Meeting Cadence for leading your Business from Good to Great

Good-to-Great Meeting Cadence is designed not only to progress us on the hard-edge systems — Winning Strategy, Aligned Execution and Healthy Cashflow Systems — but also to strengthen the soft-edge systems of the organisation — Nurturing Culture, People Excellence Cohesive Team and Coach Cascade Systems. Each meeting in the cadence has its own agenda to fulfil on these objectives.

Meetings are the key to saving team members' time, keeping the team focused, consciously developing cohesiveness and healthy discussions, keeping the culture alive and well, and ensuring that whatever plan is created is focused on and achieved.

There are 7 meetings in the Cadence as follows. The agenda for each meeting is given in the above presentation, along with the duration of the meeting and required participants:

1. Daily Connect
2. Weekly Strategy Execution Meeting
3. Monthly Meeting
4. Monthly Townhall Meeting
5. Quarterly Planning Meeting
6. Annual Strategy Planning Meeting
7. CEO Email Update — Though this is not a meeting, it is a very powerful communication tool to strengthen the organisational culture.

In order to have an effective and efficient meeting, all team members must prepare beforehand — every time. Each meeting has a standing agenda, which makes it possible for all attendees to prepare effectively beforehand. The meetings are effective because the strategic execution plan is developed and agreed upon with the team.

The agenda is set up to strengthen the seven systems of the RYD Business Good to Great Framework in every meeting:

1. Nurturing Culture System
2. Cohesive Team System
3. People Excellence System
4. Winning Strategy System
5. Aligned Execution System
6. Healthy Cashflow System
7. Coach Cascade System

The standing agendas ensure the Cultural and Cohesive Systems are covered in Good News, the People Excellence System and Healthy Cashflow System are covered in the Metrics section, and the Priorities keep a clear focus on the plan and accountability in play. The Dynamic section is where the team members will continue to hone their cohesiveness by sharing stucks, asking for help, or offering help. The discipline of the standing agendas ensures continuous development as a super-performing team by activating the RYD Business Good to Great Framework. The meeting rhythm and the standing agendas are not a recommendation but a must for the good to great journey — of the business, of the leaders and of the CEO.

At the end of each meeting — weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual — the best practice is for the leadership team to agree on 3 Key Messages from the meeting. It is important that the leadership team shares the same messages about the key events, meetings and learnings at the same time with their teams. This will keep the team together and excited as we move forward with the plan to implement RYD Business Good to Great Framework. The messages shared by each leader with their teams must be the same. This ensures all team members have the same information at the same time. It also ensures that the leaders are starting the practice of cascading messages from meetings to their teams.

One Phrase Close ensures before we close a meeting that we check in with each team member. Ask each team member in turn, "From your gut, how do you feel right now in 5 words or less?" It is a chance to check in with each leader and find out exactly where they are, after having been through the meeting.

The discipline of the meeting cadence provides a structure of success for the 7 systems to be implemented. The first step in implementing RYD Business Good to Great Framework is to schedule the meeting cadence and follow it with discipline.

To win the gold medal in the Olympics of Business requires us to bring the discipline worthy of an Olympian on this journey. Our best friends on the bad to good journey, which is a dance to the tune of mediocrity, are stress, long hours and fire-fighting. Our best friends on the good to great journey are — joy of learning, humility of a student and commitment to contribute. It is a joyously fulfilling journey making the discipline required worthwhile, supporting us to lead ourselves, our health, our kids, our relationships, our people and our businesses from good to great, realize our dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure together along the way.
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Loving you,
j.
Source: Metronomics by Shannon Byrne Susko