It's the last day of January - you made it. If you're managing a team, it's highly likely that some or all of them have been impacted in some way by the chaos and tragedy of a rough month. As you navigate leading through times like this, one suggestion I have is that you're unlikely to go wrong by acting according to your answer to the question: "What would it look like to take care of my team right now as human beings?"
Let's get to your Monthly Management Memo - as always with something bold, something new, something borrowed, and something to pursue.
Something Bold - "Chaos Monkey" Your Meetings Once a year at a random time, Shopify cancels all recurring meetings on calendars and then implements a two-week moratorium on adding them back to the calendar. What would it look like to free your team from meetings for the next two weeks (or at a date soon in the future, like starting Feb 17 or March 3?) and then only add back what you found you needed to move forward the work (and maybe this time it's a shorter meeting, or less frequent, or with fewer people)? Farhan Thawar shares more about this in a 55-second video here.
Something New - Meeting Agenda Item Purpose Menu I recently led a client's senior leadership team in a workshop to rethink their biweekly meetings to ensure they were the best use of time possible. To support them, I created a menu of "meeting agenda item purposes". I suggested that each agenda item in the meeting had one of these purposes attached to it - that way, everyone was clear on what they were doing during that part of the meeting (are we making a decision? giving input? making a plan? getting an update? etc.). Feel free to take this menu, update it however you see fit, and use it in your company if it's helpful for you.
Something Borrowed - 19 Words to Say Before Giving Feedback The last slide in this Instagram posthas Adam Grant sharing research about how a particular set of 19 words helps people become dramatically more receptive to the feedback you're about to give: "I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I am confident you can reach them."
Something to Pursue - Do This When Group Brainstorming Here's a quick video tipfor you about something I think is critical to do every time a team brainstorms (or reflects) together. It will increase the quality of the ideas and the engagement of everyone involved, and it only takes a few minutes.
P.S. I've added some new workshop and retreat topics in the last few months, including guiding teams through restructuring their meetings or annual cycles and kicking off big projects for groups. See them all here, and let me know if one of them might be helpful for your team!
Bring your team, I'll bring my A-game. I love helping teams with workshops on topics of productivity, team culture, and effectiveness at work. Find out more and book a free chat to see if I can be helpful for your organization.