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All too often, agendas are made up on the fly, added last minute, or left unchanged from week to week. This renders the agenda lazy and hollow and leaves your team likely uninspired, or worse, wondering “What was the point of that meeting?”

\n\n

When we put so little effort going into a meeting, we grow accustomed to very little coming out. A Harvard Business Review study supports this sentiment, reporting only 17% of executives agree their meetings are productive uses of group and individual time.

\n

This routine, err vicious cycle, perfectly sums up how & why (most) meetings are generally viewed as colossal wastes of time and disruptions to real work. There’s not enough time invested in pre-meeting prep work. No matter how familiar you are with leading meetings - whether you’re a first time manager or a seasoned pro - we want to make sure your meetings are set up for success, and that all starts with a meaningful agenda.

\n

In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven Rogelberg likens an agenda to an event plan. When planning an event, we think about the details, the flow, the experience, and the approach. We should apply that same mindset and process when planning a meeting. In fact, once you factor in attendee time, salaries, and time away from equally essential solo work, meetings can become fairly expensive events in their own right, further justifying careful planning.

\n

Think about showing up to a client without being ready to discuss their account, any services issues, or potential projects coming up.  That should never happen right? That same focus should be brought to your internal meetings!

\n

How to Prepare for Productive Meetings

\n

 

\n\n

1. Know Why You’re Meeting

\n

Meetings must have a purpose and a desired outcome. Before you begin creating an agenda, figure out if you need to meet by asking why. Do you need to solve a problem, make a decision, or do you just want to check in with a direct report? Meetings should be called to address issues that require genuine interaction and engagement amongst attendees. If the topic doesn’t require interaction, another communication medium, like an email or memo, will likely be more efficient. 

\n

Once you’ve decided a meeting is necessary, make the purpose known, even including it in the agenda, so everyone else explicitly knows why you’re meeting. 

\n

 

\n\n

2. Collaborate on the Agenda

\n

For meetings to be transformative, they need to be a shared experience. Ideas for your meeting agenda should bubble up from team members. Rogelberg agrees; “When your employees are encouraged to bring their thoughts and ideas to the table and to have them be truly heard, they tend to feel a greater sense of commitment to and identification with the team and organization”. This lends itself to meetings where attendees are actively involved and invested in the meeting, while increasing the chances of hitting topics of critical importance to all who are present.

\n

What employees propose should definitely be considered, but you, as the meeting facilitator have final say. Encourage attendees to submit topics for discussion 2-4 days in advance of the meeting. Ask them to include a 1-2 sentence reason for why they want a topic included in the meeting. If a topic doesn’t make the cut, privately give an explanation to the employee or move it to a more appropriate meeting, like your 1:1. Make sure to always close the loop, though. Your simple acknowledgement goes a long way.

\n

\n

Strety Users: Our agendas are shared and collaborative. No need to go back and forth about agenda construction. Encourage everyone to add leading up and you can be the gatekeeper for what makes it one. Just get more ideas on the table!

\n

 

\n\n

3. Curate Your Agenda

\n

Now that all the potential agenda items have been collected, it’s time to whittle the list down. Determine which topics will really add value to the meeting and drop any content that doesn’t contribute to the meeting’s purpose and desired outcome(s). 

\n

Studies from Rogelberg suggest that items early in an agenda receive a disproportionate amount of time and attention, so order your topics in order of importance. Know the difference between what’s essential to cover and what would be nice. 

\n

Next, look for agenda items that should be addressed in/around one another. This will help your agenda flow more smoothly.  If all else is relatively equal, prioritize employee-generated agenda items. This sends a strong message around voice, inclusion, and shared ownership. 

\n

Lastly, meetings should always start and stop in the same way. Open with a short ice-breaker or segue. Close with a summation of key takeaways and clarifying ownership of next steps/action items

\n

 

\n\n

4. Share Meeting Responsibilities 

\n

A meeting should always have a facilitator but that doesn’t mean they’re solely responsible for leading the discussion around every agenda item. Each agenda item should have it’s own clearly - and publicly - designated owner.  If an engineer on your team wants to talk about a specific services issue, they need to prep that agenda item and own the discussion. 

\n

Sharing responsibility will also provide an opportunity to develop meeting leadership skills for other team members and it will get more people - and varied voices - involved in the meeting.

\n

\n

Strety Users: Manage the work that results from your meetings with Action Items.  We allow you to assign to-dos and manage their progress from meeting to meeting, so there’s accountability and nothing slips through the cracks.

\n\n

5. Plan For Process

\n

Rogelberg says “planning a meeting is knowing not only what you want to cover but also how you want to go about doing it.” This final step in agenda creation is often ignored or assumed as obvious but it’s imperative you put some thought into the process to which you’ll address each agenda item. 

\n

There are plenty of tools and techniques to consider when discussing certain agenda items - we’ve even written about a few here. Consider the team, the task, and the desired outcome. For example, if your weekly team meeting has an agenda item to discuss KPIs (we love KPIs, we’re all BrightGauge alumni), the process would be “I’ll lead this topic off discussing my team’s KPIs and we’ll go around the room letting each team lead share theirs”..

\n

Leaders are uniquely qualified to attach process to agenda items given their big-picture understanding and their responsibility in ensuring there’s a positive return on time spent in the meeting.

\n

 

\n\n

Summary

\n

An agenda alone will not make your meeting great but putting a little effort into it definitely will. By establishing a purpose, opening it up for collaboration, thinking through flow & process, and divvying out responsibility you’ll change the attitude towards meetings in your company and you’ll increase the return on everyone’s time investment.

\n

If you want to see your meetings improve - and automate much of what you’ve read above - request a demo and let us show you the Strety solution!

","post_summary":"

All too often, agendas are made up on the fly, added last minute, or left unchanged from week to week. This renders the agenda lazy and hollow and leaves your team likely uninspired, or worse, wondering “What was the point of that meeting?”

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

All too often, agendas are made up on the fly, added last minute, or left unchanged from week to week. This renders the agenda lazy and hollow and leaves your team likely uninspired, or worse, wondering “What was the point of that meeting?”

\n\n

When we put so little effort going into a meeting, we grow accustomed to very little coming out. A Harvard Business Review study supports this sentiment, reporting only 17% of executives agree their meetings are productive uses of group and individual time.

\n

This routine, err vicious cycle, perfectly sums up how & why (most) meetings are generally viewed as colossal wastes of time and disruptions to real work. There’s not enough time invested in pre-meeting prep work. No matter how familiar you are with leading meetings - whether you’re a first time manager or a seasoned pro - we want to make sure your meetings are set up for success, and that all starts with a meaningful agenda.

\n

In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven Rogelberg likens an agenda to an event plan. When planning an event, we think about the details, the flow, the experience, and the approach. We should apply that same mindset and process when planning a meeting. In fact, once you factor in attendee time, salaries, and time away from equally essential solo work, meetings can become fairly expensive events in their own right, further justifying careful planning.

\n

Think about showing up to a client without being ready to discuss their account, any services issues, or potential projects coming up.  That should never happen right? That same focus should be brought to your internal meetings!

\n

How to Prepare for Productive Meetings

\n

 

\n\n

1. Know Why You’re Meeting

\n

Meetings must have a purpose and a desired outcome. Before you begin creating an agenda, figure out if you need to meet by asking why. Do you need to solve a problem, make a decision, or do you just want to check in with a direct report? Meetings should be called to address issues that require genuine interaction and engagement amongst attendees. If the topic doesn’t require interaction, another communication medium, like an email or memo, will likely be more efficient. 

\n

Once you’ve decided a meeting is necessary, make the purpose known, even including it in the agenda, so everyone else explicitly knows why you’re meeting. 

\n

 

\n\n

2. Collaborate on the Agenda

\n

For meetings to be transformative, they need to be a shared experience. Ideas for your meeting agenda should bubble up from team members. Rogelberg agrees; “When your employees are encouraged to bring their thoughts and ideas to the table and to have them be truly heard, they tend to feel a greater sense of commitment to and identification with the team and organization”. This lends itself to meetings where attendees are actively involved and invested in the meeting, while increasing the chances of hitting topics of critical importance to all who are present.

\n

What employees propose should definitely be considered, but you, as the meeting facilitator have final say. Encourage attendees to submit topics for discussion 2-4 days in advance of the meeting. Ask them to include a 1-2 sentence reason for why they want a topic included in the meeting. If a topic doesn’t make the cut, privately give an explanation to the employee or move it to a more appropriate meeting, like your 1:1. Make sure to always close the loop, though. Your simple acknowledgement goes a long way.

\n

\n

Strety Users: Our agendas are shared and collaborative. No need to go back and forth about agenda construction. Encourage everyone to add leading up and you can be the gatekeeper for what makes it one. Just get more ideas on the table!

\n

 

\n\n

3. Curate Your Agenda

\n

Now that all the potential agenda items have been collected, it’s time to whittle the list down. Determine which topics will really add value to the meeting and drop any content that doesn’t contribute to the meeting’s purpose and desired outcome(s). 

\n

Studies from Rogelberg suggest that items early in an agenda receive a disproportionate amount of time and attention, so order your topics in order of importance. Know the difference between what’s essential to cover and what would be nice. 

\n

Next, look for agenda items that should be addressed in/around one another. This will help your agenda flow more smoothly.  If all else is relatively equal, prioritize employee-generated agenda items. This sends a strong message around voice, inclusion, and shared ownership. 

\n

Lastly, meetings should always start and stop in the same way. Open with a short ice-breaker or segue. Close with a summation of key takeaways and clarifying ownership of next steps/action items

\n

 

\n\n

4. Share Meeting Responsibilities 

\n

A meeting should always have a facilitator but that doesn’t mean they’re solely responsible for leading the discussion around every agenda item. Each agenda item should have it’s own clearly - and publicly - designated owner.  If an engineer on your team wants to talk about a specific services issue, they need to prep that agenda item and own the discussion. 

\n

Sharing responsibility will also provide an opportunity to develop meeting leadership skills for other team members and it will get more people - and varied voices - involved in the meeting.

\n

\n

Strety Users: Manage the work that results from your meetings with Action Items.  We allow you to assign to-dos and manage their progress from meeting to meeting, so there’s accountability and nothing slips through the cracks.

\n\n

5. Plan For Process

\n

Rogelberg says “planning a meeting is knowing not only what you want to cover but also how you want to go about doing it.” This final step in agenda creation is often ignored or assumed as obvious but it’s imperative you put some thought into the process to which you’ll address each agenda item. 

\n

There are plenty of tools and techniques to consider when discussing certain agenda items - we’ve even written about a few here. Consider the team, the task, and the desired outcome. For example, if your weekly team meeting has an agenda item to discuss KPIs (we love KPIs, we’re all BrightGauge alumni), the process would be “I’ll lead this topic off discussing my team’s KPIs and we’ll go around the room letting each team lead share theirs”..

\n

Leaders are uniquely qualified to attach process to agenda items given their big-picture understanding and their responsibility in ensuring there’s a positive return on time spent in the meeting.

\n

 

\n\n

Summary

\n

An agenda alone will not make your meeting great but putting a little effort into it definitely will. By establishing a purpose, opening it up for collaboration, thinking through flow & process, and divvying out responsibility you’ll change the attitude towards meetings in your company and you’ll increase the return on everyone’s time investment.

\n

If you want to see your meetings improve - and automate much of what you’ve read above - request a demo and let us show you the Strety solution!

","rss_summary":"

All too often, agendas are made up on the fly, added last minute, or left unchanged from week to week. This renders the agenda lazy and hollow and leaves your team likely uninspired, or worse, wondering “What was the point of that meeting?”

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A growing company - or the sudden absence of an office - can make it difficult for a manager to keep a steady pulse on the health and performance of their team. Daily Stand-ups and status updates can tell the story during meetings but a good manager needs a process to collect and manage team sentiment between meetings.

\n\n

At Strety, we call this process 'Check Ins'. Check-ins are recurring single-prompt questions managers and team leads ask to increase engagement and gain proactive insights. The right mix of questions will help surface issues and gauge the real-time health of their team between team and 1:1 meetings, effectively filling in all a manager's blind spots.

\n

In their book Nine Lies About Work, Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall say  “A team with low check-in frequency is a team with low intelligence. Data reveals checking in with your team members once a month (during meetings) is literally worse than useless. While team leaders who check-in once a week see a 13% increase in team engagement, those in check-in once a month see a 5 percent decrease in engagement. There’s also a 2.7x increase in retention that accompanies frequent conversations. As if team members are saying “I’d rather you not waste my time if all we’re going to do is talk in generalities”.

\n

Check-ins are not one-sided.  You have to give to receive. The engagement boost only happens when team members regularly check in AND regularly get a reply. Buckingham & Goodall elevate this sentiment:  

\n

\n

“Checking in with each person on a team - listening, course correcting, adjusting, coaching, advising, paying attention to the intersection of the person and the real-world work - is not what you do in addition to the work of leading. This is the work of leading” 

\n

\n

The more frequent and predictable your check ins, the more real time attention you’ll be able to give to your team’s work, leading to more engagement and higher performance from your team. What we’re saying is: It Starts with You! 

