One more meeting? Yes, please!
You might already be thinking “Oh no, another article about adding one more meeting to our already meeting-exhausting schedule”. I can assure you that I feel the same way about most meetings at Belong but if you agree with us that effective communication is a struggle at every stage of a company, please read on.
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It is no secret that it’s critical to keep everyone at the company informed and help all team members understand how each department is solving its top-of-mind challenges. At Belong, every quarter, each department head presents an Operating Review to help the whole company learn how their team is driving to our milestone goals. These reviews are excellent opportunities for the entire company to understand its high-level goals, team-specific nuances, and feedback.
Here are a few tips on how we make them effective:
- Simplify the format
- Define strict presentation time
- Require participation and record every presentation
Simplify the format. Consistency, simplicity, and focus are essential to help a company-wide audience engage and retain as much of the presentation as possible. The high-level structure we created at Belong includes the team’s mission and operating philosophy, team composition, and roadmap related to Belong’s Northstar metric (e.g., specific sales, efficiency, or other types of metrics). Through this format, we ensure that every presentation is a piece of the puzzle of our company’s roadmap and a clear path to understanding how we will accomplish our goals.
Define strict presentation time. We can all talk for days about our teams, and that doesn’t mean we should. Time is scarce in startup land, so we make these meetings valuable, concise, and to the point for anyone taking the time to attend. We share what the audience can benefit from, and we strive to get input on burning topics. Each review shouldn’t last more than 30–40 minutes, including the Q&A.
Require participation and record every presentation. These meetings are critical learning moments, so it’s good practice to encourage participation strongly and record them. Anyone who couldn’t connect will be able to watch them, and these will be incredibly helpful to onboard any new team member. Watching later should be the exception, not the norm unless you are a new hire.
As an example, I shared my latest Operating Review. In the video, you will see that I focused on the People team’s core virtues, performance reviews, and Belong’s newest virtue. Given our size and stage, I made the deliberate choice of not talking about future milestones. In the next Review, I’ll focus on preparing for scale as we gear up to raise another round of funding.
Investing in these interactions is especially crucial in our current circumstances, given that our teams are operating virtually and can feel disconnected. However, we are showing up in a more emotionally honest way, and these quarterly conversations provide a forum to understand and engage as a community around our shared mission.
Did I convince you that holding Quarterly Operating Reviews as early as you can is a great idea? Try it out! It’ll help your company move faster, promote more internal mobility opportunities, and create great cross-functional feedback opportunities. Stay tuned and see what QORs look like for other teams at Belong!
