The 30-Minute

Operations Meeting Blueprint

A WHITEPAPER BY

ALIGN. ENGAGE. PREDICT.

he weekly operations meeting—where the executive team assembles to review company priorities and solve problems—is a critical tool for enabling the company to achieve its objectives.

But there are many ways in which these meet-ings can, and do, go wrong. In this whitepaper, we will offer a simple blueprint to help you run weekly operations meetings that are highly pro-ductive. Best of all, using this blueprint allows most leaders to get these meetings done in about 30 minutes.

THE PURPOSE OF THE WEEKLY OPERATIONS MEETINGWhat we’re calling operations meetings go by many names, but the purpose is the same: the CEO gets the executives in the same room to understand where everyone stands and what needs to be done to move the ball forward.

These are high-stakes meetings. You’ve got many executive salaries in the room—so wast-ed time is costly. And if key issues get lost in a hurricane of irrelevant data, the consequences can be dire.

As CEO, it’s important to run these meetings purposefully. A focused, well-run operations meetings has many benefits, including:

• Alignment around shared priorities.• Cross-functional clarity; reduced silos.• Rapid surfacing of execution roadblocks.• Open, collaborative problem solving.

We are sure you’re aware of the many failure modes that plague corporate meetings of all kinds, particularly the operations meeting. They include but certainly aren’t limited to:

• Long-winded and unnecessary deep-dives into one department’s metrics/KPIs.

• Circular discussions—or arguments—that recur from week to week.

• A nebulous meeting agenda, leading to dis-traction and boredom.

• Lack of follow-up to items discussed and decisions made in the meeting.

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TMEETINGS WILL WASTE YOUR TIME—

IF YOU LET THEM

Like you, we have been in countless routine weekly leadership meetings that balloon to two hours or more. The law of diminishing returns typically kicks into gear at about the 30- or 45-minute mark. Attendees often start tapping out emails right there at the conference table.

Harvard Business Review recently covered research showing that CEOs spent 72% of their total work time in meetings, and more than two-thirds of those meeting lasted an hour or more. The authors of the research write: “In our de-briefs, CEOs confessed that one-hour meetings could often be cut to 30 or even 15 minutes.” Cutting down weekly operations meetings can help you recapture some of that time—without losing your grasp of company operations.

Operations meetings also eat up time beyond your executive team. Bain & Company found in one case that a weekly meeting of the executive team consumed 300,000 person-hours annually, as reports were prepared layers down the orga-nization. As we’ll discuss, presenting complex functional data every week rarely enlightens anyone—and can actually be counterproductive.

THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT

CEO Working Hours

In meetings72%

Not in meetings

28%

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THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT Here is our suggested process for running your weekly operations meetings. The 30-minute guideline isn’t a strict one—longer discussions may come up. Generally, however, strive to keep these meetings concise.

BEFORE THE MEETINGThe first two items consist of prework for a healthy operations-meeting practice.

1. Set Strategic ObjectivesMost meeting dysfunction stems from a lack of focus. To get to the root of that problem, it’s important that you set a handful (5–7) of specif-ic, measurable objectives for your organization each quarter, and ensure that they are tightly aligned with company strategy. These objectives should represent what success looks like for the company over the next 90 days.

But what do these strategic objectives have to do with your operations meetings? As you’ll see, your 5–7 objectives (and the associated met-rics/KPIs you’re tracking) will give operations meetings structure and focus. They articulate the organization’s priorities for the quarter, so the purpose of the operations meeting becomes clear: to review the objectives and ensure they are on track. Keep the objectives in a system available to all your executives, and make sure these objectives influence the goals that execu-tives set for their own teams.

2. Set Expectations for the MeetingNext, communicate to the executive team what you expect in weekly operations meetings. Share a template agenda (p. 5) and any guidelines you set (p. 3, sidebar). It’s also good to set a consis-tent time and day for the meetings—Mondays are a natural choice, so everyone kicks off the week reoriented to shared priorities.

THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT

There is no better way to have a fundamental impact on an organization than by changing the way it does meetings. —Patrick Lencioni

SAMPLE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

Grow revenue by 30% year over yearMeasurement: $20M annual recurring revenue

Launch iOS mobile app version 1.0Measurement: GA released by 6/15

Build strategic partnershipsMeasurement: Two partnership agreements signed

Deliver world-class customer serviceMeasurement: Improve Net Promoter Score

from 35% to 40%

Fill COO positionMeasurement: Offer made to highly qualified

candidate

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DURING THE MEETINGItems 3 through 7 make up your operations meet-ing agenda. See it in template form on p. 5.

3. Open BrieflyIt’s common sense that this meeting should begin on time and promptly—it shows that you respect each of your executives’ time. Open by sharing any wins the team had in the previous week or anything else you think should be on your executives’ radars.

4. Review Action ItemsLater, you will be recording action items to be completed in the coming week. This is a time to review the action-item list for last week and see which were done. The completion rate will never be 100%, but it’s important to hold the team ac-countable for what they committed to doing.

5. Review Each Strategic ObjectiveNow it’s time to review the 5–7 strategic objec-tives you set at the beginning of the quarter. Pull them up for everyone to see and touch on each one. As CEO, you own these objectives, but each one will likely be associated primarily with one or two of the executives in the room.

For each objective, ask the executive(s) to an-swer two key questions:

• Likelihood: How likely are we to achieve this objective on time?

• Quality: How do you feel about the quality of the work done so far on this objective?

The first question allows the department head to raise an alert if some circumstance may prevent timely achievement of the objective. It’s critical that the executive team work together as a whole to solve these execution roadblocks.

The second question gives the executive a chance to discuss, generally, how the work toward this objective is going. It’s designed to surface any quality tradeoffs that may be taking place to reach a number—to reveal the more nu-anced reality behind the numerical data.

THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT

WHAT ARE YOUR PERSONAL MEETING GUIDELINES?

As CEO, you set the tone for what goes on in operations meetings. It’s a good idea to clearly establish how you like to run meetings. One way to do this is to create a customized set of meeting guidelines. Codify these guidelines and share them with your executives (and perhaps the whole compa-ny).

We are sure you can think of plenty of your own guidelines, but a few to consider: • Transparency in people. Some people

have a tendency to keep silent when they disagree with something in a meeting, but then they will privately complain later. It can help to say that you expect people to be courageously transparent and give their honest reactions in the moment.

• No devices. We don’t necessarily rec-ommend a blanket “no devices” rule, but if you’re a purist, or if your executives tend to get sucked into their laptops and phones while meeting, this could be a guideline you set.

• Represent the whole company. In The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, Pat-rick Lencioni points to a common meet-ing dysfunction: Executives operate like members of the United Nations, there to lobby for their constituents (the people in their department), rather than operat-ing as members of the leadership team. It can help to set the expectation that executives see the leadership team as their “first team,” as Lencioni describes it. Their position as representative of their department comes second to their position as a member of a cohesive lead-ership team working to solve problems across the whole company.

THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT

For example, maybe your head of product says that the mobile app will be launched on time, but the developers are worried about the amount of bugs they’re detecting. Or maybe your VP of sales feels that the revenue goal will be met but is worried about the dried-up lead pipeline, which indicates lower revenue next quarter.

As you move from objective to objective, keep the conversation focused and on track. Some of your executives may be tempted to begin diving into their functional data, one of the most common pitfalls of operations meetings. Nine times out of ten, that PowerPoint isn’t going to enlighten anyone or lead to a better decision. Set the expectation that executives will synthe-size everything they know after analyzing their own data and share only the relevant insights, so the meeting stays tight and relevant.

Here is the rule of thumb: If the conversation begins to veer off into an area that doesn’t affect everyone in the room—or that most people in the room can’t volunteer help with—bring the meet-ing back to a focus on the strategic objectives.

6. Address New IssuesIf an objective is going well, you don’t need to dwell on it. The operations meeting is a time to manage by exception—to focus on deviations from the plan, on places where action is needed. When an executive raises an issue while answer-ing the two questions in step 5, have a targeted discussion about how to handle it. Ask these additional two questions:

• What actions do you think will best address this issue this week?