\n\n

Implementing Check Ins

\n

We use check ins to keep our teams engaged and our managers informed; each one serving as its own asynchronous, one-question meeting.  Buckingham and Goodall simplify their approach by recommending managers start by asking each team member two simple questions each week:

\n

\n
• What are your priorities this week
\n
• How can I help
\n

\n

It’s less about a perfectly posed question and more about consistency, and these two check ins are a great place to start. They’re simple and they put the focus on the actual work your team is doing. This allows managers to know where they can have the most impact right now.

\n

Don’t expect your questions to be uncovering gold right away. You’ll have to find what works best for you and your team. Test, learn, iterate, repeat. Here are a few things to think about as you roll-out check ins:

\n

\n
• Cadence: How often do you want to ask certain questions
\n
• Day of the week: Ask the check in when you’ll get the best answer
\n
• Public/Private: Do you want answers to be shared with the entire team or only with you
\n

\n

At Strety, our check ins are a healthy balance of daily, weekly, and monthly work and non-work related prompts. We’ve set up questions that ensure we have a holistic view of how our people are doing while also reinforcing our company’s values & culture. Here are some examples of questions we’ve had success with to help you get going:

\n

Suggested Questions to Ask Your Team

\n\n

Daily Check Ins

\n

1. What are you working on today?

\n

Ask in the morning, make public. This should be a short bulleted or numbered list of the key tasks each team member is working on today.  Not only does this show you what your team is prioritizing but it helps break down the barriers between departments. In providing visibility into what everyone else is working on, you allow each team member to see how their work contributes to the overall organizational effort

\n

\n

2. How was your day?

\n

Ask in the afternoon, private or public. Perfect for new hires or people in new roles.  A great opportunity for your team members to reflect on hyper-specifics from their day and for a manager to provide a little hands-off guidance. It’s also a cross-referencing point with ‘What are you working on today?”

\n\n

Weekly Check Ins

\n

3. How are you feeling coming into this week?

\n

Ask Monday morning. Can be open-ended or 1-10 scale. This is about understanding everyone’s headspace. Are they coming into the week refreshed and recharged or are they carrying stress? 

\n

If the latter, it’s a great opportunity for you to help lighten their load and set the pace for a better week. Especially important for distributed team leaders since you don’t have that Monday morning visual like you would in the office.  

\n

4. What challenges are you facing?

\n

Ask this midweek.  Allows you to get ahead of any issue and to provide real-time course correction while the actual work is being done. Really push to get a response here. Maybe it isn’t directly related to the work they’re doing but to their work process; i.e. having trouble staying focused while working from home. You need to know these things, too!

\n

5. What wins did you have this week?

\n

Ask on Friday afternoon. Gives you an opportunity to recognize their work - especially the day-to-day things you may not be fully on top of. Also allows you to see where your team is placing value; what do they see as a win versus what you may see as a win? Take note of the types of work each member of your team is proud of.

\n

6. How did you feel this week?

\n

Ask on Friday afternoon.  This forces your direct report to slow down, reflect, and learn from the work they’ve accomplished. Seeing self-growth is empowering. We are BIG TIME believers in this practice.  It also gives you an opportunity to offer advice, guidance or reassurance at the end of a week reducing the likelihood any unnecessary stress gets carried into the next week

\n

Strety Users: When a Check in response requires further discussion, easily add it to any upcoming meeting agenda

\n

\n

 

\n\n

Monthly Check Ins

\n

7. What part of your role are you most passionate about? Feels the most draining?

\n

This check in will give you quality insights to how your direct report feels about their work.  Does their purpose match up with the team and organizations?  Knowing what tasks sap the energy from their day is equally as vital.  

\n

In collecting answers to these questions each month - rather than 1x/year during annual performance reviews - you’ll have the data points you need to really understand what’s motivating, driving, and/or hindering performance, helping them feel more fulfilled and perform higher year round.

\n

8. Have you been inspired or extra motivated by anything or anyone recently?

\n

Weekly or monthly prompt that encourages peer recognition.  Can also bring organization-wide visibility to silo’d work. Sources of inspiration and motivation can also come from outside work, i.e family, friends, communities, philanthropy.  We strongly encourage you to work this check in into your routine.

\n\n

Culture Building Check Ins

\n

9. What did you do this weekend?

\n

We ask this every Monday morning. This is an opportunity to learn about the person behind the role. I can’t tell you how many cool things I’ve learned about my co-workers from their weekend updates; some are excellent cooks, some read A LOT, some can run 10 miles.  In the long run, this is the stuff that truly matters when building a cohesive team.  Sharing may not come natural to everyone, so lead by example and encourage everyone to share a few photos!

\n

\n

10. If you were to recommend one ___ what would it be?

\n

\n
• movie/youtube video to watch
\n
• album or podcast to listen to
\n
• book or blog to read 
\n
• Restaurant to eat at
\n
• Recipe to try 
\n

\n

People love sharing what they’re into! These more fun questions will help your team get to know one another and could build relationships between team members through common interests or shared experiences they’d perhaps never have found out otherwise. 

\n

 

\n

How someone is feeling and how they’re performing are almost always intrinsically connected, and having a consistent pulse on both sides of a person at all times, not just during meetings, is a vital part of your role.

\n

Use these questions - or come up with you own - and you’ll be well on your way to better understanding your team, increasing engagement, and achieving better business outcomes.

","post_summary":"

A growing company - or the sudden absence of an office - can make it difficult for a manager to keep a steady pulse on the health and performance of their team. Daily Stand-ups and status updates can tell the story during meetings but a good manager needs a process to collect and manage team sentiment between meetings.

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

A growing company - or the sudden absence of an office - can make it difficult for a manager to keep a steady pulse on the health and performance of their team. Daily Stand-ups and status updates can tell the story during meetings but a good manager needs a process to collect and manage team sentiment between meetings.

\n\n

At Strety, we call this process 'Check Ins'. Check-ins are recurring single-prompt questions managers and team leads ask to increase engagement and gain proactive insights. The right mix of questions will help surface issues and gauge the real-time health of their team between team and 1:1 meetings, effectively filling in all a manager's blind spots.

\n

In their book Nine Lies About Work, Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall say  “A team with low check-in frequency is a team with low intelligence. Data reveals checking in with your team members once a month (during meetings) is literally worse than useless. While team leaders who check-in once a week see a 13% increase in team engagement, those in check-in once a month see a 5 percent decrease in engagement. There’s also a 2.7x increase in retention that accompanies frequent conversations. As if team members are saying “I’d rather you not waste my time if all we’re going to do is talk in generalities”.

\n

Check-ins are not one-sided.  You have to give to receive. The engagement boost only happens when team members regularly check in AND regularly get a reply. Buckingham & Goodall elevate this sentiment:  

\n

\n

“Checking in with each person on a team - listening, course correcting, adjusting, coaching, advising, paying attention to the intersection of the person and the real-world work - is not what you do in addition to the work of leading. This is the work of leading” 

\n

\n

The more frequent and predictable your check ins, the more real time attention you’ll be able to give to your team’s work, leading to more engagement and higher performance from your team. What we’re saying is: It Starts with You! 

\n\n

Implementing Check Ins

\n

We use check ins to keep our teams engaged and our managers informed; each one serving as its own asynchronous, one-question meeting.  Buckingham and Goodall simplify their approach by recommending managers start by asking each team member two simple questions each week:

\n

\n
• What are your priorities this week
\n
• How can I help
\n

\n

It’s less about a perfectly posed question and more about consistency, and these two check ins are a great place to start. They’re simple and they put the focus on the actual work your team is doing. This allows managers to know where they can have the most impact right now.

\n

Don’t expect your questions to be uncovering gold right away. You’ll have to find what works best for you and your team. Test, learn, iterate, repeat. Here are a few things to think about as you roll-out check ins:

\n

\n
• Cadence: How often do you want to ask certain questions
\n
• Day of the week: Ask the check in when you’ll get the best answer
\n
• Public/Private: Do you want answers to be shared with the entire team or only with you
\n

\n

At Strety, our check ins are a healthy balance of daily, weekly, and monthly work and non-work related prompts. We’ve set up questions that ensure we have a holistic view of how our people are doing while also reinforcing our company’s values & culture. Here are some examples of questions we’ve had success with to help you get going:

\n

Suggested Questions to Ask Your Team

\n\n

Daily Check Ins

\n

1. What are you working on today?

\n

Ask in the morning, make public. This should be a short bulleted or numbered list of the key tasks each team member is working on today.  Not only does this show you what your team is prioritizing but it helps break down the barriers between departments. In providing visibility into what everyone else is working on, you allow each team member to see how their work contributes to the overall organizational effort

\n

\n

2. How was your day?

\n

Ask in the afternoon, private or public. Perfect for new hires or people in new roles.  A great opportunity for your team members to reflect on hyper-specifics from their day and for a manager to provide a little hands-off guidance. It’s also a cross-referencing point with ‘What are you working on today?”

\n\n

Weekly Check Ins

\n

3. How are you feeling coming into this week?

\n

Ask Monday morning. Can be open-ended or 1-10 scale. This is about understanding everyone’s headspace. Are they coming into the week refreshed and recharged or are they carrying stress? 

\n

If the latter, it’s a great opportunity for you to help lighten their load and set the pace for a better week. Especially important for distributed team leaders since you don’t have that Monday morning visual like you would in the office.  

\n

4. What challenges are you facing?

\n

Ask this midweek.  Allows you to get ahead of any issue and to provide real-time course correction while the actual work is being done. Really push to get a response here. Maybe it isn’t directly related to the work they’re doing but to their work process; i.e. having trouble staying focused while working from home. You need to know these things, too!

\n

5. What wins did you have this week?

\n

Ask on Friday afternoon. Gives you an opportunity to recognize their work - especially the day-to-day things you may not be fully on top of. Also allows you to see where your team is placing value; what do they see as a win versus what you may see as a win? Take note of the types of work each member of your team is proud of.

\n

6. How did you feel this week?

\n

Ask on Friday afternoon.  This forces your direct report to slow down, reflect, and learn from the work they’ve accomplished. Seeing self-growth is empowering. We are BIG TIME believers in this practice.  It also gives you an opportunity to offer advice, guidance or reassurance at the end of a week reducing the likelihood any unnecessary stress gets carried into the next week

\n

Strety Users: When a Check in response requires further discussion, easily add it to any upcoming meeting agenda

\n

\n

 

\n\n

Monthly Check Ins

\n

7. What part of your role are you most passionate about? Feels the most draining?

\n

This check in will give you quality insights to how your direct report feels about their work.  Does their purpose match up with the team and organizations?  Knowing what tasks sap the energy from their day is equally as vital.  

\n

In collecting answers to these questions each month - rather than 1x/year during annual performance reviews - you’ll have the data points you need to really understand what’s motivating, driving, and/or hindering performance, helping them feel more fulfilled and perform higher year round.

\n

8. Have you been inspired or extra motivated by anything or anyone recently?

\n

Weekly or monthly prompt that encourages peer recognition.  Can also bring organization-wide visibility to silo’d work. Sources of inspiration and motivation can also come from outside work, i.e family, friends, communities, philanthropy.  We strongly encourage you to work this check in into your routine.

\n\n

Culture Building Check Ins

\n

9. What did you do this weekend?

\n

We ask this every Monday morning. This is an opportunity to learn about the person behind the role. I can’t tell you how many cool things I’ve learned about my co-workers from their weekend updates; some are excellent cooks, some read A LOT, some can run 10 miles.  In the long run, this is the stuff that truly matters when building a cohesive team.  Sharing may not come natural to everyone, so lead by example and encourage everyone to share a few photos!

\n

\n

10. If you were to recommend one ___ what would it be?

\n

\n
• movie/youtube video to watch
\n
• album or podcast to listen to
\n
• book or blog to read 
\n
• Restaurant to eat at
\n
• Recipe to try 
\n

\n

People love sharing what they’re into! These more fun questions will help your team get to know one another and could build relationships between team members through common interests or shared experiences they’d perhaps never have found out otherwise. 

\n

 

\n

How someone is feeling and how they’re performing are almost always intrinsically connected, and having a consistent pulse on both sides of a person at all times, not just during meetings, is a vital part of your role.

\n

Use these questions - or come up with you own - and you’ll be well on your way to better understanding your team, increasing engagement, and achieving better business outcomes.

","rss_summary":"

A growing company - or the sudden absence of an office - can make it difficult for a manager to keep a steady pulse on the health and performance of their team. Daily Stand-ups and status updates can tell the story during meetings but a good manager needs a process to collect and manage team sentiment between meetings.

\n","keywords":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"public_access_rules":[{"type":2,"ids":[],"wall_preview_enabled":false}],"html_title":"10 Check In Questions to Keep Your Team On Track Between Meetings","header":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":"Management Tips & Skills","campaign_utm":"Management%20Tips%20%26%20Skills","meta_keywords":null,"meta_description":"Check ins increase engagement and provide proactive insights you need to drive better business results. Keep your team on track with automated check ins! ","tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":false,"security_state":"NONE","placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":10375125,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"link_rel_canonical_url":null,"page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/5256430/17b.png","featured_image_alt_text":"A manager checks in with their team","featured_image_width":0,"featured_image_height":0,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"published_at":1604422858802,"password":null,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null}

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Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them. 

