10MINMC.Ep24.V1.AUDIO
===
Trey Sheneman: [00:00:00] So many strategy meetings are really just status updates with snacks. If you want to get more momentum in your marketing and sales, and not just more meeting minutes, that felt wasted, I suggest you run your strategy meetings like this.
Welcome to 10 Minute Masterclass, your weekly mic drop for Business breakthrough. I'm your host and lead MC Trey Sheneman, and it's my goal on this podcast every week to help you learn timeless business principles that will help you solve today's business problems. Now we do that through what I describe as the four core drivers of growth teaching you about how to solve problems in marketing, sales, operations, and leadership.
'cause for me, no matter when I'm running startups or [00:01:00] heading up growth inside of some brands that you probably know. Our ability to take our product to market, and it getting bogged down from growing always related back to one of those four core areas. Now in today's episode, we're diving deeper into this operations bucket, and if there's something that I dislike more than waste of time meetings in the professional world, I don't know what it is, but can I get an amen from the back row about being in a meeting and you get to the end and you look at each other and you say, wow, that could have been an email.
Or a Slack update or a text message. Like there's no reason why all of us should have been in here. Especially when you go to a meeting that's on your calendar, and it's supposed to be a strategy meeting, which a strategy meetings for me are the meetings where that are designed for you to work on the business that you're in and not down in it.
Like when you go to one of those meetings and you walk away going, this could have been an email update or Slack update, you got a problem. 'cause that just sucks. I mean, I don't know of any other way to say it, but. [00:02:00] Spending your time in meetings like that are, it's terrible. So. Meetings that kind of fit this type to me are meetings that are just filled with updates. They don't have any decisions that are made. They lack focus, clarity, or follow through. They probably didn't have an agenda. Um, the wrong people in the meetings talk for too long about the wrong things, so now we're just doubly wasting our time and you get to the end of it and everyone's leaving the meeting.
Going, what in the world just happened? Those traits are traits of strategy meetings that suck. And I want to fix that for you today because at the end of the day, when you have meetings like what I just described, they were really just examples of expensive procrastination. 'cause what's gonna happen next is you're gonna have to actually have the meeting that you were supposed to have, which means you're going to pay for everybody's time.
A second go around. To get back in the room or to actually address what it was you're supposed to. So today I wanna teach you about the four traits of, of a professional [00:03:00] strategic planning meeting and how you can do them for your company, for your team, no matter the size, stage, your age, we should all want to have better meanings and do them well.
So let's jump in. First trait of a professional strategic planning meeting is that it is anchor to objectives, not opinions. The best way to do this is to use OKRs or some people that are running like EOS, the traction model inside of their business. They're gonna have rocks, is what they're gonna call 'em.
You wanna make sure that your strategic planning meeting is based off of the OKRs or rocks that you set for that quarter. Okay. And if you don't have OKRs or rocks, then we got a different problem altogether that we have to solve a side of your business, and maybe we'll cover that in a future episode.
Um, but that's exactly the reason why. As an example, here at Herald, we work with teams on installing the Compass method, what we ultimately call the Compass Operating System inside of their brand, so that they always have OKRs or rocks and they know exactly what everyone's working on. But at the last.[00:04:00]
Ditch effort here. No one should be walking into a meeting like this saying, what should we do? Like the, some of the strategies should have already been decided outside of the room before you're planning what to do next about the strategy. The better question that everyone should be walking into a strategic planning meeting, especially when you have 90 day OKRs and 90 day rocks.
Were. Did we or did we not hit our goal in the last 90 days? And everyone should then be bringing their top two or three priorities they believe are gonna help you hit your goals for the next 90 days. By, by having this as the frame of reference going into a strategy meeting, your meeting should be more effective right outta the gate.
If you did nothing else of that I'm about to tell you, but just this one premise here and applied it to everyone of your strategic meetings going forward, the meetings would improve. Now the nice thing is when people understand the use of OKRs or rocks and everybody's playing by that same rule book, you're gonna be able to then start the meeting when you have it by reading out the objectives that you had [00:05:00] before and saying, red, yellow, or green, how do we do?
And being able to visualize that for the team, it's just gonna. Put everyone in a very clear position as to what you should be trying to solve today. If there are things that are red or yellow on the board, you're probably gonna spend some time talking about them in the meeting. So that's number one.
Make sure that you have rocks, ultimately a scorecard. Uh, you know, examples of what you were supposed to have done and if you did them or not, and you're gonna begin the meeting that way. Then from there. It, it needs to have a very facilitated format. It doesn't need to just be this random set of things.
