Beets, Miserable Meetings and Your Micro Business

This week we have a long-overdue team retreat for Heart of Business. We found a perfect house on AirBnB  to rent for three days, and even the two members who can’t be here live will be Skyping in to participate.

For two and a half days we’re going to be digging into the project sprawl that has happened for us, and we’re going to use our collective wisdom to connect, deepen and focus, and to wrestle through some questions and priorities. And we’re going to have fun.

I’m really looking forward to it.

However, when I mentioned that I had a company team retreat coming up to some folks I know at the gym I go to I received sympathetic looks and condolences.

If you have more than one person involved in your business, meetings of various sorts start to crop up with surprising regularity. Even if you are solo, you may notice once your business moves into some momentum, that you still need to meet with people whom you hire to help you with various things, whether it’s the accountant, bookkeeper, webdesigner or administrative support person.

Unfortunately, meetings can be a real pain point in your business. They can leave you drained, uninspired, with little of the clarity and action you were hoping for. So let’s talk about beets.

As I was walking back from the gym this morning, I was musing about the fact that my ancestors, eastern European Jews, had a lot of different ways to prepare beets. Barscz (a.k.a borscht for those who don’t like the Polish spelling), roasted, sliced, pickled, grated raw, even kvass, a refreshing fermented beet drink (non-alcoholic).

If someone asks, “What’s for dinner?” and you say, “Beets,” the question hasn’t really been answered, has it?

Same With Spiritual Practice

There are so many different spiritual practices, just in my lineage alone, that it would be physically impossible to do them all regularly. Saying I’m going to do spiritual practice doesn’t really cover it. I have to choose the practice to meet the need of my heart.

And then there’s the TRX supine plank. I can go to the gym several times a week for several months, and still Kinya, one of the 5:30am class instructors, can give us an exercise that I’ve never seen or heard of before. Holy tamale, how many ways to torture our bodies? Saying I’m going to “work out” doesn’t really give you much detail.

The point is this: There are different types of meetings. You need to know what kind of meeting it is, and structure it accordingly.

I will admit that almost everything good I’ve learned about meetings arises out of the above key insight from Patrick Lencioni’s fantastic book Death by Meeting.

There are different kinds of meetings. The book goes on to describe four different kinds of meetings, and the template he offers is one we’ve adopted quite happily here at Heart of Business.

But the essence is this understanding. Recently I supported clients, three co-owners of a yoga studio, to put this understanding into action, and their meetings immediately, became a source of pleasure, inspiration, and clarity.

What Kinds of Meetings?

For you as a solo or micro-business owner, let me suggest the following meeting structure, which is, again, mostly cribbed from Mr. Lencioni’s fine book.

1. Daily Check-In

If you have a partner, or an admin support person, or other team members who work daily in your business, or even if you belong to a mastermind, the daily check-in serves the need to stay connected.

The intention is that people know what’s important about today, how/where/when to reach you, and anything else important.

For me, this includes my biggest priority, what’s going on for me emotionally, other things I’m wanting to get done if there’s time.

The daily check-in can be done in 5 minutes on the phone, or in 5 minutes through email or a private online forum of some sort. The key point here is: 5 minutes! It shouldn’t bog you down.

Example:

Today the kids start preschool and it’s a big deal! I’m feeling pretty emotional about it, maybe surprisingly so. My big priority for today is prepping for tomorrow’s class. Other things on my list include some writing, some important emails, and trying to clear my inbox.

2. The Weekly Meeting

The weekly meeting is mostly what people think of as a “meeting.” It’s the list of to-do’s, actions, and projects that need to be discussed so they get handled in a timely manner. It should take forty minutes to an hour or so, maximum.

The important thing about this meeting is that if there are any big issues or decisions to make, questions of larger strategy, or some deeper problem, that you do NOT deal with them here. Mixing together in-depth discussions with time-sensitive to-do’s is a sure way to bog everyone down.

A sample agenda for a weekly meeting:

• Going over the task list for the next course preparation.
• Latest progress in marketing preparations for the next course- what’s next?
• Latest in choosing collaboration tools- what’s next?
• Final preparation before team retreat.
• What’s the most important priority for this week?

The big focus for a weekly meeting is just making sure that the innumerable things that need to get done are being handled, or consciously ignored, rather than just missed.

3. Big Issue Meeting

The big issue meeting is taking one or two bigger topics and having an indepth discussion. You can’t dig into more than that and really have the time to make a good decision about anything.

Marketing strategies, emergency revenue ideas, anything that requires a discussion, back-and-forth, and coming to a decision that is significant for your business is worth putting into a Big Issue Meeting.

Tackling only one or two of these a month may not seem like much, but if you do this several months in a row, you’ll be surprised at how much clarity will arise from these decisions.

And, if you’re new to this and have a LOT to tackle, you can do what my client is doing, which is having a Big Issue meeting once a week for a several weeks to pile through a number of big decisions.

Or, you can go into the fourth meeting.

4. The Team Retreat

Take a retreat at least annually, but ideally every six months. This kind of spaciousness is what makes a huge difference in business development. It takes you out of reaction and being run by urgent needs, and into a sense of truly running your business.

That’s what we’re doing coming up this week. Taking two to three days for everyone on your team to go really deep and big picture. If you’re solo, you can do this in a mastermind, with a spouse or partner, or even, *gasp* solo.

I know a solo business owner who will go away for two nights, and spend the entire time visioning, doodling, sketching, mindmapping, thinking about the big picture of the business and coming up with the next year’s plan.

Here’s a sample agenda for time together:

1. Review of the past- celebrations and mistakes.
2. Who are you? What are your core intentions and identity as a business?
3. What would make the biggest difference for your business in the coming year (six months)
4. Playing with project ideas and coming up with your schedule and plan, prioritizing projects according to ability, resources, and how alive they are in your heart.

There you go, one of the simple secrets to meetings in micro businesses. There’s more than one way to exercise, to prepare beets, to do spiritual practice and, as it turns out, to meet. Who knew?

What do you do to make your meetings inspiring and productive? I’m so curious.

Please tell us in the comments.