\n\n

According to the Issues Solving Track (IDS) laid out in Gino Wickman’s Traction, “When addressing issues, leadership teams spend most of their time discussing the heck out of everything, rarely identifying anything, and hardly ever solving something”.

\n

If you find yourself continually punting problems down the road or solving issues you’d thought you’d already solved, it’s time to rethink how your organization approaches problem solving.

\n

The first step to a better problem-solving process is creating an issue list. If you don’t have one already, create one.  Ask your leadership team to be open and honest about the issues facing your business and write them down. This will be a transparent, running list that will add structure and organization to your problem solving process. Bring it with you to every leadership meeting.

\n

With your list in place, you can begin to implement Gino’s simplistic & straightforward IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) process. When followed, it can transform your company into a well-oiled, problem solving machine where you tackle issues with little to no wasted effort. Here’s how it works:

\n

Identify

\n

Each meeting, examine your list and rank the issues in order of priority.  Don’t jump in and immediately discuss solutions. Wickman says “the underlying issue is always a few layers down. Most of the time the stated problem is a symptom of the real issue, so you must find the root of the matter”. 

\n

Continue to pull the string: Is it a communication, process, or person issue? By investing time in the identification phase you’ll not only address your biggest issues but you’ll likely notice a few smaller problems will go away on their own, as they turn out to be symptoms of the root issues you’ve already solved.

\n

Discuss

\n

Once you’ve clearly identified an issue, this is everyone’s opportunity to offer thoughts on a resolution. Push to hear from everyone, open and honest discussion around issues will build trust amongst your team.

\n

According to Wickman, everyone should say what they believe but should say it only once. Get everything out on the table. Offer solutions that contribute to the greater good, not what’s best for you or your department. 

\n

One more thing to keep top of mind as you discuss solutions: avoid tangents at all costs! Call them out to stay on track. If a tangent is a legitimate issue worth discussing, add it to your Issue List and continue discussing options, solutions, and concerns regarding the issue at hand. 

\n

Solve

\n

The goal for solving any issue should be that once it’s solved, it’s gone away forever. To make that happen, you have to align the solution with the long term vision for your company. 

\n

Wickman likens it to driving a car, not having a destination, and making turns randomly. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t make decisions on which way to turn.

\n

Issues may take longer to solve from this approach but the time spent clearly identifying and discussing the root issue will save you time and effort in the future.

\n

 

\n

Solving problems through IDS will provide structure to your process and force you to be intentional in tackling problems the right way, not the easiest way. 

\n

If you’d like to see how Strey can systemize IDS - or any other concepts from Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - let us know,  we love talking about this stuff!

","post_summary":"

Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them. 

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them. 

\n\n

According to the Issues Solving Track (IDS) laid out in Gino Wickman’s Traction, “When addressing issues, leadership teams spend most of their time discussing the heck out of everything, rarely identifying anything, and hardly ever solving something”.

\n

If you find yourself continually punting problems down the road or solving issues you’d thought you’d already solved, it’s time to rethink how your organization approaches problem solving.

\n

The first step to a better problem-solving process is creating an issue list. If you don’t have one already, create one.  Ask your leadership team to be open and honest about the issues facing your business and write them down. This will be a transparent, running list that will add structure and organization to your problem solving process. Bring it with you to every leadership meeting.

\n

With your list in place, you can begin to implement Gino’s simplistic & straightforward IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) process. When followed, it can transform your company into a well-oiled, problem solving machine where you tackle issues with little to no wasted effort. Here’s how it works:

\n

Identify

\n

Each meeting, examine your list and rank the issues in order of priority.  Don’t jump in and immediately discuss solutions. Wickman says “the underlying issue is always a few layers down. Most of the time the stated problem is a symptom of the real issue, so you must find the root of the matter”. 

\n

Continue to pull the string: Is it a communication, process, or person issue? By investing time in the identification phase you’ll not only address your biggest issues but you’ll likely notice a few smaller problems will go away on their own, as they turn out to be symptoms of the root issues you’ve already solved.

\n

Discuss

\n

Once you’ve clearly identified an issue, this is everyone’s opportunity to offer thoughts on a resolution. Push to hear from everyone, open and honest discussion around issues will build trust amongst your team.

\n

According to Wickman, everyone should say what they believe but should say it only once. Get everything out on the table. Offer solutions that contribute to the greater good, not what’s best for you or your department. 

\n

One more thing to keep top of mind as you discuss solutions: avoid tangents at all costs! Call them out to stay on track. If a tangent is a legitimate issue worth discussing, add it to your Issue List and continue discussing options, solutions, and concerns regarding the issue at hand. 

\n

Solve

\n

The goal for solving any issue should be that once it’s solved, it’s gone away forever. To make that happen, you have to align the solution with the long term vision for your company. 

\n

Wickman likens it to driving a car, not having a destination, and making turns randomly. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t make decisions on which way to turn.

\n

Issues may take longer to solve from this approach but the time spent clearly identifying and discussing the root issue will save you time and effort in the future.

\n

 

\n

Solving problems through IDS will provide structure to your process and force you to be intentional in tackling problems the right way, not the easiest way. 

\n

If you’d like to see how Strey can systemize IDS - or any other concepts from Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - let us know,  we love talking about this stuff!

","rss_summary":"

Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them. 

\n","keywords":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"public_access_rules":[{"type":2,"ids":[],"wall_preview_enabled":false}],"html_title":"How to Handle Company Issues with Less Stress and Mess","header":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":"Management Tips & Skills","campaign_utm":"Management%20Tips%20%26%20Skills","meta_keywords":null,"meta_description":"Implement the EOS Issues Solving Track for a more structured and effective approach to addressing your company's important issues\n\n","tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":true,"security_state":"NONE","placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":9725277,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"link_rel_canonical_url":null,"page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/5256430/Blog%20Images/16b.png","featured_image_alt_text":"Team work","featured_image_width":0,"featured_image_height":0,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"published_at":1591876975051,"password":null,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null}

{"use_featured_image":true,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"tag_ids":[23667170488],"topic_ids":[23667170488],"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"composition_id":0,"post_body":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n\n

That doesn’t mean you should stop searching for new tools to help your business grow. It means finding the RIGHT tools -- not MORE tools. You need implementation strategies that minimize tool fatigue and accelerate adoption so you can get more done.

\n

Adoption is what delivers results from SaaS solutions. If a new technology isn’t used, it isn’t going to make a difference. I’m sure you can easily envision a more efficient and more effective version of your company. You know the changes that need to be made to realize your vision, that’s why you’re testing out new Saas in the first place. The largest obstacles in actualizing that vision are communicating through change and getting buy-in from key parties.

\n

Buy-in is mandatory if you want to accurately assess whether a SaaS solution is right for you. You do not want to be the business leader who's unable to harvest transformative benefit potential from new SaaS because you can't get your team onboard.

\n

Thankfully, there are plenty of things you can do to facilitate SaaS adoption from your team. Before you can overcome adoption issues, it’s best to understand where they’re rooted. 

\n

 

\n\n

Obstacles to Adoption

\n

Tool Fatigue

\n

Tool fatigue is real, it’s discouraging, and it isn’t going away. I’d be shocked if you’re a TSP and not dealing with tool fatigue in some capacity right now.

\n

Tool fatigue is when you have:

\n

\n
• Too many tools
\n
• Too much overlap between tools
\n
• Too much jumping between tools
\n

\n

As software management becomes increasingly decentralized, it’s common to find numerous SaaS tools with overlapping features. For example, most organizations use a combination of Google Docs, Slack/Teams bots, email, and employee surveys to collect feedback. What they choose is dependent on the team or use case, and in some instances, arbitrarily, without any thought to organizational cohesion. This can quickly spiral and create more trouble when trying to filter through threads to pull relevant feedback for 1:1 meetings or performance reviews.

\n

As the work your team is doing spreads out across more and more apps, your team will struggle to find the data they need when they need it, adding complexity to their workflow. At that point, can you blame their reluctance in adding another tool to their stack?

\n

Change in Mindset

\n

No one looks forward to changing a well-worn workflow, not to mention the stress and the time commitment that comes with it. But adopting new software isn’t just about creating better, more user friendly processes. It’s also a mechanism to transition towards a new way of thinking. 

\n

For example, continuous feedback cultures require a totally different mindset. If your team isn’t prepared to receive feedback about themselves, feedback will come across as a top-down initiative rather than a company-wide culture shift. Instead, leaders must emphasize, communicate, and lead by example, demonstrating feedback and more regular conversations around performance are necessary to reach company objectives and a healthier work environment.

\n

Be understanding that any approach intended to foster long term buy-in will likely take time to take hold.

\n

Poor Communication

\n

Deloitte reports that up to 70% of change initiatives fail because key stakeholders struggle to adapt. That struggle can begin before anyone even begins to use the product.

\n

It’s one thing for you to see the value in a new tool, it’s another to effectively communicate that value to your team. Think about it through the lens of selling your clients on a new Managed Security Service that you use internally; you can’t position the solution as it benefits your security, you have to position the solution as they see it protecting their data. 

\n

Failure to frame your messaging towards your team could easily lead to misaligned expectations, and sets up your new SaaS tool for an uphill battle towards team-wide adoption.

\n

Improper Training

\n

Even if you perfectly prepare your team for a new SaaS tool, it won’t make a difference if they are unable to derive value from it early-on.

\n

First impressions are huge and whatever early impression your SaaS tool makes will drive the motivation towards buy-in going forward. So, what are your options when you need every employee onboard with a new SaaS tool? How can you work with leadership and your vendor to accelerate the spread of a SaaS tool within your company? Most importantly, what’s the right approach when you’re faced with employees struggling with change?

\n

The wrong answers to these questions could deliver a death blow for fast adoption, leaving you flat footed with a discouraged team and without a solution.

\n

 

\n\n

How to Drive Widespread Adoption

\n

Choose the Right Tools

\n

For any problem you’re trying to solve with SaaS, there are probably multiple solutions for you to choose from. When comparing similar solutions, keep two things top of mind:

\n

\n
• Is the tool industry specific
\n
• How quickly can your team use it
\n

\n

First, Is the tool built for you or is it built for the broad market?  It’s almost always the right move to go for the industry-specific tool.  Vendors in your industry speak your language, understand your business problems and desired outcomes, and will be more likely to act on your feedback and feature requests, giving you greater opportunity to shape the tool for your needs. If there are comparable tools with comparable features, going with the MSP-specific solution is a no brainer.

\n

Second, be proactive in countering tool fatigue. Much of the software you truly need already exists: Office 365, GSuite, Teams, Slack. This is where users are already spending time. 

\n

Look for tools that embed or layer into your existing processes and systems. Make it easy for them to adapt.

\n

Third, weigh their UX. If a tool does exactly what you need it to do but it feels clunky and poorly designed, you won’t see efficiency or effective deployment when your team ultimately hates working with it. Probably rings a bell, doesn’t it?

\n

Lastly, how much time will it take to onboard the average employee? If it has extensive training programs and a lot of digital resources/tutorials, it will likely take more time and effort to learn the tool, making the tool susceptible to pushback. Additionally, look at what sort of support is available from the vendor. Will it be easy for your team to get help when, where, and how they need it? 

\n

Communicate Change Management

\n

The role of management in any situation is that of motivation. It’s your duty to help your team cross new bridges despite their tendency to look back. Best way to get them moving forward? Ready them for the other side. Communicate how to get there and why it’s going to be better.

\n

For adoption to spread you need an effective internal marketing plan that will help ingrain these habits into people’s workflows. This is where you address the how and why:

\n

\n
• Why will using this product benefit them?
\n
• How can they be successful using this tool?
\n
• How is this going to make their job easier/better?
\n
• Why is this better than the old way?
\n
• What do they need to do to start using it?
\n

\n

Think about what triggered the need for the tool in the first place. Are you struggling to train new or inexperienced managers? Are you growing too fast and need more effective systems in place to scale? Are you experiencing low engagement levels? Be genuine in what you expect the new tool to do for the organization and for them, and don’t focus solely on the practical uses, find fun ways to get your people excited about using the tool and your adoption rate will increase.

\n

For example, even if you know introducing continuous feedback will help solve several overarching problems, culture change is a long-term benefit that will take time to implement and be felt by the team. Instead of selling the idealized result, start by focusing on a couple more immediate and specific pain points and explain why it’s critical to address it now. For example, ask weekly employee surveys that will form the foundation for tomorrow’s continuous feedback culture.

\n

Strety Users: Use our customizable email templates to internally communicate what Strety is, what it does, how everyone benefits, and next steps all before you launch and increase your odds for faster adoption. 

\n

Encourage Participation

\n

One of the most important factors in getting widespread adoption is widespread participation. If the vendor allows it, encourage your team to participate in the demo/trial period. Collect their feedback and let them know their input will be a part of the evaluation process. Early ownership can go a long way towards adoption. 

