Effective Staff Meetings: Balancing Structure and Flexibility
In this episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take?, hosts Brad Hefta-Gaub and Scott Porad discuss best practices for running effective staff meetings. They explore different meeting structures, including ad hoc agendas, the 'ball of mud' pattern, and structured rhythms for sprint reviews and operations reviews. The duo emphasizes the importance of having a clear agenda to avoid unproductive meetings and suggest using categorized agenda items to align discussions with organizational goals. They also address the challenge of keeping attendees engaged and focused on key objectives. Practical tips for promoting fiscal responsibility, system uptime, and team engagement are shared to help leaders run more efficient and meaningful staff meetings.
00:00 The Importance of Meeting Agendas
00:21 Introduction to the Podcast
00:32 Different Approaches to Staff Meetings
01:14 Effective Meeting Structures
02:43 Tailoring Meetings to Company Needs
04:20 Balancing Structure and Flexibility
06:37 Addressing Common Meeting Issues
09:46 Implementing Structured Agendas
12:06 Engaging Attendees in Meetings
14:02 Conclusion and Podcast Outro
Brad: If you show up to a meeting and there's literally no agenda at all,
then you shouldn't have the meeting.
Welcome to another episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast.
My name is Brad Hefta-Gaub,
and this is my co-host, Scott Porad.
Scott: And let's actually go back to the staff meeting for a second.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: How do you like to run those staff meetings?
Let's actually prime that pump a little bit.
Brad: Yeah, prime that a little bit. There's so many.
That's a big question.
Scott: There's a few different approaches I've
Brad: Well,
Scott: used.
Brad: we start by everybody having to do push-ups. That's how we start.
That what you meant?
Scott: You know, I once worked at a place where, you know, we talked about stand-up.
We would do plank-up. Let me tell you, when you are doing planks, your stand-up ends really fast.
You get about 90 seconds, you get through the whole team, what their updates are.
Okay,
so...
Okay, what are the patterns I've seen?
Okay, I've seen the most common pattern,
the ball of mud pattern,
which I would refer to as the ball of mud pattern,
the most common pattern,
which is the ad hoc agenda topics, where there's an agenda,
anybody can throw topics on there, and you just talk about random stuff.
And sometimes that stuff is really meaningful to the directors,
and sometimes it feels like it's a giant waste of time.
That's one pattern.
another pattern as well called the essentially the stand-up pattern which is it's a status update so each director is like here's what we got going on here's here's what we got going on here's what we're planning on doing here's what we're blocked on right that kind of that kind of step thing um i have seen the more structured rhythm
um that's structured rhythm obviously but a little bit more structured maybe um once a month or uh on some rhythm you're doing a deep dive like oh in fact this is what i was doing with my last team we did um the week
so sprints were two weeks so the week after a sprint was over we reviewed the schedule so we looked ahead like what got done at that sprint what's going to happen going forward and then in the off week we did an operations review so how were our how was our not our engineering performance or our systems performance you know time stuff so we just toggled back and forth between those things and then there was some ad hoc topics in addition to those so different
approaches to it and I'm just wondering and I've never found one I love they
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: all they all they all have something they all lack something and I'm just wondering how you approach it
Brad: I think, well,
first of all, I think you've got to, it's always going to be situation,
right?
So it's always going to be a it depends answer,
right?
So what's the stage of the company?
What are the challenges it's facing?
What are the, what are the, you know, how,
you know.
Do you have, do you manage project coordination via some other meeting?
So in what I would prefer,
my general preference would be that the purpose of the staff meeting would be that at my level of VP or CTO,
you know, my staff is going to be, you know, directors or VPs, right?
And so at that level,
you're...
uh project management i believe should be dashboard driven it should be it should not become a project coordination problem shouldn't be coming like certainly at the sprint level shouldn't be coming to this director's meeting because hopefully we solved that via dashboards and other process etc now it could be that we've got like a
A big topic that does have multi-group implications that, you know, maybe we've gotten a, you know, maybe we have some kind of a pivot that has to happen or a, you know, a curveball was thrown from the business to that needs to radically change a bunch of our projects, then certainly that would be a good thing to talk about in this staff meeting.
