Ironically, the purpose of business strategy is to clarify the direction of the team, but meetings to discuss strategy can often become confusing, disjointed, and lead to greater confusion. One study shows that 80% of senior executives’ meeting time is spent on issues that account for less than 20% of the company’s long-term value. Another survey showed that 88% of senior executives believe that decisions on important strategic issues are not being made in their leadership team meetings. This is not necessarily the case. Based on my experience conducting strategy meetings with hundreds of executive leadership teams, I have developed some principles and techniques that I will share with you to ensure that your strategy meetings are as effective and efficient as possible.
First, think about your most recent strategy meeting and answer true or false to these five sample statements in the Strategy Facilitation Assessment to understand how your team is currently performing:
- The moderator of a meeting is not the leader of the meeting, as these are two different and conflicting roles.
- The facilitator has no stake in the decisions made at the meeting.
- The expected outcomes of the meeting are set out in the meeting agenda.
- Strategy meetings in the past have been effective and efficient uses of people’s time.
- Meetings are organized around conversational topics and questions rather than a series of presentations.
You can take the full 20-question quiz: https://www.strategyskills.com/strategy-facilitation-assessment/ See how your team is rated
How many “wrong” answers did you get? Three or more indicates a great opportunity to raise the bar in your strategy sessions. The Facilitation Framework gives you concrete ways to improve team meetings, and it involves the three Ps: Purpose, People, and Process.
Purpose
One of the first things to consider is the purpose of the meeting, and here I don’t just mean the general agenda. What is the expected outcome of the meeting? There is a big difference between an agenda that lists the topics to be discussed and an agenda that contains the expected outcomes of the meeting. Is the desired outcome a new strategic framework, identification of the company’s core competencies, or the development of a competitive strategy to suppress new players in the market?
When designed strategically, executive leadership team meetings can also serve the following purposes: opportunity to build relationships, inspire people to think differently, develop a shared understanding of the business, create greater commitment to priorities, and achieve well-known “same position”. First, abandon the traditional agenda format, with time periods on the left and topics on the right. Setting a time frame for each topic (9:00 AM – 9:15 AM for mission; 9:15 AM – 9:45 AM for vision; 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM for saving the planet) is a surefire way to limit People think and talk. Good counselors will estimate approximate time frames in their counselor guides but will not share these time frames with the group. Why? Because if the time is 9:43 AM, people will mentally leave the current topic and move on to “Save the Planet,” which starts at 9:45 AM, even though they may have just discovered an important new insight.
Replace the traditional agenda format with the following items: expected outcomes for the entire meeting, total time frame (for example, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM), topics, expected outcomes for each topic, and the person responsible for leading the conversation. Be prepared for resistance from those who want to attach more specific time frames to each topic. This is often when multitaskers want to plan their outings – don’t give them the time.
When designing your agenda, keep in mind that research shows that the most important meeting items don’t necessarily get the most time and attention. Be sure to put the most important topics in the conversation at the beginning of the meeting, as they tend to take a disproportionate amount of time and attention. Before moving from one topic to the next, take the important step of writing down the results and next steps for that topic.
Another key aspect of purpose is discerning what relevant information should be shared forward Meetings and what should be discussed period Meeting. Research shows that 40% of meeting time is spent sharing information that can be provided before the meeting. To make matters worse, 65% of meetings are deliberately Set up for status updates or information sharing. It’s shocking how a management team’s time is completely wasted by having eight people sit around a conference room table for half an hour listening to someone else’s latest progress. If it’s an update, send it out for people to review before the meeting, then ask questions and comments about the update during the meeting.
people
When thinking about people, think about both facilitators and participants. The role of the facilitator is to guide the group through a series of conversations to achieve the desired outcome. To do this, a coordinator needs to have both business acumen and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence may be overlooked, but one’s ability to read a room, actively listen, ask provocative questions, and modify one’s approach accordingly is critical.