• What help do you need from the rest of the organization?

The answer to the first question should be a clear action item for the executive. A designat-ed meeting attendee—you, a COO, or someone else—should write down all such action items from the operations meeting.

The second question prompts your department heads to actively collaborate to keep corporate objectives on track. Again, these discussions should be focused on working across depart-ments—avoid tactical discussions that drag down the meeting and that don’t involve every-one.

By the end of the meeting, you should have an informed view of the status of each strategic objective. The gold standard is a shared system like Khorus, where strategic objectives and all supporting goals are updated each week, given a color-coded status, and contextualized with comments. However, in the absence of such a system, it’s a good idea to tag each goal weekly with a red-yellow-green status:

 

7. End PromptlyOnce you’ve gone through each of the objectives and recorded action items, end the meeting. At times, you may have a topic you want to dis-cuss with the whole leadership team. It’s fine to take advantage of having everyone in the same room to do so, but draw a clear line between that discussion and the operations meeting.

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Grow revenue by 30% year over year

Launch iOS mobile app version 1.0

Build strategic partnerships

Deliver world-class customer service

Fill COO position

Operations Meeting Agenda

As you see from the ranges below, your meeting may end up exceeding 30 minutes—especially if you surface a critical issue or have a high-

stakes decision to make.

Open5 minutesShare announcements and wins or lessons from the previous week.

Review Action Items5 minutesReview the lists of actions committed to last week. How many were completed?

Review Strategic Objectives10–15 minutesPull up the company’s strategic objectives, with associated metric(s). For each, ask an executive to forecast likelihood of achievement and assess quality of work done.

Address New Issues10–15 minutesCollaborate to solve execution roadblocks surfaced during the review of objectives. Record any action items to be taken.

Close PromptlyEnd the meeting. Don’t let discussions that don’t affect everyone drag on.

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THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT

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AFTER THE MEETING

8. Follow Up on Action Items and Communicate DecisionsAfter the meeting, ensure that every executive has their list of action items. It’s a good practice to appoint someone to coordinate this process.

Also, it’s a very common mistake to make a deci-sion in a leadership meeting and then fail to com-municate it to the rest of the organization, leaving employees operating on outdated assumptions. If a decision of any consequence is made in an

operations meeting—especially one relating to a strategic objective—communicate this decision to the rest of the staff, or ask an executive to do so. This type of transparency builds trust across the whole workforce and helps people align their daily actions with strategic priorities.

CONCLUSIONIf you use this blueprint for your operations meet-ings, we think you’ll see the benefits after just a few weeks: saved time, increased alignment across departments, and an ongoing focus on the true priorities of the business.

About KhorusKhorus is software that helps your company execute strategy predictably, from the C-suite to the frontline. Offering clarity and direction on the mission, alignment with strategic objec-tives, companywide engagement in the plan, and weekly predictive updates for leadership, Khorus functions as the organization’s central hub for getting the right things done.

Get in touch today to see how Khorus gives you a framework for highly productive operations meetings—and much more.

Try Khorus

About the AuthorsCAROLYN JENKINS is chief executive officer at Khorus Software. Prior to Khorus, she cofounded and served as VP of customer success at Iconixx Software Corporation, cofounded nCent Software, and cofounded EngageTalent. In her first executive role, she spent seven years as VP of Human Resources at two different technology compa-nies. She holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Red McCombs School of Business and has served on the Compensation Trends and Best Practices Advisory Board at HR.com.

JOEL TRAMMELL is the founder and chairman of Khorus Software, and currently serves as chief executive officer of Black Box Network Services. Joel’s leadership as founder and CEO of NetQoS and CacheIQ resulted in nine-figure acquisitions by two Fortune 500 companies. He blogs at TheAmericanCEO.com, and writes regular columns for Entrepreneur.com and Inc.com. His book, The CEO Tightrope, describes a systematic approach to the chief executive role.

THE 30-MINUTE OPERATIONS MEETING BLUEPRINT