TRC Online Meeting Blog: August 2014 Archives

Our fourth article on effective meetings focuses on the quarterly review meeting. Author Patrick Lencioni strongly advocates the use of quarterly leadership team meetings in his book “The Advantage - Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business”. Regarding this meeting form he states, “Activities that should be addressed during these meetings should include reviewing the organization's strategic anchors and thematic goals, assessing the performance of key employees, discussing industry changes and competitive threats and, of course, reviewing the behaviors of the team members in regard to cohesiveness.”

Lencioni recommends the use of an outside consultant or leader of the executive team to participate as a member, organize the meeting and facilitate the discussion. He advises executives to step back and revisit the four disciplines covered in his book: team, clarity, communication, and human systems. The author advises that every organization spend two days each quarter for these developmental review meetings.

We all cringe at the thought of sitting through yet another weekly meeting in which we hash out the events of the seven days and discuss what each team member feels is top priority moving forward. These meetings can seem mundane and tiresome as can the time spent creating an agenda leading up to them. In “The Advantage” Patrick Lencioni addresses how to eliminate the fuss and capitalize on time to ensure your dreaded weekly meeting not only serves purpose, but makes it enjoyable.

According to Lencioni “there is no more valuable activity in any organization than the regular staff meeting of a leadership team.” He has designated weekly or bi-weekly meetings for tactical purposes. These meetings are to quickly create a real-time agenda and assess top priorities. The challenge is evaluating the importance of each priority brought up by team members while eliminating topic distractions.