\n

Once you have your team using the product, lean on your superstars to crank up usage. Contrary to logical opinion, don’t look to early adopters (more on them in a minute) to help usage spread, look to your company’s key influencers. Focus on your team members who get it, you know the ones, and encourage them to be more active within the tool to set an example for the rest of the team. Even the most reluctant employees are much more likely to adapt if a coworker they trust is supporting new software and processes.

\n

Your team is also likely to adopt new tools more quickly with rewards in place. Reward early adopters with positive reinforcement; It's far more effective than enforcing penalties or discipline over a lack of adoption. 

\n

Though you have your team’s best helping you out, you’ll need to lead by example. It’s critical that you show enthusiasm for the tool. A leader’s level of usage and promotion is a great indication of the success a product will have across an organization. 

\n

Strety Users: Acknowledge when your team participates. Leave a comment whenever a team member responds to a Check in or updates their Goal. If your team doesn’t see your feedback in the early stages, they’ll be less inclined to respond to the next prompt.

\n

Reinforce Usage

\n

Once a tool is in place and you know you’re moving forward, force change away from existing tools or old behaviors. According to Charles Duhigg’s research on habit formation, “to change a habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine”. 

\n

For example some employees just don’t feel as comfortable providing feedback or expressing themselves in written form.  Changing to a more documented approach presents an extra barrier for them to adopt. 

\n

Help them through the transition by tailoring new processes to their individual needs. One size fits all will not apply. Be patient and flexible, but make sure incremental progress is being made; do not settle for a complete absence of participation or reverting back to old processes

\n

You must encourage and reinforce usage until it becomes habitual. If there’s always the option of returning to the old way, you’ll continue to fight tool fatigue and fall short of actualizing full value from your new solution. 

\n

Strety Users: Start by setting up Check ins around what your team discusses during their Daily Huddle, i.e ‘What are your priorities for the day”. No need to reinvent the wheel.  Your team will be more comfortable responding to what they’re familiar with. They’ll soon see their Daily Huddles become more productive and efficient, increasing adoption.

\n

\n

Set Milestones

\n

Set SMART goals and milestones to measure success at each implementation phase for key stakeholders in your company. Be clear what you want to accomplish, for example, at 1 month, after 3, and in 12. Goals will vary depending on the pain you need to solve, so work with your CSM to help you come up with goals you can track with the tool.

\n

Once you hit those goals, draw attention to the quick wins that come through early adopters. Celebrate any example of the product improving specifics; i.e “Jessica’s team has knocked 15 minutes from their daily stand-up as a result of enacting new processes”. It’s vital for the team to know how the new software is making an impact across the organization.

\n

Strety Users: We want you to be successful using Strety. Schedule time with a CSM to discuss what success looks like for your organization and let’s work together to get you there

\n

 

\n

Finding new tools to unlock your business’s potential is hard work. Once you’ve found the right solution, it can be a real challenge to take those tools and implement them company-wide, especially when you’re working with teams of varying personalities and preferences.

\n

In order to receive the full benefit of your new tool, an intentional, strategic adoption approach is a must. Be mindful of the technology you select and the way in which you implement it and make sure adoption is top of mind when deciding on new tools, and you’ll see ROI much more quickly.

","post_summary":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n\n

That doesn’t mean you should stop searching for new tools to help your business grow. It means finding the RIGHT tools -- not MORE tools. You need implementation strategies that minimize tool fatigue and accelerate adoption so you can get more done.

\n

Adoption is what delivers results from SaaS solutions. If a new technology isn’t used, it isn’t going to make a difference. I’m sure you can easily envision a more efficient and more effective version of your company. You know the changes that need to be made to realize your vision, that’s why you’re testing out new Saas in the first place. The largest obstacles in actualizing that vision are communicating through change and getting buy-in from key parties.

\n

Buy-in is mandatory if you want to accurately assess whether a SaaS solution is right for you. You do not want to be the business leader who's unable to harvest transformative benefit potential from new SaaS because you can't get your team onboard.

\n

Thankfully, there are plenty of things you can do to facilitate SaaS adoption from your team. Before you can overcome adoption issues, it’s best to understand where they’re rooted. 

\n

 

\n\n

Obstacles to Adoption

\n

Tool Fatigue

\n

Tool fatigue is real, it’s discouraging, and it isn’t going away. I’d be shocked if you’re a TSP and not dealing with tool fatigue in some capacity right now.

\n

Tool fatigue is when you have:

\n

\n
• Too many tools
\n
• Too much overlap between tools
\n
• Too much jumping between tools
\n

\n

As software management becomes increasingly decentralized, it’s common to find numerous SaaS tools with overlapping features. For example, most organizations use a combination of Google Docs, Slack/Teams bots, email, and employee surveys to collect feedback. What they choose is dependent on the team or use case, and in some instances, arbitrarily, without any thought to organizational cohesion. This can quickly spiral and create more trouble when trying to filter through threads to pull relevant feedback for 1:1 meetings or performance reviews.

\n

As the work your team is doing spreads out across more and more apps, your team will struggle to find the data they need when they need it, adding complexity to their workflow. At that point, can you blame their reluctance in adding another tool to their stack?

\n

Change in Mindset

\n

No one looks forward to changing a well-worn workflow, not to mention the stress and the time commitment that comes with it. But adopting new software isn’t just about creating better, more user friendly processes. It’s also a mechanism to transition towards a new way of thinking. 

\n

For example, continuous feedback cultures require a totally different mindset. If your team isn’t prepared to receive feedback about themselves, feedback will come across as a top-down initiative rather than a company-wide culture shift. Instead, leaders must emphasize, communicate, and lead by example, demonstrating feedback and more regular conversations around performance are necessary to reach company objectives and a healthier work environment.

\n

Be understanding that any approach intended to foster long term buy-in will likely take time to take hold.

\n

Poor Communication

\n

Deloitte reports that up to 70% of change initiatives fail because key stakeholders struggle to adapt. That struggle can begin before anyone even begins to use the product.

\n

It’s one thing for you to see the value in a new tool, it’s another to effectively communicate that value to your team. Think about it through the lens of selling your clients on a new Managed Security Service that you use internally; you can’t position the solution as it benefits your security, you have to position the solution as they see it protecting their data. 

\n

Failure to frame your messaging towards your team could easily lead to misaligned expectations, and sets up your new SaaS tool for an uphill battle towards team-wide adoption.

\n

Improper Training

\n

Even if you perfectly prepare your team for a new SaaS tool, it won’t make a difference if they are unable to derive value from it early-on.

\n

First impressions are huge and whatever early impression your SaaS tool makes will drive the motivation towards buy-in going forward. So, what are your options when you need every employee onboard with a new SaaS tool? How can you work with leadership and your vendor to accelerate the spread of a SaaS tool within your company? Most importantly, what’s the right approach when you’re faced with employees struggling with change?

\n

The wrong answers to these questions could deliver a death blow for fast adoption, leaving you flat footed with a discouraged team and without a solution.

\n

 

\n\n

How to Drive Widespread Adoption

\n

Choose the Right Tools

\n

For any problem you’re trying to solve with SaaS, there are probably multiple solutions for you to choose from. When comparing similar solutions, keep two things top of mind:

\n

\n
• Is the tool industry specific
\n
• How quickly can your team use it
\n

\n

First, Is the tool built for you or is it built for the broad market?  It’s almost always the right move to go for the industry-specific tool.  Vendors in your industry speak your language, understand your business problems and desired outcomes, and will be more likely to act on your feedback and feature requests, giving you greater opportunity to shape the tool for your needs. If there are comparable tools with comparable features, going with the MSP-specific solution is a no brainer.

\n

Second, be proactive in countering tool fatigue. Much of the software you truly need already exists: Office 365, GSuite, Teams, Slack. This is where users are already spending time. 

\n

Look for tools that embed or layer into your existing processes and systems. Make it easy for them to adapt.

\n

Third, weigh their UX. If a tool does exactly what you need it to do but it feels clunky and poorly designed, you won’t see efficiency or effective deployment when your team ultimately hates working with it. Probably rings a bell, doesn’t it?

\n

Lastly, how much time will it take to onboard the average employee? If it has extensive training programs and a lot of digital resources/tutorials, it will likely take more time and effort to learn the tool, making the tool susceptible to pushback. Additionally, look at what sort of support is available from the vendor. Will it be easy for your team to get help when, where, and how they need it? 

\n

Communicate Change Management

\n

The role of management in any situation is that of motivation. It’s your duty to help your team cross new bridges despite their tendency to look back. Best way to get them moving forward? Ready them for the other side. Communicate how to get there and why it’s going to be better.

\n

For adoption to spread you need an effective internal marketing plan that will help ingrain these habits into people’s workflows. This is where you address the how and why:

\n

\n
• Why will using this product benefit them?
\n
• How can they be successful using this tool?
\n
• How is this going to make their job easier/better?
\n
• Why is this better than the old way?
\n
• What do they need to do to start using it?
\n

\n

Think about what triggered the need for the tool in the first place. Are you struggling to train new or inexperienced managers? Are you growing too fast and need more effective systems in place to scale? Are you experiencing low engagement levels? Be genuine in what you expect the new tool to do for the organization and for them, and don’t focus solely on the practical uses, find fun ways to get your people excited about using the tool and your adoption rate will increase.

\n

For example, even if you know introducing continuous feedback will help solve several overarching problems, culture change is a long-term benefit that will take time to implement and be felt by the team. Instead of selling the idealized result, start by focusing on a couple more immediate and specific pain points and explain why it’s critical to address it now. For example, ask weekly employee surveys that will form the foundation for tomorrow’s continuous feedback culture.

\n

Strety Users: Use our customizable email templates to internally communicate what Strety is, what it does, how everyone benefits, and next steps all before you launch and increase your odds for faster adoption. 

\n

Encourage Participation

\n

One of the most important factors in getting widespread adoption is widespread participation. If the vendor allows it, encourage your team to participate in the demo/trial period. Collect their feedback and let them know their input will be a part of the evaluation process. Early ownership can go a long way towards adoption. 

\n

Once you have your team using the product, lean on your superstars to crank up usage. Contrary to logical opinion, don’t look to early adopters (more on them in a minute) to help usage spread, look to your company’s key influencers. Focus on your team members who get it, you know the ones, and encourage them to be more active within the tool to set an example for the rest of the team. Even the most reluctant employees are much more likely to adapt if a coworker they trust is supporting new software and processes.

\n

Your team is also likely to adopt new tools more quickly with rewards in place. Reward early adopters with positive reinforcement; It's far more effective than enforcing penalties or discipline over a lack of adoption. 

\n

Though you have your team’s best helping you out, you’ll need to lead by example. It’s critical that you show enthusiasm for the tool. A leader’s level of usage and promotion is a great indication of the success a product will have across an organization. 

\n

Strety Users: Acknowledge when your team participates. Leave a comment whenever a team member responds to a Check in or updates their Goal. If your team doesn’t see your feedback in the early stages, they’ll be less inclined to respond to the next prompt.

\n

Reinforce Usage

\n

Once a tool is in place and you know you’re moving forward, force change away from existing tools or old behaviors. According to Charles Duhigg’s research on habit formation, “to change a habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine”. 

\n

For example some employees just don’t feel as comfortable providing feedback or expressing themselves in written form.  Changing to a more documented approach presents an extra barrier for them to adopt. 

\n

Help them through the transition by tailoring new processes to their individual needs. One size fits all will not apply. Be patient and flexible, but make sure incremental progress is being made; do not settle for a complete absence of participation or reverting back to old processes

\n

You must encourage and reinforce usage until it becomes habitual. If there’s always the option of returning to the old way, you’ll continue to fight tool fatigue and fall short of actualizing full value from your new solution. 

\n

Strety Users: Start by setting up Check ins around what your team discusses during their Daily Huddle, i.e ‘What are your priorities for the day”. No need to reinvent the wheel.  Your team will be more comfortable responding to what they’re familiar with. They’ll soon see their Daily Huddles become more productive and efficient, increasing adoption.

\n

\n

Set Milestones

\n

Set SMART goals and milestones to measure success at each implementation phase for key stakeholders in your company. Be clear what you want to accomplish, for example, at 1 month, after 3, and in 12. Goals will vary depending on the pain you need to solve, so work with your CSM to help you come up with goals you can track with the tool.

\n

Once you hit those goals, draw attention to the quick wins that come through early adopters. Celebrate any example of the product improving specifics; i.e “Jessica’s team has knocked 15 minutes from their daily stand-up as a result of enacting new processes”. It’s vital for the team to know how the new software is making an impact across the organization.

\n

Strety Users: We want you to be successful using Strety. Schedule time with a CSM to discuss what success looks like for your organization and let’s work together to get you there

\n

 

\n

Finding new tools to unlock your business’s potential is hard work. Once you’ve found the right solution, it can be a real challenge to take those tools and implement them company-wide, especially when you’re working with teams of varying personalities and preferences.

\n

In order to receive the full benefit of your new tool, an intentional, strategic adoption approach is a must. Be mindful of the technology you select and the way in which you implement it and make sure adoption is top of mind when deciding on new tools, and you’ll see ROI much more quickly.

