Meeting Strategies to Strengthen Your Bottom Line

Just mention the word weekly strategy meeting and most people’s eyes will glaze over. There is a good reason for that. Many companies know that they should have a weekly or monthly meeting but don’t know how to conduct a good one. They can be boring, repetitive, and in the end not get anything done for the company. But that doesn’t have to be so. Here are some strategies to make those weekly department meetings and monthly strategy meetings more effective.

Annual Meetings Set the Goals


This is the meeting that creates the big picture for your coming year. The meeting should be organised by a management team. If your company doesn’t have a management team, many smaller companies do not; simply appoint those that handle the key functions within your business. These people will be able to give you an overview and from that create monthly goals such as acquiring new business, bringing in new products, and hiring and training new employees.

Most companies have an annual meeting in order to set goals for each department. It is also a good time to look back at the past year’s accomplishments, learn from our successes and failures and create bonds between departments that strengthen the roles within the each department.

Effective Monthly Meetings
Monthly meetings are where the real work gets done. Goals that were set in the annual meetings are broken down into monthly chunks. These become manageable and individual departments can strategize on how to meet these goals. It is important for monthly meetings that clear statements at the beginning of the meetings are made on goals reached and missed. Here is a schedule of how a good monthly meeting could be run:

  • Start with a recap of last month. Don’t take longer than 5 to 10 minutes for this. 
  • Look into monthly results and discuss if you met your goals for the month. 
  • If you can, have each employee take about 5 minutes to discuss their personal goals for the month and how they achieved them. 
  • Move on from there to discuss the company goals for the following month. 
  • Conclude the meeting by having each employee make a quick 2 minute statement of their personal goals for the following month. 

If you keep to the schedule, a monthly meeting can move along quickly and still be personally relevant to everyone there.

Daily and Weekly Meetings


How often you meet probably depends upon the size of your company. Amazon is known for having some of the best customer service. One of the reasons is that they meet both daily and weekly to discuss customers. Their daily meetings are fast and give them real time information on customer service situations. Generally lasting no longer than 10 minutes, they simply allow the company to be proactive on specific customer problems.

They use weekly meetings to discuss new products and upcoming marketing campaigns. Monthly meetings are used to strategize the coming months and decide what has worked and what has not. Everyone gives feedback. But not everyone is as complex a company as Amazon. Still, there’s much we can learn from their highly effective meeting strategies.

Good Meetings Build Morale


Some companies have a middle of the month meeting to assess goals and adjust strategies, in place of the daily or weekly meeting. Whether your company chooses to have weekly monthly or annual meetings it is important to keep them on topic. Good planning, keeping them relevant, and making sure all your employees have a say in the meetings is key to making them proficient. Good meeting planning can pay off with more effective employees and better morale.

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