Here are some guidelines to consider when choosing a counselor:
- Not the leader of the meeting. The role of coordinator and the role of leader are different and need to be separated. Leaders who try to drive strategy meetings risk steering the conversation toward their point of view and limiting the team’s input, especially those who are unwilling to offer ideas that are contrary to their boss’s.
- Have no stake in the decision being made. If the facilitator’s resources are also on the table, they can’t have strategic conversations around resource reallocation.
- There are no internal political relationships that could influence the outcome of the conversation. This is relevant both during and after the meeting. Company cultures that allow for confidential conversations after meetings do themselves no favors, as this one-on-one approach leaves others with less information and leaves leaders vulnerable to accusations of favoritism.
- Strategic thinking process expert. Unfortunately, in some organizations, the use of exercises in strategy sessions is very similar to the game of pick-up sticks. A series of random, unrelated strategic thinking tools are thrown onto a flipchart, with no indication of their practical application or order. “Hey, let’s do a SWOT analysis, then a gap analysis, and then wrap it up with the Five Forces Model.” People leave meetings feeling frustrated and unsatisfied because they’ve done some thinking but it’s ineffective. Expert strategists understand which of 120 strategic thinking tools are appropriate for their specific situations and, just as importantly, which tools are a waste of time.
Coordinators can come from within or outside the organization, as long as they meet the outlined criteria. When you add up the paycheck of a two-day off-site strategy session in the room and think about how to strengthen or weaken the executive team’s entire business approach, you’ll understand why the choice of coordinator is so important.
Another aspect people need to consider is attendees. Let’s start with the numbers. Research shows that 20% of attendees should never be there in the first place. If a person is not going to actively contribute insights during the meeting, then they should not attend. Anyone in the room who is not a knowledgeable, active contributor will slow down the meeting. Then there’s the 8-18 rule, which states that 8 or fewer people are best for decision-making and 18 or fewer people are best for divergent thinking (e.g., idea generation).
process
Once you’ve established the purpose of the meeting and who will be attending, it’s time to outline the process. As mentioned earlier, a good strategy facilitator will be able to choose which of the 120 strategy exercises is most relevant to achieving the desired results. Creative thinking exercises are a great way to start the course. These exercises can help executives think about the business differently, discover ideas that may exist in other areas, combine elements in new ways, and break out of conventional ways of doing things. When we think of innovation as creating new value for customers, the right questions or exercises can open up a flood of insights.
Decisions should usually be made at executive leadership meetings. It helps to know from the beginning who has final say on each decision. While this may sound obvious, even at the C-suite level, it’s often unclear who is actually responsible for certain decisions. Once decision rights are identified, steps include identifying the decision at hand, establishing criteria for a solution, exploring options, weighing the risks and benefits of each option, and soliciting input from the group.
Another aspect of the process that is often overlooked is the selection of an activity to achieve a desired outcome for a specific topic. It is not enough to simply put a topic on the agenda and then hope that the conversation will lead to a path to appropriately address the issue. For each topic, a specific activity should be identified to achieve that outcome. For example, your strategy meeting topic might be succession planning. The desired outcome is to identify the second person behind each functional area vice president. The activities to achieve the desired results are working as a team through the 9-box talent model.
There are many other techniques for facilitating the process, including various voting methods, priority lists, and decision-making frameworks. If you make wise choices, your counselor will be at your disposal to use these items and prescribe the appropriate items to achieve the desired results. At the end of the meeting, be sure to create a brief action plan that includes what, who, and when to ensure accountability for next steps.
When a six- or seven-figure investment is made in a new product or capital equipment, great care is taken to ensure that the money is spent wisely. That’s not the case for many C-suite leadership team meetings, even though the level of investment is similar when people’s time and salaries are added up over the course of a year. Too often, these meetings are either the same thing or a random jumble of unrelated agenda items with no real purpose. If you apply the facilitation framework and practice the three Ps of Purpose, People, and Process, you will see a significant improvement in the way your team talks about the business. If not, you can always play the Pick Up Stick game.