But I would be avoiding any kind of.
any kind of project updates and things like that i think that to use your um you know you know kind of the taxonomy that you gave i think i don't necessarily like the ball of mud but i think what well what i've tended to do is like i said pre-published agendas that anyone can anyone can add to so everybody that's coming in the meeting gets to put their agenda item on the agenda and then
You know, we do some collective adjudication where,
you know, it's my staff meeting. So like
Scott: Mm
Brad: I'm
Scott: -hmm.
Brad: going to make the call about whether or not we need to how much time we need to spend on that topic based on my perspective of the business import of it.
So I'm a general like let's get the agenda before we start.
Let's do a quick agreement on are we going to try to cover these and in what order?
And then let's try to stick to them and pace it out, right?
Like, if you show up to a meeting and there's literally no agenda at all,
then you shouldn't have the meeting,
right?
Scott: Yeah,
of course.
You know, years that are going in my head right now are thinking,
you know, what is it that I dislike about the open agenda process?
And I think the part.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of it?
Well,
the strength is it creates an open forum for people to bring whatever they need to bring.
That's good because you need to have that space.
The weakness is it doesn't always have a direction. Your organization is trying to head in a direction.
And as a leadership team,
you should be trying to move it in that direction.
And oftentimes the topics that people bring up.
have nothing really to do with moving in that direction.
I think I'd like to shape that staff meeting like every week there is some aspect of this meeting where we are talking about how are we moving in the direction that we need to be moving in.
Brad: You know, I would say like if I had a if I had a director that constantly showed up to the staff meeting and was effectively pulling us in a direction that wasn't aligned with the direction we.
are trying to move the organization in then that's a that's a that's a let's have that conversation with that
Scott: Yeah,
Brad: director
Scott: that's
Brad: yeah
Scott: not what I mean. Let me give an example.
It's not a real one,
but, you know, a director puts on the list,
hey, we're overspending on our Circle CI.
It's like, okay,
that doesn't, yes,
that's a real problem that we need to figure out what to do with, but.
It's for lack of a description an ordinary problem.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: It's
Brad: Well,
Scott: not
Brad: I think that's great.
But wouldn't that be a good example to say, great,
thank you for bringing it to the staff meeting.
Everybody that is utilizing the Circle CI,
you know, what.
go identify go identify your usage of it and come back to the staff meeting let's set a goal of next month and have a have an action plan i'll let you guys i'll defer to you you guys own it you guys run with it let me know how i can help
Scott: 100%. I think what I want to fit that in to is a context of we are trying to manage to budget.
Totally.
Brad: Yeah, love it.
Scott: So,
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: you know, when
Brad: So
Scott: it says
Brad: zoom
Scott: appropriate.
Brad: the camera out.
Scott: yeah it needs to be in some context of the things we're trying to accomplish which are we're trying to keep our systems up we're trying to operate within budget we're trying to deliver new software on schedule right so like and we're trying to have our team be engaged and happy and satisfied with their work so those are like the four buckets really i'm just thinking this out loud right now but like that's almost like the context we need to run the staff meeting in which
Brad: Totally.
Scott: is when we create maybe it's even when we create that open agenda there
that there are four buckets and you can put your item in any bucket but it needs to be under one of these buckets i guess there can be a miscellaneous bucket but if it's miscellaneous then
i wonder what it would Well, be
Brad: yeah, and I think that like,
no,
I like that idea, too.
Like you could definitely like generally say the goal of this meeting is to cover one of these four pillars.
Here's my four pillars. Throw your agenda item into one of those. That's great.
The other thing I would say, though,
is like I can picture that that person bringing this CircleCI issue to the.
to the meeting and they could bring it in a way
where they've already gotten that message about the big themes and they're bringing it in that context.
Hey,
Scott: Yes.
Brad: folks,
I know that fiscal responsibility is important,
uptime is important,
CICD is a big piece of that.
I've noticed because in my own personal audit,
I identify a great audit,
you're doing personal audits, that's an excellent role.
And then you have an opportunity to basically go,
you know.
Kudos,
Janet.
You have demonstrated all the attributes I like. Thank you for bringing it to this.