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The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

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Plateaus are invisible enemies. 

\n\n

Hitting a plateau feels like writer’s block, or hitting the wall midway through a tough workout, or like endless monotony with no clear path forward. If we’re not constantly achieving, we feel like we’re failing -- even when we might be able to progress with the right coaching. Since that failure feels embarrassing, we don’t talk about plateaus with our managers or teammates. 

\n

As a leader, your job is to identify when someone on your team is starting to plateau so that you can coach appropriately. But how do you know if someone’s plateaued if they won’t bring it up?

\n

 

\n\n

Signs of a Plateau

\n

People on your team could be feeling the beginnings of a plateau at any time, hidden in plain sight. While performance may not yet be visibly slipping, teams and individuals that plateau tend to exhibit signs of complacency:

\n

\n
• Lower engagement with their teammates
\n
• Poorer standards of quality on their outputs
\n
• Rushed projects
\n
• Lack of focus
\n
• Lack of energy
\n

\n

Complacency quickly turns into a lost sense of purpose, and with it, a lack of motivation and engagement. Once you reach this point, performance issues are likely to surface. And If there is no attempt to adjust and correct once the wall has been hit, blame may be - fairly or unfairly - put on their environment, leading them to leave your organization. 

\n

Your goal: tackle the plateau before performance issues become problematic. And definitely before it leads to attrition.

\n

 

\n\n

Why Plateaus Happen

\n

Growth isn’t linear. From the outside, growth might look like a straight line up and to the right, but from the inside, it’s a jumbled tangle of ups and downs that (hopefully) eventually lead to growth. 

\n

Temporary plateaus can be part of a normal growth process. Short plateaus are nothing to fear -- in fact, they’re productive because they serve as a brief interlude to recharge for more growth. The leader’s role in a healthy plateau is to keep that interlude from turning into inertia. Give your employee space to take a breath, then help them run when they’re recharged.

\n

Not all plateaus are productive, however. Sometimes an employee plateaus for less-than-helpful reasons, like:

\n

\n
• Lack of variance, interest, or challenge in their day-to-day
\n
• Unresolved frustrations or resentment on the team
\n
• Lack of opportunities to grow within their role or within the company
\n
• Insufficient coaching
\n
• Uncertainty over the value of their work
\n
• Misalignment between the employee’s sense of purpose and the company’s vision
\n

\n

It could even be a conscious decision -- sometimes, advancing in career just isn’t someone’s top priority in life. An employee might decide they’re okay with how good they are at something, turn on autopilot, collect their paycheck, and stop improving. This is referred to as hitting the “OK plateau”, and it’s super common. In some fields, that’s not a huge problem. In others, a lack of progression is effectively regression and must be mitigated.

\n

Regardless of why your team is plateauing, it’s in your best interest as a leader to try to empower your employee to push through in the right way at the right time.

\n

 

\n\n

How to Coach Someone Through a Plateau

\n

Managers and leaders can have a huge impact in shortening plateaus. With the right coaching, a plateau can be more productive and less frustrating for all involved. 

\n

While sustained plateauing is a cause for concern, more often than not it’ll serve as a wake-up call telling you to shake things up or try something new. 

\n

Here’s how to foster newfound motivation during a plateau:

\n

\n
1. Change their responsibilities
\n
2. Rethink recognition
\n
3. Improve cross-department collaboration
\n
4. Create new opportunities for development
\n
5. Introduce written reflections 
\n

\n

 

\n

Change Their Responsibilities

\n

If your team isn’t feeling challenged, they’ll lack a connection to the work they’re doing. A lack of challenge happens when a job role becomes one-note, making it too easy to run on autopilot.

\n

Changing an employee’s responsibilities gives them more (and different) opportunities to develop, avoiding a plateau. As a manager, one of the most effective ways you can overcome that is by dishing out the right responsibilities to the right people.

\n

To do that, align someone’s areas of ownership with their zone of genius. In a 1:1, ask your employee which tasks give them energy and which tasks feel exhausting. Sometimes, a 5-hour task can be more invigorating than something that takes 10 minutes but saps your motivation. It’s not always about the amount of work, it’s about how that work feels to the employee. 

\n

To change responsibilities, you might have to involve multiple teammates. It’s best to address shifts in job roles in the setting of a performance review so that everyone has a chance to talk about what they love about their jobs and what they wish they could hand over to someone else. Chances are, one teammate might be dying to stop owning a project that another is excited to take over. This doesn’t have to be a major job shift -- it might be a simple project shuffle that makes all the difference.

\n

When you’re shuffling responsibilities, make sure to give ownership of work-related goals to the right people. Ownership of goals shouldn’t live with the manager, it should live with the person responsible for the work. If someone has zero input to the work they’re doing, it’s unlikely they’re going to care about that work -- and they’ll eventually plateau. Employees perform best when they feel a strong connection to purpose, and ownership of goals helps foster that purpose.

\n

You can also transfer responsibility by being less visible as a leader.

\n

Refrain from unnecessary micromanagement, like dictating tasks step-by-step or asking to be cc’d on every email. Instead, open up non-invasive lines of communication. Ask for high-level check-ins like a weekly performance recap or a daily “What are you working on” and only course-correct when necessary. In giving your team member more autonomy, you create more autonomy for yourself.

\n

 

\n

Rethink Recognition

\n

Recognition doesn’t have to be complicated. People thrive when they feel like they’re being heard, and sometimes, that’s all it takes. Elevating a plateaued employee’s voice can reignite motivation by reminding your team member that their work -- and voice -- have value. 

\n

To elevate more voices, encourage everyone on the team to contribute to meetings by opening your meeting agendas. Ask your team to suggest agenda topics. Let your employee drive their 1:1. Using shared, collaborative meeting agendas will get more varied ideas on the table while proving your commitment to making sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute to the discussion. 

\n

Sometimes, people plateau because they don’t know where they stand or how they’re doing. Everyone wants to know how their work contributes to team success, and once-annual performance feedback is not enough. Continuous feedback is key.

\n

In order to provide continuous feedback, you need a system in place to collect valuable, actionable responses. Our team provides weekly updates to their goals and self-determine if we’re on-track. We provide context to those updates so that any team member can quickly see what’s going on with a project or initiative. This gives our leadership an opportunity to acknowledge great performance and realign the team whenever necessary. With continuous feedback, plateaus are spotted early and mitigated quickly.

\n

Pull from performance recaps, daily or weekly check ins, goal updates, and 1:1 meetings to find opportunities for recognition. A simple acknowledgement that you read and appreciated an update or check in goes a long way.

\n

If you want to take it a step further, positive feedback can be incredibly powerful when shared publicly. Systems like Teams and Slack make it easy to publicly recognize a team member for their accomplishments. Sharing successes with the entire organization leaves no doubt that someone’s work is valued.

\n

Strety Users: Automate 360 feedback 2-4x/year so you’ll have a well-rounded read on your team’s performance when it comes time for annual reviews

\n

\n

 

\n

Improve Cross-Department Collaboration

\n

Cross-departmental collaboration adds newness and variety which are crucial to finding a new sense of motivation. But the real impact of collaboration comes from pushing people outside of their comfort zone.

\n

Once someone gains exposure to the real work of other teams, they may identify new skills to develop or an interest in new responsibilities. An engineer might find themselves excited to help customers solve their problems, which could lead them to consider product management. Or a support agent might discover they enjoy leveraging their product knowledge to help sell the product’s benefit to future customers, leading to an interest in sales or marketing.

\n

Working alongside other teams gives exposure to different ways of thinking and new approaches to problem solving. This is not a new concept. 

\n

Here’s a personal anecdote: I’m a Customer Success Manager. I once traveled to a conference with a front-end developer and got a lot of exposure to how he worked. His approach to solving a customer problem was vastly different than mine and seeing that gave us each a newfound understanding and respect for each other’s role. It also showed us how wildly ineffective and inefficient communication can be across departmental lines. That exposure and improvement in communication was directly responsible for quicker time to resolution for our customer’s problems.

\n

Lastly, cross-departmental collaboration eliminates unnecessary siloes. In any organization, finding the time to assess whether there’s a better approach to a process can be very difficult. Getting fresh eyes on old processes could lead to asking, “is there a better way we can do that?” Giving individuals the opportunity to ask those questions and make changes that improve your processes decreases the risk of plateauing for employees and organizations alike.

\n

How you implement cross-departmental collaboration will vary depending on your business, but it has enormous potential to help individual team members and the organization at-large avoid plateauing. 

\n

 

\n

Create New Opportunities for Development

\n

Stagnation will lead to a plateau. It’s your responsibility to help your people see the ways which they can develop to avoid stagnation in the first place. 

\n

As a leader, your role is to encourage employees to talk about their future. Start by discussing their career goals in your weekly 1:1s. If you aren’t having weekly 1:1s, start there!  Once you know what an employee hopes to accomplish, you can coach them to achieve their goals.

\n

To create new opportunities, expand their professional network by introducing them to professionals already doing what they’re interested in trying. Share resources that have helped you. Help them find quality training courses and create a budget to pay for it. 

\n

Once you’ve found opportunities together, hold them accountable; make sure they’re taking advantage of you as a resource. Collaborating on an employee’s development will build trust and, once again, prove to them that you are invested in their growth.

\n

Strety Users: Set-up ‘Career Development Opportunities’ as a 1:1 Recurring Agenda Item so you can continually discuss any ongoing or upcoming opportunities with your direct report

\n

 

\n

Introduce Written Reflections

\n

A performance recap is a written self-summary of one’s work. Recaps must be performed regularly, typically at the end of a workweek. They aren’t just about what an employee did and what they’re planning to tackle next -- recaps provide an opportunity to reflect on the work experience itself. Encourage your team to write openly and honestly about where they felt challenged, what they were proud of accomplishing, and what didn’t feel great. Invite them to share their recaps with you and, when appropriate, their teammates. Regular recaps have far-reaching benefits for both the leader and the employee.

\n

For the employee, it provides an opportunity to see what they’ve accomplished. It’s easy to pass through a workweek without acknowledging growth. Slowing down, reflecting, and writing gives you a system to fuel a sense of purpose. An employee also has a chance to self-identify areas for improvement, which leads to more motivated action than if those areas for improvement were suggested by someone else.

\n

As the manager, you’ll learn what motivates your team through their recaps. You’ll understand what type of work are they proud of accomplishing -- is it a company-led initiative or figuring something out on their own? Are they excited to learn and develop new skills? Do they love collaborating or are they happier working solo? Does the work they’re doing fall within their Zone of Genius, or are they constantly drained by simple tasks? What can you do to give them more of the work that gives them energy, and take exhausting tasks off their plate?

\n

You’ll also learn what eats at your team. What types of issues linger? What causes toxic stress? Is there someone or something that’s in the way of their growth?

\n

All these insights makes you a more informed manager and provide you an amazing opportunity to give better feedback. You can’t apply one size fits all approach to understanding the needs, motivations, and challenges your team is facing; you have to start by asking questions. Once you ask, you can begin to guide, but not before. A performance recap gives you actionable insights to move your team forward in a systematic way.

\n

Strety Users: Set up a weekly private Check in to ask your team how their week went. Always comment to acknowledge the writing and provide a little feedback. If a response requires a deeper discussion, add it to your next 1:1 meeting.

\n

\n

 

\n

Plateaus are inevitable, but they don’t have to be a problem. It’s up to you and your leadership team to find new ways to inspire and engage employees. The most important thing in helping your team through a plateau is communication and collaboration.

\n

Your role is to help an employee feel secure in their challenges while suggesting solutions. And if you can do that, you’ll be accomplishing much more than just solving your team’s plateau problem. You’ll become a stronger leader in your own right!

","post_summary":"

Plateaus are invisible enemies. 

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

Plateaus are invisible enemies. 

\n\n

Hitting a plateau feels like writer’s block, or hitting the wall midway through a tough workout, or like endless monotony with no clear path forward. If we’re not constantly achieving, we feel like we’re failing -- even when we might be able to progress with the right coaching. Since that failure feels embarrassing, we don’t talk about plateaus with our managers or teammates. 

\n

As a leader, your job is to identify when someone on your team is starting to plateau so that you can coach appropriately. But how do you know if someone’s plateaued if they won’t bring it up?

\n

 

\n\n

Signs of a Plateau

\n

People on your team could be feeling the beginnings of a plateau at any time, hidden in plain sight. While performance may not yet be visibly slipping, teams and individuals that plateau tend to exhibit signs of complacency:

\n

\n
• Lower engagement with their teammates
\n
• Poorer standards of quality on their outputs
\n
• Rushed projects
\n
• Lack of focus
\n
• Lack of energy
\n

\n

Complacency quickly turns into a lost sense of purpose, and with it, a lack of motivation and engagement. Once you reach this point, performance issues are likely to surface. And If there is no attempt to adjust and correct once the wall has been hit, blame may be - fairly or unfairly - put on their environment, leading them to leave your organization. 

\n

Your goal: tackle the plateau before performance issues become problematic. And definitely before it leads to attrition.