There needs to be an agenda with a structure and the structure that I learned, uh, this is me again. I, I like to use alliteration 'cause it just helps me remember. Um, but this is a structure that I learned. I learned this from watching incredible project managers at Ramsey Solutions when I worked. There. I had never worked with project managers before.
I'd never worked with a strategic planning team, which Ramsey also had, so there my own ability to understand what a good meaning. Went like it [00:06:00] leveled up so much in my time when I was at Ramsey, but this is me kind of recapping or rehashing what I learned when I was there. The structure of a really good meeting is you review last period's results, you reframe, where are we now?
You refocus on what needs to shift and then you realign on who's gonna do what coming outta the meeting. Those are kind of the four outcomes of the strategic planning meeting and so. Having a good facilitator against someone who's their whole point is being in the meeting to run the meeting, not to participate with the answers, but to run the meeting, I think is one of the healthiest unlocks you can do as a business owner.
Even if that means you need to hire from the outside, you need to bring a specialist in for a strategic meeting to be able to lead the meeting for you. I think it's a great idea 'cause the structure of these meetings should never feel like it slows you down, but speeds you up and the way it speeds you up is 'cause it gives you more clarity, clarity.
Always makes us go faster. Okay. Number three, the end of the strategic meeting has to end with ownership. You cannot leave a strategic meeting with [00:07:00] a list of things to do without there being someone's name beside every single one of those things. Every one of those rocks or every one of those tactics.
And it really doesn't need to be two or three names as often as we can. It needs to be a single name beside those, those, uh, those to-do lists. So a good way of doing this is, is to say, what's the task? Who owns it, when's it due by, and why does it matter again? Like how does that task nest up to a bigger goal for the company?
I. This is, this is great. Uh, this is a great way to make sure that, you know, you've got a plan. You're gonna review, you're gonna go into the plan. It's gonna be, you're gonna go into the strategic planning meeting, it's gonna be facilitated, and then at the end of it, it's gonna come. You're gonna come out with an outcome of framework that everybody can stand by.
Again, it's not just clarity. That's what the facilitation of the meeting is gonna help you do. Now that you have clarity, you can create. Commitment. That's what comes out of every task, getting somebody's name beside it. It creates commitment. Then from there, the last [00:08:00] part is, is like really great strategic meetings follow a specific rhythm.
They're never done in a panic, so once you have a good meeting designed, you should do that meeting. On some sort of a cadence. It might be in some, um, seasons of your business that you have to do something like this weekly. Like when you're going zero to one in a business and you're having to take something to market, you very well might have to do a strategic meeting like this every week.
As your business matures, you might be doing this kind of a meeting once a month and eventually when, as your company kind of gets big enough, your team gets built out enough. Those meetings that you used to be participating in as the owner that were, you know, once a week or once a month. You're probably now participating in them once a quarter.
That's about the rhythm that I see. Most of the brands we work with are, are doing their strategic meetings. They're doing them on a quarterly rhythm, but whatever it is, they should be on a rhythm. You shouldn't just be randomly reacting and having a strategy meeting that tells me just your day-to-day operations, your scoreboard, reporting the metrics that you watch something's off.[00:09:00]
Once you've decided the rhythm for your strategic meaning. Again, by strategic meaning I'm saying the meanings that are designed to work on your business, not in it. Of course you're gonna have other meetings on your calendar. Those are all the ones that help you deliver in the week of what's happening, happening Tactically, you wanna make sure that you have that calendar published in advance.
So people can have plenty of notice on how to prepare, and you also wanna make sure that you're helping them visualize and see how that strategic meeting then does connect down to the operational meetings that happen with regularity during the quarter. Like all hands or staff updates or standups or one-on-ones, like all the other different kinds of meetings we see brands run because at the end of the day, your goal.
As visionary, CEO, founder driver of the business is to constantly be reaffirming that everyone has clarity. They catch the vision, they know where you're going. So when you've done all of this, you have your schedule. You got your facilitator, you know the, the outcome of the meeting, and you have a way to review [00:10:00] before going in and you visualize everything.
Make sure that you are using whiteboards, scorecards, flip charts, something to visualize all this in the meeting. Make sure that you're not guessing at your data when you show up that you're bringing the actual data in. And make sure, again, this is one of my favorite things I learned when I was Ramsey.
People can't buy in unless they get the weigh in. Push for dissent. In these meetings, you're gonna be blown away by how much better these meetings get if you'll just take these things too hard. So. Don't run meetings that suck. Make meetings be great. Hopefully you got something out of this, and until next time, we'll see you on the flip side.
