Get your small business into a meeting rhythm.

When small businesses are growing, especially undergoing fast growth, communication is critical. As I like to say:

“communication is the key to any relationship.”

And as people are the hardest and most valuable thing in small business, effective relationships are crucial. To have better relationships, regular and professional communication is needed.

Early-on in your business’ growth you probably have little structure, systems and rhythm. Putting in place set meeting times with specific agendas is one of the first steps in helping your baby grow up.

During growth it is understandable to think you need to cut-back on your meetings, to “save time”. But this approach will actually cost you time and value medium-to-long-term. The caveat is, if the Chair of the meeting doesn’t see value from the regular meetings, change or cancel them. There is no need to meet just for the sake of having a meeting.

An effective meeting rhythm has regular, punchy and value-adding get togethers with the right people in corners of the business.

Here is the meeting schedule I recommend for your growing small business:

Weekly one-on-one’s: each manager should meet with their direct reports, as recommended by Mark & Mike of Manager Tools. Per direct report, 30 minutes each week, chaired by the line manager
Weekly KRA Manager Meeting: the owners or managers of each Key Reporting Area (KRA) should meet at the start of each week to go over any company-wide issues. KRA owners/managers, 30 minutes each week, chaired by the Founder/owner/CEO/GM/MD
Weekly KRA Team Meeting: each KRA team (e.g. Sales Team, Operations Team or Production Teams) should meet to collaborate, discuss issues, wins and team priorities for the week. KRA team members, 30 minutes each week, chaired by the KRA manager
Monthly Team Meeting: run through the Key Reporting Areas (KRAs), bottom-up (start with Production, then Operations, Sales, Marketing, Management and end with Strategy). Everyone attends, 1-2 hours each month
Quarterly Strategic Meeting: the Board discuss the strategy of the business and progress with the role in charge of executing strategy day-to-day (e.g. Founder/owner/CEO/GM/MD). The role in charge of day-to-day performance reports on progress for the quarter. In the meeting you set your top top objectives for the next quarter, and run through the progress of the top set for the quarter just completed. Board and Founder/owner/CEO/GM/MD, 1-2 hours each quarter, chaired by the chairperson

As your business grows it will grow into the full schedule above. As some corners will be small at the start (e.g. the Marketing Team may only be one person for some time), they may not meet until there are 2 to 3 people in that team.

Now, some small business owners will look at all this meeting time and think their company will grind to a halt – we need to be ‘doing’ not ‘talking.’

That’s how I used to think, and it’s a natural thought to me as I’m a task-orientated High D. But over time I have learned to be effective I need to engage, motivate and lead others – not burn them out driving them with “more tasks!”

It finally dawned on me some years into small business that people are where the value is at, especially if I want to get out of the business operationally. I needed to invest in people. And as you learn from DiSC®, 50% of people are people-orientated, whereas the other 50% (which I’m in) are intrinsically task-orientated.

As I’m not people-orientated I have to work hard on this weakness (in the context of managing and growing a small business, not naturally being a “people person” is a drawback).

Setting up and sticking to a meeting rhythm will add value and reduce friction in your business. Here are the benefits of setting up regular meetings: