Hey, happy Monday,
the first month of this new decade is almost over.
We expected that everything would be different, actually nothing has changed. Business as usual.
The first meetings were not much different from the last ones. We keep getting the same feeling that something didn’t work.
Google, for example, appears to have canceled weekly all-hands meetings as early as November 2019 to avoid unnecessary office tension. (Look in the links to the People section to read the news)
The reason is simple: every time they get together to talk about strategy and business it actually ends up only talking about workplace issues.
✋Raise your hand if the same happens to you! Write to me, I’m curious, just between us….
The fact is, as we saw in our #strtgymeeting in January, people are the most important thing. You can’t improve your products (and therefore the business) if you don’t improve the people, and the processes by which they work.
The 3P Meeting Routine
I propose a solution.
Set three short meetings a week, one for each P.
Trials. Monday. 60 min max (20 Design, 20 Business, 20 Tech)
Just back from the weekend, in the early hours of the week, is the best time to plan activities. Fix what the goals and outputs are. Which are not the same thing.
The goal is not to do that thing by that date. That is an output.
Think of the goal as the effect you want to achieve with your and your team’s work.
Now that you have these two pieces of information, draw a small diagram that represents, in the simplest possible form, the process you will have to do to achieve the goal and produce the outputs you need.
You will notice two things right away.
The first one you can’t do all by yourself, you will probably need to get some information from someone before going into the next step. Request it now and decide on a deadline that is compatible with your activities.
The second is that you can already foresee what might slow you down, where this ideal process you are designing might stop. Take all the steps now to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Products. Wednesday. 60 min max (20 Design, 20 Business, 20 Tech)
By midweek the leaner processes you have decided to use will probably be bearing fruit. Clarity about goals and outputs will have allowed you to focus on your work. There is no better time to stop for an hour and talk about the shape the products and services you offer are taking or the results you are bringing to your customers.
You can look at the data. What data? The ones that consistently anyone produces as a result of any interaction with your brand or product.
Are you a designer? Your data are the number of artboards you created, the number of different variations of the same screen or flow, the number of user-interviews you conducted, the number of responses, and the quality of the responses themselves–what impact is design having on business?
Are you a dev? The number of pushes in the code, the speed velocity of the sprints, the bugs caught/fixed/fixed… How is technology making it easier to achieve goals?
Are you on the business team? Your numbers could be from the famous AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) pirate funnel. Every business has these metrics. I assure you. Want help identifying yours? Write me, schedule a call, I’ll prove it to you in 15 min, or unsubscribe!
People. Friday. 60 min max (20 Design, 20 Business, 20 Tech)
The week is over. Take a moment to celebrate successes or document failures. Some will have stood out, others will have been distracted. This is normal.
In LIFT-D for example, the mess is directly proportional to the order we restore in the teams we work with.
It happens to everyone that over time the culture wears out because we are not used to showing gratitude when things are going well but it is so easy to complain when things are not going right. Does it sound familiar?
Instead of starting the weekend talking about tasks, use this meeting to figure out how to create the best possible conditions in which to work.
How do current projects help people maintain that feeling of progress in their lives and careers?
In competitive environments such as the ones in which we work, I have come to understand one thing: it is not companies that hire talent, but talent that hires the company that offers the best chance to advance. That’s not supercazzola; it’s the Job-to-be-Done theory applied to HR.
Let me know how it goes!
Good work!
Until next time.
