We hate meetings. We love meetings. But despite the trendy articles that we need to avoid them, we need them. Here are my top 10, with the desired outcome from the meeting. I hope they help!

Top 10 Essential Meetings

As an overall set of rules for every meeting, I like attendees to be  given information in one page summaries ahead of time, decisions required from the meeting to be flagged up ahead of time and clear actions must always be trapped.

  1. Sales PipelineOutcome – A clear understanding how each sales professional will meet target, the deals that will be involved and the tactics required based on your sales process.
  2. Onboarding New ClientsOutcome – For all new clients a project manager is able to describe the path for each new client to enjoy the results promised in the sales process and articulated in the proposal.
  3. Marketing Content generation – Outcome – A list of content to be generated with deadlines and responsibility feeding into the Editorial Calendar
  4. Marketing Campaigns – Outcome – An update of progress made on all marketing initiatives since the last meeting including relevant metrics showing the status of those deals in the pipeline or closed.
  5. Financial Health – Outcome – Probably held monthly (of course daily cash controls should be in operation as part of the finance teams duties) to review the cash flow, balance sheet and trading performance against, last year, budget and forecast. See previous posts.
  6. Special Projects – Outcome – Review delivery of previous agreed actions, solving of roadblocks and agreement of clear next steps. (Subject matters will clearly vary. They could involve multi-departments or just one department.)
  7. Town Hall – Outcome – Update staff on key achievements since the last meeting, share a few objectives, highlight some outstanding performances by employees. Probably no more than once a quarter.
  8. Appraisals/Mentoring – Outcome – Employee understands the issues to be improved, successes that were appreciated and further training if relevant.
  9. Alignment – Outcome – Two levels of meeting. First the CEO needs to ensure that his or her objectives are aligned with the operational agenda items of department heads. Second level requires department heads to ensure their team are working on the right stuff.
  10. Operations – Outcome – This will depend on the nature of the business i.e. manufacturing, service, technology, retail etc. However the key will to be understand the operational issues preventing success and who is accountable for the solution.
Depending on the size of  the business and the shareholding structure, you will also require a monthly or quarterly Board Meeting. See previous post.
I’m currently scaling three businesses as their COO: Edge Velocity, HR Knowledge and ADMET. Drop me a line with your thoughts at ian.smith@portfoliopartnership.com