If you are anything like me and facilitating plenty of meetings or only have a few meet coming up. There is an easy template or acronym that you can use for planning out your session.

Each of the letters propel you into the next one. Intent gets you half way to what you actually want as an outcome. With that expected outcome you can start planning an agenda, where you start with the end goal in sight.

Intention

What do we intend with the meeting? Why even have it?

Desired Outcome

What specific results do we want to have achieved at the end of this meeting?

Agenda

What will we do at the meeting and in what order to achieve the expected results.

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Sometimes this is enough for a great meeting. It takes a couple of minutes to write, but it highly improves the meeting. When I facilitate longer sessions I add the last three letters of the acronym.

Roles

What roles and responsibilities are there for the meeting to run smoothly? Who facilitates, participates, documents? What is expected of the participants.

Rules

What kind of rules do we have in this meeting?

Should we practice active listening and not just wait for the moment to state your point?

Should we use some way of indicating who talks and how to hand over the mic to someone else, especially valid when doing a hybrid meeting with people both remote and on-site.

Should computers or mobiles be used when we run a meeting where everyone is in the same room?

Law of two-feet i.e. Leave if you don’t contribute?

How do we take minutes and where are they stored?

Let the participants come up with other rules that they want to include.

Time

How long is the meeting, will there be breaks?

Read slightly more over at https://toolbox.hyperisland.com/idoarrt-meeting-design

John Barrows, sales professional and writer of the book “I want to be in sales when I grow up”, talks about three different types of people that advocates your products within the companies they work at: Fans, Coaches, Champions.

Fans

These are the end-users of your products. They love your products, they will talk someone’s ears off evangelizing your product. They have no real impact of decisions or budget.

Coaches

Coaches help you navigate the map of a company. Who to talk to, when to talk to them, and what is going on at the company. “You didn’t hear it from me, but… this is what’s happening”.

Champions

These are the people that can take a chunk of the budget. They might not have direct authority, but they have a seat at the table when the conversations are happening. At that same table others will be advocating their favorite so make sure your champion has the correct data and arguments to advocate your product.

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Do you know if your advocate is really a champion, fan or coach?

As I mentioned in the previous post about growing pains, one regular pattern seen when growing past 50 people is the shift from direct communication to processes.

While it is easy to believe that processes could solve communication and vision challenges, this is seldom the case.

Hey there! You are not following the process!

Sure, we could always point at the process and say “Hey there! You are not following the process!“ And hope that your colleagues changes behavior, but that usually has no long lasting effects, especially when there is a believe that “what got us here, will take us there”.

There is a reason a company succeeds and grows, and it is probably credited with founders’ core values. Customer-centric, adaptability, collaboration, deep technical skills, “we can do it”-mentality to name just a few.

When these rather informal values go through the transformation to become documented processes a lot of agility and flexibility are lost on the way.

Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash

Rules and processes have a tendency to be absolute and we need a different way to move forward with our vision and at the same time have the opportunity to steer away from it temporarily when needed.

Similar to how the agile manifesto has values that captures both sides of an argument and favors one, so could a company capture its guidelines.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. - Agile Manifesto

Instead of writing a process around “Choice A versus Choice B” write guidelines with focus of picking one over the other, “Choice A over Choice B”. Making it easier transparent when we sidestep, but that is ok. Also making it easier to move forward on the vision.

Some examples of guidelines:

• Money over Glory
• Support existing customers over acquiring new customers
• Subscription over One-Time Payment
• Improve existing products over Building new products
• MVP over Big Bang
• Collaboration over Silos
• Team players over Rock stars
• Done over Perfect

Similar to the agile manifesto, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

While there is value in formal processes, I value the agility in guidelines more.

Read this great article about Molly Graham’s experiences with companies facing challenges during rapid growth and hiring. Managers should focus on normalizing and confirming feelings, their employees feel when change happens in at a rapid pace.

As a leader, you want to head it off at the pass and proactively say, ‘Hey, this is what you can expect to feel during this time of growth. It’s pretty universal‘. - Molly Graham

Rapid growth could mean that your employees are challenged by changes in roles or responsibilities. Certain parts of their work or responsibility, where they have done an excellent job, no longer belong to them. By focusing on the vision and the future and help the picturing it, it eases the transition.

One of the best techniques for getting people through job-change anxiety is to help them picture the reality of their next job and the size of the opportunity. - Molly Graham

Graham also sees patterns when companies grow beyond a certain amount of employees.

We used to be a family, now we’re a company!?

Around 30 to 50 employees you go from being a family where everyone knows each other and can strike up a conversation at any time. Communication is easy and direct. At 50 employees you’ve reached the level where you are a real company, not just a small team.

Everything that used to come naturally is now a struggle. - Molly Graham

While it is easy to focus on defining complex processes to overcome the need for a clearer way of working, you should focus on the principles and guidelines you wish to follow.

We can still change the vision and mission with ease

From 50 to 250 it is still easy to get your message across the company and to change the trajectory of the company. Beyond 250 employees it mostly depends on what you did well before.

A lot of how this phase feels has to do with how good of a ‘parent’ you were earlier on. - Molly Graham

In summary

How we hire and look after the first 100 employees will have an impact and set the tone for the next 200. Be good early on, establish guidelines rather than processes. Be transparent and open about growing pains.

Many moons have passed since I was introduced to the term psychologically safety and I realized that a freshen up was needed, clarity on what we mean when talking about building a psychologically safe workplace.

Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. - Amy Edmondson

I found this great TedX talk by Professor Amy Edmondson that coined the term back in 1999.

My main takeaways on building psychological safety are:

1. Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem. We have never been in this situation before, or for long, and we need everyone’s brains and voices in the game.
2. Acknowledge your own fallibility. Say simple things like “I might miss something, I need to hear from you…“.
3. Model curiosity. Ask a lot of questions.