\n

 

\n\n

Why Plateaus Happen

\n

Growth isn’t linear. From the outside, growth might look like a straight line up and to the right, but from the inside, it’s a jumbled tangle of ups and downs that (hopefully) eventually lead to growth. 

\n

Temporary plateaus can be part of a normal growth process. Short plateaus are nothing to fear -- in fact, they’re productive because they serve as a brief interlude to recharge for more growth. The leader’s role in a healthy plateau is to keep that interlude from turning into inertia. Give your employee space to take a breath, then help them run when they’re recharged.

\n

Not all plateaus are productive, however. Sometimes an employee plateaus for less-than-helpful reasons, like:

\n

\n
• Lack of variance, interest, or challenge in their day-to-day
\n
• Unresolved frustrations or resentment on the team
\n
• Lack of opportunities to grow within their role or within the company
\n
• Insufficient coaching
\n
• Uncertainty over the value of their work
\n
• Misalignment between the employee’s sense of purpose and the company’s vision
\n

\n

It could even be a conscious decision -- sometimes, advancing in career just isn’t someone’s top priority in life. An employee might decide they’re okay with how good they are at something, turn on autopilot, collect their paycheck, and stop improving. This is referred to as hitting the “OK plateau”, and it’s super common. In some fields, that’s not a huge problem. In others, a lack of progression is effectively regression and must be mitigated.

\n

Regardless of why your team is plateauing, it’s in your best interest as a leader to try to empower your employee to push through in the right way at the right time.

\n

 

\n\n

How to Coach Someone Through a Plateau

\n

Managers and leaders can have a huge impact in shortening plateaus. With the right coaching, a plateau can be more productive and less frustrating for all involved. 

\n

While sustained plateauing is a cause for concern, more often than not it’ll serve as a wake-up call telling you to shake things up or try something new. 

\n

Here’s how to foster newfound motivation during a plateau:

\n

\n
1. Change their responsibilities
\n
2. Rethink recognition
\n
3. Improve cross-department collaboration
\n
4. Create new opportunities for development
\n
5. Introduce written reflections 
\n

\n

 

\n

Change Their Responsibilities

\n

If your team isn’t feeling challenged, they’ll lack a connection to the work they’re doing. A lack of challenge happens when a job role becomes one-note, making it too easy to run on autopilot.

\n

Changing an employee’s responsibilities gives them more (and different) opportunities to develop, avoiding a plateau. As a manager, one of the most effective ways you can overcome that is by dishing out the right responsibilities to the right people.

\n

To do that, align someone’s areas of ownership with their zone of genius. In a 1:1, ask your employee which tasks give them energy and which tasks feel exhausting. Sometimes, a 5-hour task can be more invigorating than something that takes 10 minutes but saps your motivation. It’s not always about the amount of work, it’s about how that work feels to the employee. 

\n

To change responsibilities, you might have to involve multiple teammates. It’s best to address shifts in job roles in the setting of a performance review so that everyone has a chance to talk about what they love about their jobs and what they wish they could hand over to someone else. Chances are, one teammate might be dying to stop owning a project that another is excited to take over. This doesn’t have to be a major job shift -- it might be a simple project shuffle that makes all the difference.

\n

When you’re shuffling responsibilities, make sure to give ownership of work-related goals to the right people. Ownership of goals shouldn’t live with the manager, it should live with the person responsible for the work. If someone has zero input to the work they’re doing, it’s unlikely they’re going to care about that work -- and they’ll eventually plateau. Employees perform best when they feel a strong connection to purpose, and ownership of goals helps foster that purpose.

\n

You can also transfer responsibility by being less visible as a leader.

\n

Refrain from unnecessary micromanagement, like dictating tasks step-by-step or asking to be cc’d on every email. Instead, open up non-invasive lines of communication. Ask for high-level check-ins like a weekly performance recap or a daily “What are you working on” and only course-correct when necessary. In giving your team member more autonomy, you create more autonomy for yourself.

\n

 

\n

Rethink Recognition

\n

Recognition doesn’t have to be complicated. People thrive when they feel like they’re being heard, and sometimes, that’s all it takes. Elevating a plateaued employee’s voice can reignite motivation by reminding your team member that their work -- and voice -- have value. 

\n

To elevate more voices, encourage everyone on the team to contribute to meetings by opening your meeting agendas. Ask your team to suggest agenda topics. Let your employee drive their 1:1. Using shared, collaborative meeting agendas will get more varied ideas on the table while proving your commitment to making sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute to the discussion. 

\n

Sometimes, people plateau because they don’t know where they stand or how they’re doing. Everyone wants to know how their work contributes to team success, and once-annual performance feedback is not enough. Continuous feedback is key.

\n

In order to provide continuous feedback, you need a system in place to collect valuable, actionable responses. Our team provides weekly updates to their goals and self-determine if we’re on-track. We provide context to those updates so that any team member can quickly see what’s going on with a project or initiative. This gives our leadership an opportunity to acknowledge great performance and realign the team whenever necessary. With continuous feedback, plateaus are spotted early and mitigated quickly.

\n

Pull from performance recaps, daily or weekly check ins, goal updates, and 1:1 meetings to find opportunities for recognition. A simple acknowledgement that you read and appreciated an update or check in goes a long way.

\n

If you want to take it a step further, positive feedback can be incredibly powerful when shared publicly. Systems like Teams and Slack make it easy to publicly recognize a team member for their accomplishments. Sharing successes with the entire organization leaves no doubt that someone’s work is valued.

\n

Strety Users: Automate 360 feedback 2-4x/year so you’ll have a well-rounded read on your team’s performance when it comes time for annual reviews

\n

\n

 

\n

Improve Cross-Department Collaboration

\n

Cross-departmental collaboration adds newness and variety which are crucial to finding a new sense of motivation. But the real impact of collaboration comes from pushing people outside of their comfort zone.

\n

Once someone gains exposure to the real work of other teams, they may identify new skills to develop or an interest in new responsibilities. An engineer might find themselves excited to help customers solve their problems, which could lead them to consider product management. Or a support agent might discover they enjoy leveraging their product knowledge to help sell the product’s benefit to future customers, leading to an interest in sales or marketing.

\n

Working alongside other teams gives exposure to different ways of thinking and new approaches to problem solving. This is not a new concept. 

\n

Here’s a personal anecdote: I’m a Customer Success Manager. I once traveled to a conference with a front-end developer and got a lot of exposure to how he worked. His approach to solving a customer problem was vastly different than mine and seeing that gave us each a newfound understanding and respect for each other’s role. It also showed us how wildly ineffective and inefficient communication can be across departmental lines. That exposure and improvement in communication was directly responsible for quicker time to resolution for our customer’s problems.

\n

Lastly, cross-departmental collaboration eliminates unnecessary siloes. In any organization, finding the time to assess whether there’s a better approach to a process can be very difficult. Getting fresh eyes on old processes could lead to asking, “is there a better way we can do that?” Giving individuals the opportunity to ask those questions and make changes that improve your processes decreases the risk of plateauing for employees and organizations alike.

\n

How you implement cross-departmental collaboration will vary depending on your business, but it has enormous potential to help individual team members and the organization at-large avoid plateauing. 

\n

 

\n

Create New Opportunities for Development

\n

Stagnation will lead to a plateau. It’s your responsibility to help your people see the ways which they can develop to avoid stagnation in the first place. 

\n

As a leader, your role is to encourage employees to talk about their future. Start by discussing their career goals in your weekly 1:1s. If you aren’t having weekly 1:1s, start there!  Once you know what an employee hopes to accomplish, you can coach them to achieve their goals.

\n

To create new opportunities, expand their professional network by introducing them to professionals already doing what they’re interested in trying. Share resources that have helped you. Help them find quality training courses and create a budget to pay for it. 

\n

Once you’ve found opportunities together, hold them accountable; make sure they’re taking advantage of you as a resource. Collaborating on an employee’s development will build trust and, once again, prove to them that you are invested in their growth.

\n

Strety Users: Set-up ‘Career Development Opportunities’ as a 1:1 Recurring Agenda Item so you can continually discuss any ongoing or upcoming opportunities with your direct report

\n

 

\n

Introduce Written Reflections

\n

A performance recap is a written self-summary of one’s work. Recaps must be performed regularly, typically at the end of a workweek. They aren’t just about what an employee did and what they’re planning to tackle next -- recaps provide an opportunity to reflect on the work experience itself. Encourage your team to write openly and honestly about where they felt challenged, what they were proud of accomplishing, and what didn’t feel great. Invite them to share their recaps with you and, when appropriate, their teammates. Regular recaps have far-reaching benefits for both the leader and the employee.

\n

For the employee, it provides an opportunity to see what they’ve accomplished. It’s easy to pass through a workweek without acknowledging growth. Slowing down, reflecting, and writing gives you a system to fuel a sense of purpose. An employee also has a chance to self-identify areas for improvement, which leads to more motivated action than if those areas for improvement were suggested by someone else.

\n

As the manager, you’ll learn what motivates your team through their recaps. You’ll understand what type of work are they proud of accomplishing -- is it a company-led initiative or figuring something out on their own? Are they excited to learn and develop new skills? Do they love collaborating or are they happier working solo? Does the work they’re doing fall within their Zone of Genius, or are they constantly drained by simple tasks? What can you do to give them more of the work that gives them energy, and take exhausting tasks off their plate?

\n

You’ll also learn what eats at your team. What types of issues linger? What causes toxic stress? Is there someone or something that’s in the way of their growth?

\n

All these insights makes you a more informed manager and provide you an amazing opportunity to give better feedback. You can’t apply one size fits all approach to understanding the needs, motivations, and challenges your team is facing; you have to start by asking questions. Once you ask, you can begin to guide, but not before. A performance recap gives you actionable insights to move your team forward in a systematic way.

\n

Strety Users: Set up a weekly private Check in to ask your team how their week went. Always comment to acknowledge the writing and provide a little feedback. If a response requires a deeper discussion, add it to your next 1:1 meeting.

\n

\n

 

\n

Plateaus are inevitable, but they don’t have to be a problem. It’s up to you and your leadership team to find new ways to inspire and engage employees. The most important thing in helping your team through a plateau is communication and collaboration.

\n

Your role is to help an employee feel secure in their challenges while suggesting solutions. And if you can do that, you’ll be accomplishing much more than just solving your team’s plateau problem. You’ll become a stronger leader in your own right!

","rss_summary":"

Plateaus are invisible enemies. 

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{"use_featured_image":true,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"tag_ids":[23182286584],"topic_ids":[23182286584],"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"composition_id":0,"post_body":"

One-on-one (1:1) meetings are an opportunity to discuss real-time performance, your career development opportunities, and to receive feedback and coaching from your manager.  It’s also a way for you and your boss to build or strengthen your professional relationship.  

\n\n

Your one on one is one of the few moments where you, the direct report, are the main subject of the meeting.  The responsibility to bring relevant issues to the table and to make these an effective use of your time rests squarely on your shoulders. If you remain passive and allow your boss to drive the agenda, it’s unlikely all your needs will be met.

\n

“So, what do you want to talk about?” is the last thing you ever want to be asked during a one on one meeting. If you’re not invested in yourself and your performance, how can you expect your manager to be? If there was ever a time to selfishly prepare, it’s for your 1:1s…

\n

Own the Agenda

\n

To hammer this home: Effective 1:1s happen when you determine what you want to discuss. This is your one-on-one. Own the agenda! Throughout your week and between meetings, write down topics for discussion as they come to you. Potential topics include:

\n

\n
• Career development
\n
• Personal growth and self improvement
\n
• Suggestions for team improvement
\n
• Communicating your contributions
\n
• Aligning priorities
\n
• Personal issues that could impact work performance
\n
• Interpersonal issues with coworkers (the good and bad)
\n

\n

By the time your next 1:1 rolls around you should have a formidable list of topics to choose from. From there you should prioritize your list, create an agenda, and share it with your manager a couple days before meeting; giving your manager an opportunity to prepare and add their own topics.

\n

Strety Users: Our meeting agendas are collaborative. Leverage the agenda as an active list of topic ideas. This gives your manager an opportunity to offer guidance and advance the conversation within the comment thread, leading to more dialed-in discussion during the actual meeting.

\n

 

\n

12 Questions to Ask Your Manager

\n

So now you have a rough outline of what to do - what about actionables? I don’t want to provide you a list of uninspired suggestions or contextless questions to ask your manager; you can find those anywhere. I’d like to share with you a list of malleable starting points, with context, that you can bank-up and pull-out whenever you need more from your 1:1s…

\n\n

Team & Organizational Alignment

\n

1. What’s holding our team back from accomplishing [x] ?

\n

Identify the main problem or bottleneck in your team’s performance and get a better sense as to what management thinks will help overcome it.  Gaining insight to how management looks to solve performance issues is valuable knowledge for you to possess.

\n

2. What is one thing I can do to help improve our team’s performance?

\n

The exhibits your commitment to the team or organizational effort and can segue into a discussion about your own skill set.

\n

3. What’s one thing you think we should stop doing?

\n

Knowing which processes or projects that are failing to produce is valuable intel. You can re-prioritize your workload and/or see it as an opportunity to help improve inefficiencies.

