Productive Team Meetings

During a busy workweek, the last thing any manager needs is a wasted hour due to an unproductive meeting.

Managers need to make every minute count. When done well, meetings can be extremely productive and accomplish a lot in a limited amount of time.

 Understand the needs, behaviors and schedules of employees. Meetings often take away valuable time from workers, decreasing their productivity. When planning meetings, understand employees’ schedules and workload for the week.

The best time of the week for a meeting is 3 p.m. on Tuesdays. That’s early enough in the week that the meeting won’t interfere with deadlines.

 Create an agenda, and stick to it. Agendas should include step-by-step details for the meeting — including specifying the time for questions. Even if a detail seems obvious, include it on the agenda so that every attendee can be on the same page. Make sure each item on the agenda is clearly described and allotted a time frame. Skipping an item on the agenda is OK; adding to the agenda during the meeting is not.

 Make everyone responsible. Successful Fortune 500 companies such as Apple and Google have the mechanics of running a productive meeting down to a science. How so? These employers assign every employee a responsibility at a given meeting.

Apply a similar concept: For example, the meeting chair should require employees to report on their accomplishments for the week, no matter how big or small. This way, each employee is involved and more accountable for their work.

  Create consequences (and rewards) for meeting attendance. When employees show up late for meetings, it can make the meeting last longer than needed and increase distractions. To ensure everyone shows up on time for meetings, enforce consequences for attendance.

First, create a strict start time for the meeting. For example, let’s say the meeting takes place every Tuesday at 3 p.m. If employees arrive exactly at 3 p.m., they will be marked tardy. Any employee who is marked tardy will have to stay after the meeting to clean up.

Employees who show up early can be rewarded with having the first choice on a new project, for example.

 Make the meeting actionable. At the end of the meeting, require every attendee to share what they learned and their new goals in a 30-second recap. This helps the meeting chair find out what information attendees retained and whether a certain topic needs more clarification.

Meeting leaders can also ask a series of questions at the end of each meeting to find out what each attendee learned. Here are some examples:

“What do you plan to accomplish in the next week?”

“What information from this meeting will you relay to your team?”

“Name one valuable thing you learned from this meeting.”

 Put bookends on the meeting. Every meeting should have a clear start and end time to ensure the meeting doesn’t stray from its goals. Start and end times allow meeting chairs to keep attendees on track and decrease room for unnecessary chatter or long-winded, repetitive discussions.

Ultimately, productive meetings must be well-planned and focused on a goal. By getting the right people on board and promoting timely yet engaging discussions, the productivity of meetings will be greatly improved.

Growth Companies by Donald Hjelm

Sooner or later nearly every growth company needs to raise capital be it through borrowing, an equity investment or a merger. The days of blindly picking an investment bank and trusting the experts to go out and find capital from private equity firms are over.

Only investment banks that directly align their business model and compensation with the interests of their clients will survive as online investing platforms continue to transform the capital-raising landscape. I say this as a CEO who has been through this. An advantage of using some online platforms is that companies seeking capital remain in control of who sees their information and can see to it that sensitive information doesn’t end up in the hands of dozens of undesired investors. When an investment bank shares a company’s information, potential investors — typically private equity firms — might hold onto that information for several years.

When working with an online private investing platform, an entrepreneur can determine which potential investors look at the company’s data and first evaluate prospective investors’ backgrounds to decide if they would be a good fit. In contrast to the traditional investment-banking model, the entrepreneur remains squarely in control of the information and the capital-raising process.

This isn’t to say all investment banks are bad. Rather, it’s incumbent on the company to do their due diligence before hiring one. Here are the seven questions you need to ask:

1. What is your success rate?

Ask what percentage of the bank’s engagement letters lead to closed deals.

2. Why do you love my company?

Make the bankers be specific. If the bankers can’t convince you that they are strong believers in your management team and your business, they certainly won’t be compelling when they present the company to potential investors.

3. What’s the average time for closing a deal?

Don’t have the bank make speculative guesses about the length of time it might take to close a deal. Have the bank confirm its statement in an email with specifics after it runs an analysis. Once you sign an engagement letter with an investment bank, the meter is running. If the fee structure is weighted toward a retainer rather than a commission, the banker has less of an incentive to close a deal quickly. Often investment bankers will take three or four months before they even begin to talk to investors.

4. Does the bank have experience with firms of this size?

If the investment bankers tend to work with larger companies, think about what might happen if a larger client needs attention. Suddenly, your company might become a second- or third-tier customer. What if the bank has had no recent clients in your industry?

5. Can you provide five references?

Ask for introductions to five companies that were former clients of the bank in a fundraising effort — two that were successful in raising capital and three that were not. Ideally, these references will be in your industry and in your company’s size range. Ask that these clients be recent ones and make sure they all worked with your specific banker not just the bank itself.

6. Who are the first five people the bank will approach?

If you run a $15 million food company, and the investment banker wants to approach a Fortune 500 firm, ask for specifics. If the banker mentions contacting Nestlé, say, “That’s great, who exactly would you call at Nestlé and when was the last time you talked with him or her?”

7. What are the firm’s average fees?

A very high retainer doesn’t provide a banker an incentive to close a deal. Conversely, investment banks that rely heavily on commissions are motivated to close transactions quickly and at the highest valuation possible. And they are inclined to only take on companies in which they believe strongly.

Donald Hjelm

Don Hjelm