Weekly team meeting agenda

Good news of the week (5 mins)

5 mins business or personal good news from last week – short sharing exercise by everyone.

Why start with good news? You start the meeting on a high with the possibility of some laughter too, creating the best frame of mind for everyone in the meeting. It’s also important to get everyone involved and engaged from the start of your meeting. Sharing good news achieves this. It also builds social connectedness that builds trust amongst a team. When you first start this meeting process with your team this section will take a little longer, pretty quickly everyone will get in the swing of things.

Concrete examples: Andrew finished decorating his lounge. Sarah received a glowing client comment about her work. Please just focus on the good news. Anyone who plays the ‘I don’t really know’ card can be helped/encouraged before next week’s meeting so they come prepared and participate fully next time.

Share your weekly numbers (5–10 mins)

5 to 10 mins when every individual shares their numbers. Here’s where everyone in your team share the numbers that reflect the work and responsibilities they have. Don’t get hung up in conversation just report the numbers. Make them quick/easy to understand by showing them graphically.

Concrete examples: Sarah shares the customer feedback numbers in a weekly bar chart so everyone can see the upward trend. Susan shares the number of customer care calls this week. Charlie shares the number of on-time deliveries vs late deliveries and the quality-failures/successes of the week. This means every team member will need to appreciate what’s expected of them every week – this in itself is a good process for building better understanding of what has to be done. Don’t let this stop you getting the weekly team meeting going, instead ask everyone for their 1 or 2 work priorities this week until you have everyone’s weekly numbers agreed.

Bottlenecks and hold-ups (5–10 mins)

5-10 mins about what’s slowing you down or holding you up or making it difficult or slow for your customers.

What issues are cropping up repeatedly? Issues in need of focused attention to resolve. Don’t resolve them in the meeting just identify them and agree a working party or process and a time to get it resolved and help drive results up.

Concrete examples: Andrew’s computer is getting too slow and making him unproductive every day. Partners all expect different things on an accounts job making the team feel as though they’re aiming at a moving target of expectations.

Strategic priority (5–10 mins)

5 to 10 mins focused on a firm-wide strategic priority – What’s the priority business focus for this quarter? What needs to be done this week to move your strategic priority forward?

Limit this section to just one next step – stay focused and agree the next step for the week ahead. As an alternative it’s also possible to use this section to emphasise the firm’s core purpose and values and share a story or two about your firm’s purpose and values coming to life. Concrete example: Improving customer feedback from 8.2/10 to 9.1/10 by the end of quarter 3 – work out how to improve the feedback scores by improving product quality and speed of delivery.

A simple phrase to signpost the end of the meeting (1–2 mins)

1 to 2 mins for a simple phrase to signpost the end of the meeting – or you can ask every individual what one-word or one-phrase finish describes how he or she now feels. A simple option is “Anything else you’d like to share or flag up?” You’ve sign-posted the end of the meeting and you’ll know if there are any issues needing 1-on-1 time with certain individuals.

Back to work (30 seconds!)

By finishing the meeting every time with the words “back to work” there’s zero doubt the meeting is over. It’s best to make this statement whilst either standing up or moving away from the meeting area. Everyone now knows you’re finished and they go back to work too.