\n

4. What factors led to us deciding [x]?

\n

You may not feel comfortable or be in a position to dig too deep as to why certain decisions are made but if you disagree with a decision or want to better understand why your team went a certain direction, it’s important to ask your superior.  Conversely, maybe you simply want insights to what goes into a decision making process within positions you aspire to be in one day. Both are perfectly valid and insightful reasons to ask for more.

\n\n

Professional Growth

\n

5. Do you have any recommendations for how I can improve [x] ?

\n

This question is about you and specific skill development. Managers have experience and connections and this is your opportunity to leverage those resources. Ask for recommendations for educational courses, training programs, reading material, or to make introductions to people in their network that can offer additional insights. 

\n

6. What do you see as gaps in my skill set?

\n

Learning where you have holes - or perceived holes - is critical knowledge for you to possess.  You can either acquire the skill or, if it’s only a perceived gap, begin to more visibly show it off. Don’t run from this question. Ask it. Learn from it. Grow because of it! 

\n

7. How do you see my role evolving over the next 12 months?

\n

You have your own ideas for what you want to accomplish - find out where your manager sees you going. Are your visions for you in alignment? If not, you have a lot to talk about in your next 1:1…

\n

8. What can I be doing now to put me in a position to be [x] in [y] time?

\n

Talk to your manager about where you want to go professionally. This does not have to be specific to the opportunities available within your current organization. These are your long-term professional goals. Have them help you lay out the steps, short and long term, to achieve your goals. DO NOT let your annual review be the only time you talk about your career aspirations.

\n

Strety Users:  Make this a recurring meeting agenda item so that this remains at the forefront of your 1:1 Meetings.  Use action items to hold you and your manager accountable for any to-dos (make a professional introduction, sign up for a training  course, etc) that come from your discussion.

\n\n

Building Professional Rapport

\n

9. What do you want to know about my work?

\n

Have empathy for your managers. It’s difficult for managers, especially first-time managers and managers of larger teams, to track the daily activity of each of their direct reports.  In asking this question, you’re being proactive in helping them fill-in their blind spots while giving you the opportunity to expound on work - progress & successes - that could be going unnoticed. Managers will appreciate this.

\n

10. How would you like to receive information/deliverables from me?

\n

Every organization has a process and structure for how information is disseminated, but each manager likely has their own personal preference for how they receive info, feedback, updates, or questions. Learn their style. Adapting your deliverables to fit their personal preferences will make their job a little easier and is a simple yet effective way to build rapport.

\n

11. What wins do you need?

\n

1:1s are a two-way street. Don’t shy away about asking your manager about their job. Their focus affects you directly or indirectly.  Learning what a manager’s priorities are is another valuable insight. It can also help you frame your work around larger team or organizational objectives.

\n

12, If I need something, what’s the best way to ask for your input?

\n

All managers manage and provide feedback differently. Learning how and where they feel most comfortable providing support - over email, in person, screen share - will increase the likelihood you get the help you need

\n

We're Here to Help

\n

Whether you can use these questions verbatim or if they need some refinement to fit your situation, I hope you leave this post seeing your one-on-one meeting as a huge opportunity...not just another meeting. 

\n

Remember: You’re in control of this one!. Be mindful and take your preparation seriously and you’ll leave each meeting better than when you entered it… if only we could say that about all our meetings :)

\n

 

","post_summary":"

One-on-one (1:1) meetings are an opportunity to discuss real-time performance, your career development opportunities, and to receive feedback and coaching from your manager.  It’s also a way for you and your boss to build or strengthen your professional relationship.  

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

One-on-one (1:1) meetings are an opportunity to discuss real-time performance, your career development opportunities, and to receive feedback and coaching from your manager.  It’s also a way for you and your boss to build or strengthen your professional relationship.  

\n\n

Your one on one is one of the few moments where you, the direct report, are the main subject of the meeting.  The responsibility to bring relevant issues to the table and to make these an effective use of your time rests squarely on your shoulders. If you remain passive and allow your boss to drive the agenda, it’s unlikely all your needs will be met.

\n

“So, what do you want to talk about?” is the last thing you ever want to be asked during a one on one meeting. If you’re not invested in yourself and your performance, how can you expect your manager to be? If there was ever a time to selfishly prepare, it’s for your 1:1s…

\n

Own the Agenda

\n

To hammer this home: Effective 1:1s happen when you determine what you want to discuss. This is your one-on-one. Own the agenda! Throughout your week and between meetings, write down topics for discussion as they come to you. Potential topics include:

\n

\n
• Career development
\n
• Personal growth and self improvement
\n
• Suggestions for team improvement
\n
• Communicating your contributions
\n
• Aligning priorities
\n
• Personal issues that could impact work performance
\n
• Interpersonal issues with coworkers (the good and bad)
\n

\n

By the time your next 1:1 rolls around you should have a formidable list of topics to choose from. From there you should prioritize your list, create an agenda, and share it with your manager a couple days before meeting; giving your manager an opportunity to prepare and add their own topics.

\n

Strety Users: Our meeting agendas are collaborative. Leverage the agenda as an active list of topic ideas. This gives your manager an opportunity to offer guidance and advance the conversation within the comment thread, leading to more dialed-in discussion during the actual meeting.

\n

 

\n

12 Questions to Ask Your Manager

\n

So now you have a rough outline of what to do - what about actionables? I don’t want to provide you a list of uninspired suggestions or contextless questions to ask your manager; you can find those anywhere. I’d like to share with you a list of malleable starting points, with context, that you can bank-up and pull-out whenever you need more from your 1:1s…

\n\n

Team & Organizational Alignment

\n

1. What’s holding our team back from accomplishing [x] ?

\n

Identify the main problem or bottleneck in your team’s performance and get a better sense as to what management thinks will help overcome it.  Gaining insight to how management looks to solve performance issues is valuable knowledge for you to possess.

\n

2. What is one thing I can do to help improve our team’s performance?

\n

The exhibits your commitment to the team or organizational effort and can segue into a discussion about your own skill set.

\n

3. What’s one thing you think we should stop doing?

\n

Knowing which processes or projects that are failing to produce is valuable intel. You can re-prioritize your workload and/or see it as an opportunity to help improve inefficiencies.

\n

4. What factors led to us deciding [x]?

\n

You may not feel comfortable or be in a position to dig too deep as to why certain decisions are made but if you disagree with a decision or want to better understand why your team went a certain direction, it’s important to ask your superior.  Conversely, maybe you simply want insights to what goes into a decision making process within positions you aspire to be in one day. Both are perfectly valid and insightful reasons to ask for more.

\n\n

Professional Growth

\n

5. Do you have any recommendations for how I can improve [x] ?

\n

This question is about you and specific skill development. Managers have experience and connections and this is your opportunity to leverage those resources. Ask for recommendations for educational courses, training programs, reading material, or to make introductions to people in their network that can offer additional insights. 

\n

6. What do you see as gaps in my skill set?

\n

Learning where you have holes - or perceived holes - is critical knowledge for you to possess.  You can either acquire the skill or, if it’s only a perceived gap, begin to more visibly show it off. Don’t run from this question. Ask it. Learn from it. Grow because of it! 

\n

7. How do you see my role evolving over the next 12 months?

\n

You have your own ideas for what you want to accomplish - find out where your manager sees you going. Are your visions for you in alignment? If not, you have a lot to talk about in your next 1:1…

\n

8. What can I be doing now to put me in a position to be [x] in [y] time?

\n

Talk to your manager about where you want to go professionally. This does not have to be specific to the opportunities available within your current organization. These are your long-term professional goals. Have them help you lay out the steps, short and long term, to achieve your goals. DO NOT let your annual review be the only time you talk about your career aspirations.

\n

Strety Users:  Make this a recurring meeting agenda item so that this remains at the forefront of your 1:1 Meetings.  Use action items to hold you and your manager accountable for any to-dos (make a professional introduction, sign up for a training  course, etc) that come from your discussion.

\n\n

Building Professional Rapport

\n

9. What do you want to know about my work?

\n

Have empathy for your managers. It’s difficult for managers, especially first-time managers and managers of larger teams, to track the daily activity of each of their direct reports.  In asking this question, you’re being proactive in helping them fill-in their blind spots while giving you the opportunity to expound on work - progress & successes - that could be going unnoticed. Managers will appreciate this.

\n

10. How would you like to receive information/deliverables from me?

\n

Every organization has a process and structure for how information is disseminated, but each manager likely has their own personal preference for how they receive info, feedback, updates, or questions. Learn their style. Adapting your deliverables to fit their personal preferences will make their job a little easier and is a simple yet effective way to build rapport.

\n

11. What wins do you need?

\n

1:1s are a two-way street. Don’t shy away about asking your manager about their job. Their focus affects you directly or indirectly.  Learning what a manager’s priorities are is another valuable insight. It can also help you frame your work around larger team or organizational objectives.

\n

12, If I need something, what’s the best way to ask for your input?

\n

All managers manage and provide feedback differently. Learning how and where they feel most comfortable providing support - over email, in person, screen share - will increase the likelihood you get the help you need

\n

We're Here to Help

\n

Whether you can use these questions verbatim or if they need some refinement to fit your situation, I hope you leave this post seeing your one-on-one meeting as a huge opportunity...not just another meeting. 

\n

Remember: You’re in control of this one!. Be mindful and take your preparation seriously and you’ll leave each meeting better than when you entered it… if only we could say that about all our meetings :)

\n

 

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One-on-one (1:1) meetings are an opportunity to discuss real-time performance, your career development opportunities, and to receive feedback and coaching from your manager.  It’s also a way for you and your boss to build or strengthen your professional relationship.  

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{"use_featured_image":true,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"tag_ids":[23182286584,27416492430],"topic_ids":[23182286584,27416492430],"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"composition_id":0,"post_body":"

The way teams work and collaborate has changed, and not just in response to COVID-19.  A study released by Zug in 2018 found that 70% of professionals worked remotely at least one day per week. An Owl Labs study from last year shows 20% of respondents would take a pay cut of more than 10% to work remotely. We all know it, distributed teams are the new norm, even beyond the post COVID-19 world. 

\n\n

Jason Fried, cofounder/CEO of Basecamp, has been advocating on behalf of remote work for 20+ years. “The beauty of remote working is the opportunity to improve the way you work, to cut way back on meetings”.  Though we know Jason Fried and his company really, really dislike meetings, you notice he doesn’t say “eliminate all meetings”...

\n

Team meetings are vital for all teams, but especially for distributed teams.  Weekly team meetings are one of the few opportunities managers have to communicate with everyone all together and ensure alignment.  Plus they’re great for a little [awkward] virtual bonding! Therefore these meetings need to be effective, efficient, and well thought through ahead of time. And realize it’s okay if you’re not there yet.  Jason Fried said it best: 

\n

\n

“If you threw a guitar at me, and I’ve never played a guitar before, everyone would understand that I’m going to suck,” Fried says. “It’s the same thing for remote work. If people haven’t practiced before, they’re going to suck for a little bit.”

\n

\n

So you may be asking yourself how you can make your remote meetings more efficient. What do you need in your tech stack? How should you prepare for a remote meeting versus an in-person one? How do you ensure attendee participation and engagement? 

\n

We’ve learned that the distributed teams that are most successful at running their team meetings remotely are those that:

\n

\n
• Are intentional about why they’re meeting
\n
• Put extra effort into meeting preparation
\n
• Understand how to apply tools to maximize the effectiveness of the remote meeting 
\n

\n

We’ve pulled from our collective past experiences leading and working on distributed teams to run Strety as a 100% remote company. We’ve learned what works for us through trial, error, and iteration - It will be the same for you.  Use our experience as guide rails and start learning what works for you and your distributed team

\n

 

\n

Pre-Meeting Preparation

\n

Establish Meeting Guidelines

\n

Team meetings can drastically differ in size and scope. Whether it’s a decision-making meeting, a problem-solving meeting, a standup, or an information-sharing meeting, some universally understood decorum is necessary to ensure your meeting operates smoothly. 

\n

Some questions to think about: What is the protocol for speaking out? Can anyone speak? Should they wait to be called on by the meeting leader? Does everyone need to have their camera on? Do you want non-speakers to be muted? 

\n

Write these guidelines up and disperse them to your team ahead of any remote meetings so everyone is on the page and you’re not using up valuable time to address breaches of etiquette.

\n

Find a Time

\n

I worked from Lisbon last year and had meetings with teams and accounts scattered throughout the US, Europe, and Australia. If your team is distributed throughout different time zones, you’ll have to put some thought into the best time for everyone to attend. 

\n

There are plenty of tools to help you speed up the process of finding acceptable time zones for your team. I loved worldtimebuddy, which lets you add the locations of multiple team members and quickly compare what time it is - or will become meeting time - in any part of the world.

\n

Tech Stack

\n

Lifted straight from Slack’s Ultimate Guide to Digital Meetings: First ask yourself: What is the key functionality you need for your remote team meeting to be successful? Do you need to be able to see everyone’s reactions as you share new product ideas?. Do you need everyone to be able to work on a press release collaboratively? Do you need everyone to watch a demo in real time?

