues, let people talk about highlights from the week before but most importantly let it set the tone and energy for the week ahead. You should be able to do this in 20–30 mins max. You want it to be lively and engaging.
3. Use the rest of Monday to conduct 1 to 1s with your direct reports. The discipline of doing this every week will pay off. Keep a note of high level actions and compare each week.
4. Hold your Management meeting at 4pm on Monday. This allows the preparation of any data (if you don’t have access to timely and accurate data almost real time at this stage of your company then you are in serious trouble), allows all members to have done their 1 to 1s and for the Management meeting to be a useful part of running your business.
We are all guilty of not sticking to plans as things come up, but if you can implement the above then you will see a rapid increase in productivity, staff engagement and your chances of success will increase.
You then also have the rest of the week to get stuff done just be careful not to have too many meetings!!
Good luck.