Everybody,
let's please follow up on this and let me know how you want to report back.
But I'm thinking a month from now, kind of come back with either your proposed solution,
if you feel I need to adjudicate it,
or let me know how you're integrating it into your go forward plans once you've come up with that. Right.
And then you get this opportunity. Right.
To demonstrate that Janet brought to the table the issue in the important context that it and you might say,
thank you for bringing that,
Janet. I would have preferred that you work with, you know, Vanush and Bob and Carl and Carlos already and have you guys could have brought that to me.
Scott: Yeah,
Brad: Right.
Scott: I think the thing that I'm taking from this, I'm actually going to put it in place for my next staff meeting is simply to take that agenda.
It's just that we just have a Google Doc too.
And right now it's just a bullet pointed list.
And I'm just going to make some headings and just say,
hey, just put your thing under the right bullet.
Brad: Yeah, I love it.
Scott: And then actually maybe start to shift our staffing a little bit like, hey, we are going to actually go through these one by one,
these section by section.
and talk about them actually that's the structure of the staff meeting is is there anything we need to talk about in regard to process this week even if there's nothing in the agenda hey i notice there's nothing in the agenda is our process working smoothly awesome great let's move on let's talk about our cost our budget
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: uh you know michelle has got the highest spend here which is we keep on topping up every month what's going on there right so i think that's that's a way
maybe a way to split the difference between some structure of what we're trying to accomplish with the freedom and liberty of everybody being able to serve for something.
Brad: You want people to bring issues.
Right.
You want them to feel comfortable bringing issues.
So you don't want to like slap them down if they bring an issue that is ordinary to use your term.
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: You want them.
to feel accountable to make decisions that are aligned with the goals of the company and not feel like they have to get your permission to make a positive difference,
right?
And so that to me is always this delicate balance with these staff meetings where it's like,
look,
I want you to,
if you have questions about what our objective here,
if you have questions about what I would do, great,
I'm here for that.
that. But generally speaking,
I want you to feel like you can run with this stuff and make a difference,
right?
And you,
I also feel like
they want like the classic there's a group of people that they they do sometimes want to be told what to do you know and hopefully
Scott: Sure.
Brad: at the director level they feel a sense of autonomy where they don't feel like there's very few things that they feel like they need to have you tell them what to do right because they're they're you know they're essentially a you know a part of part of your staff they need to be you know
autonomous, appropriately.
Scott: There's another little piece I'm trying to address.
So there are two of these staff meetings each week. There's my engineering staff meeting.
So that's about 10, let's say 10 people, maybe a few less.
And then it's eight,
nine,
including myself. So and then there is our all product engineering.
staff meeting which
Brad: Yep.
Scott: is about 22 so it's product management leaders and engineering leaders together and but and there's here's a symptom I'm trying to solve in both of these they both have the sort of ad hoc agenda strategies and in both of them there's a lot of blank looks on the camera it's like why am I here I'm just here to listen to some random stuff that other people brought up and I'm thinking
Brad: Is that more of a problem in your team meeting or in the co-owned meeting?
Scott: owned but really both to some degree it's it's more in the co-owned because the topics sometimes are of more interest to the product managers versus the engineers or vice versa but I haven't seen a ton of topics where it's like both groups are like we're super engaged right like oh this is one that really is
between both of us um that's beside the point that i think maybe by making a little structure what i'm actually also actually doing is signaling to the attendees this is what we're here about we're
Brad: Yeah, totally.
Scott: not here to discuss random stuff we're actually here to work together on a set of goals um or so right and then i'm hopeful that'll create a different type of engagement
Um,
especially if we take an, if I take an approach where every time that those four or five areas I just outlined that you're working on as a leadership team,
every time we're saying,
Hey,
anything in the people department we need to be talking about right now.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: And there's a structure there for people to then actually start to engage and think about what I should be bringing.
Yeah. So this is great. That's cool.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: We got some more today.
Brad: That was another episode of how many CTOs does it take?
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It's great talking to you again,
Scott.
See you next week.
This episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast was edited by Saffron Hepdegout. Our theme song was AI Generated by Brad.
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