\n

The key here is what are your needs. While each team within an organization is different, every remote team meeting needs to leverage, at the very least, an online meeting tool with both audio and video. 

\n

Now that you know what you need, do your research! Find tools that fill your conferencing, communication, project management, meeting agenda, and documentation gaps. We mostly use Zoom, but here’s a list of Owl Labs 10 Best Video Meetings Apps so you can see what may work best for you.

\n

One last thing: Everyone should arrive a few minutes early just to make sure their tech is set up and functioning correctly. Trust us :)

\n

Shared Meeting Agendas

\n

You know that universally applicable, but often misattributed, Abe quote “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”? Well, I love it. I apply it to everything, and it applies to meeting preparation, too.

\n

Preparedness doesn’t pertain solely to the meeting organizer, it applies to the entire team.  How do you control the preparedness of your meeting attendees? Shared, collaborative meeting agendas - that’s how! If your meeting doesn’t have one, you can easily spend 5-10 minutes on each topic catching everyone up to speed. 

\n

By creating a shared, collaborative meeting agenda and giving everyone access in the days leading up to the meeting, you give all attendees time to:

\n

\n
• Contribute to the agenda
\n
• Ask for additional context or resources
\n
• Organize and prepare their own thoughts around agenda items
\n

\n

A shared meeting agenda gives an opportunity for all attendees to be heard and to be fully prepared for an effective meeting. Zero downsides to that!

\n

 

\n

Running a Distributed Team Meeting

\n

Agenda Must-Haves

\n

I say must but I really mean should - you run your own show - but from our experience, these are must-haves for any remote team meeting:

\n

\n
• Key talking points\n
  \n
  • List in order of importance.  Items near the top of the list usually receive more floor time
  \n
  \n
\n
• Quick check-in\n
  \n
  • Open the meeting by asking how everyone is feeling. Extra important for distributed teams
  \n
  \n
\n
• Responsibilities\n
  \n
  • Don’t let people check out.  Construct your agenda so everyone has something they’re responsible for
  \n
  \n
\n
• Relevant Resources \n
  \n
  • Docs, links, etc that support agenda items
    
  \n
  \n
\n

\n

The Meeting Itself

\n

You and your team have curated a collaborative agenda, now follow it! Throw the agenda up on a screen-share and run through each item, one by one. Running through the agenda together ensures everyone stays on point and gives you a re-centering point if you veer off on tangents.  If you find your meetings are routinely running long, we suggest including a timer for each agenda item to help you stay on track.

\n

Notes

\n

Take notes as you go. Designate a primary note taker for the meeting and have them summarize any key takeaways or decisions made from each agenda item.  Before you close out the item, have the note-taker read the summary to the group to ensure everyone is on the same page. If you aren’t, this gives people an opportunity to voice that NOW. Now is better than later.

\n

Action items

\n

Meetings often lead to more work. Hold people accountable by assigning follow-ups, deliverables, and next steps including due dates during the meeting. If it’s a multi-person effort, assign ownership of the follow-up to one person. Make it clear who is responsible.  This will reduce the likelihood of someone saying “I thought you were gonna do it”. 

\n

Strety Users:  Assign an Action Item with a due date within your Meeting Agenda and all the context around the topic will be visible for the Action Item owner. You'll be reminded of your Action Items from your Strety homepage

\n

\n

 

\n

Post Meeting

\n

Share Notes

\n

Those notes you took? Hopefully you have an effective way to share them! If you can attach the notes to the meeting agenda itself, even better. Again, that context will be critical for anyone who wants to look back at the meeting, allowing them to self-serve themselves the answer versus distracting someone with a, “Hey, what did we decide to do about the overdue accounts?”.  

\n

Feedback & Adjustment

\n

We believe you should always ask for meeting feedback, but doubly so if you’re running remote meetings.  Ask open ended, guided questions. You need continuous feedback to learn whether a meeting was viewed as effective/productive and if attendees saw it as a valuable use of their time. 

\n

It’s okay if you get negative feedback, that can lead to open discussion about how you can improve.  A few sample questions you can ask to get quality feedback:

\n

\n
• Are there any improvements we need to make around the tools we use (tech stack) for our meetings?
\n
• Do you think any changes need to be made around the structure of our team meetings?
\n
• Are we meeting enough/not enough?
\n

\n

We’re Here to Help

\n

We encourage you to look at your remote team meetings as a job in and of themselves.  To reiterate, you need to get these right. We’ve been running remote team meetings for years and we’re still improving our processes.  Hopefully this gives you some structure which you can iterate from and, as always, reach out if you’d like our help!

","post_summary":"

The way teams work and collaborate has changed, and not just in response to COVID-19.  A study released by Zug in 2018 found that 70% of professionals worked remotely at least one day per week. An Owl Labs study from last year shows 20% of respondents would take a pay cut of more than 10% to work remotely. We all know it, distributed teams are the new norm, even beyond the post COVID-19 world. 

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"rss_body":"

The way teams work and collaborate has changed, and not just in response to COVID-19.  A study released by Zug in 2018 found that 70% of professionals worked remotely at least one day per week. An Owl Labs study from last year shows 20% of respondents would take a pay cut of more than 10% to work remotely. We all know it, distributed teams are the new norm, even beyond the post COVID-19 world. 

\n\n

Jason Fried, cofounder/CEO of Basecamp, has been advocating on behalf of remote work for 20+ years. “The beauty of remote working is the opportunity to improve the way you work, to cut way back on meetings”.  Though we know Jason Fried and his company really, really dislike meetings, you notice he doesn’t say “eliminate all meetings”...

\n

Team meetings are vital for all teams, but especially for distributed teams.  Weekly team meetings are one of the few opportunities managers have to communicate with everyone all together and ensure alignment.  Plus they’re great for a little [awkward] virtual bonding! Therefore these meetings need to be effective, efficient, and well thought through ahead of time. And realize it’s okay if you’re not there yet.  Jason Fried said it best: 

\n

\n

“If you threw a guitar at me, and I’ve never played a guitar before, everyone would understand that I’m going to suck,” Fried says. “It’s the same thing for remote work. If people haven’t practiced before, they’re going to suck for a little bit.”

\n

\n

So you may be asking yourself how you can make your remote meetings more efficient. What do you need in your tech stack? How should you prepare for a remote meeting versus an in-person one? How do you ensure attendee participation and engagement? 

\n

We’ve learned that the distributed teams that are most successful at running their team meetings remotely are those that:

\n

\n
• Are intentional about why they’re meeting
\n
• Put extra effort into meeting preparation
\n
• Understand how to apply tools to maximize the effectiveness of the remote meeting 
\n

\n

We’ve pulled from our collective past experiences leading and working on distributed teams to run Strety as a 100% remote company. We’ve learned what works for us through trial, error, and iteration - It will be the same for you.  Use our experience as guide rails and start learning what works for you and your distributed team

\n

 

\n

Pre-Meeting Preparation

\n

Establish Meeting Guidelines

\n

Team meetings can drastically differ in size and scope. Whether it’s a decision-making meeting, a problem-solving meeting, a standup, or an information-sharing meeting, some universally understood decorum is necessary to ensure your meeting operates smoothly. 

\n

Some questions to think about: What is the protocol for speaking out? Can anyone speak? Should they wait to be called on by the meeting leader? Does everyone need to have their camera on? Do you want non-speakers to be muted? 

\n

Write these guidelines up and disperse them to your team ahead of any remote meetings so everyone is on the page and you’re not using up valuable time to address breaches of etiquette.

\n

Find a Time

\n

I worked from Lisbon last year and had meetings with teams and accounts scattered throughout the US, Europe, and Australia. If your team is distributed throughout different time zones, you’ll have to put some thought into the best time for everyone to attend. 

\n

There are plenty of tools to help you speed up the process of finding acceptable time zones for your team. I loved worldtimebuddy, which lets you add the locations of multiple team members and quickly compare what time it is - or will become meeting time - in any part of the world.

\n

Tech Stack

\n

Lifted straight from Slack’s Ultimate Guide to Digital Meetings: First ask yourself: What is the key functionality you need for your remote team meeting to be successful? Do you need to be able to see everyone’s reactions as you share new product ideas?. Do you need everyone to be able to work on a press release collaboratively? Do you need everyone to watch a demo in real time?

\n

The key here is what are your needs. While each team within an organization is different, every remote team meeting needs to leverage, at the very least, an online meeting tool with both audio and video. 

\n

Now that you know what you need, do your research! Find tools that fill your conferencing, communication, project management, meeting agenda, and documentation gaps. We mostly use Zoom, but here’s a list of Owl Labs 10 Best Video Meetings Apps so you can see what may work best for you.

\n

One last thing: Everyone should arrive a few minutes early just to make sure their tech is set up and functioning correctly. Trust us :)

\n

Shared Meeting Agendas

\n

You know that universally applicable, but often misattributed, Abe quote “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”? Well, I love it. I apply it to everything, and it applies to meeting preparation, too.

\n

Preparedness doesn’t pertain solely to the meeting organizer, it applies to the entire team.  How do you control the preparedness of your meeting attendees? Shared, collaborative meeting agendas - that’s how! If your meeting doesn’t have one, you can easily spend 5-10 minutes on each topic catching everyone up to speed. 

\n

By creating a shared, collaborative meeting agenda and giving everyone access in the days leading up to the meeting, you give all attendees time to:

\n

\n
• Contribute to the agenda
\n
• Ask for additional context or resources
\n
• Organize and prepare their own thoughts around agenda items
\n

\n

A shared meeting agenda gives an opportunity for all attendees to be heard and to be fully prepared for an effective meeting. Zero downsides to that!

\n

 

\n

Running a Distributed Team Meeting

\n

Agenda Must-Haves

\n

I say must but I really mean should - you run your own show - but from our experience, these are must-haves for any remote team meeting:

\n

\n
• Key talking points\n
  \n
  • List in order of importance.  Items near the top of the list usually receive more floor time
  \n
  \n
\n
• Quick check-in\n
  \n
  • Open the meeting by asking how everyone is feeling. Extra important for distributed teams
  \n
  \n
\n
• Responsibilities\n
  \n
  • Don’t let people check out.  Construct your agenda so everyone has something they’re responsible for
  \n
  \n
\n
• Relevant Resources \n
  \n
  • Docs, links, etc that support agenda items
    
  \n
  \n
\n

\n

The Meeting Itself

\n

You and your team have curated a collaborative agenda, now follow it! Throw the agenda up on a screen-share and run through each item, one by one. Running through the agenda together ensures everyone stays on point and gives you a re-centering point if you veer off on tangents.  If you find your meetings are routinely running long, we suggest including a timer for each agenda item to help you stay on track.

\n

Notes

\n

Take notes as you go. Designate a primary note taker for the meeting and have them summarize any key takeaways or decisions made from each agenda item.  Before you close out the item, have the note-taker read the summary to the group to ensure everyone is on the same page. If you aren’t, this gives people an opportunity to voice that NOW. Now is better than later.

\n

Action items

\n

Meetings often lead to more work. Hold people accountable by assigning follow-ups, deliverables, and next steps including due dates during the meeting. If it’s a multi-person effort, assign ownership of the follow-up to one person. Make it clear who is responsible.  This will reduce the likelihood of someone saying “I thought you were gonna do it”. 

\n

Strety Users:  Assign an Action Item with a due date within your Meeting Agenda and all the context around the topic will be visible for the Action Item owner. You'll be reminded of your Action Items from your Strety homepage

\n

\n

 

\n

Post Meeting

\n

Share Notes

\n

Those notes you took? Hopefully you have an effective way to share them! If you can attach the notes to the meeting agenda itself, even better. Again, that context will be critical for anyone who wants to look back at the meeting, allowing them to self-serve themselves the answer versus distracting someone with a, “Hey, what did we decide to do about the overdue accounts?”.  

\n

Feedback & Adjustment

\n

We believe you should always ask for meeting feedback, but doubly so if you’re running remote meetings.  Ask open ended, guided questions. You need continuous feedback to learn whether a meeting was viewed as effective/productive and if attendees saw it as a valuable use of their time. 

\n

It’s okay if you get negative feedback, that can lead to open discussion about how you can improve.  A few sample questions you can ask to get quality feedback:

\n

\n
• Are there any improvements we need to make around the tools we use (tech stack) for our meetings?
\n
• Do you think any changes need to be made around the structure of our team meetings?
\n
• Are we meeting enough/not enough?
\n

\n

We’re Here to Help

\n

We encourage you to look at your remote team meetings as a job in and of themselves.  To reiterate, you need to get these right. We’ve been running remote team meetings for years and we’re still improving our processes.  Hopefully this gives you some structure which you can iterate from and, as always, reach out if you’d like our help!

","rss_summary":"

The way teams work and collaborate has changed, and not just in response to COVID-19.  A study released by Zug in 2018 found that 70% of professionals worked remotely at least one day per week. An Owl Labs study from last year shows 20% of respondents would take a pay cut of more than 10% to work remotely. We all know it, distributed teams are the new norm, even beyond the post COVID-19 world. 

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