How to Run Meetings

Here, we’ll outline the kinds of meetings we feel are essential for businesses of all shapes and sizes. We’ll examine who should be involved, how and when they should run, and offer tips on how to get the most out of them. 

All the research suggests that the frequency of 1:1 meetings plays a significant role in engaging your people, especially those working remotely. So let’s start there.

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How to Run Good 1:1s 

Before the meeting:

• Make sure a time to meet is agreed upon and understood. Start with 30 mins and consider a frequency of fortnightly to start.
• Have a rolling agenda and stick to a consistent schedule and talking points. Consider a regular operational 1:1 and a separate one focused on career development at least once a quarter.
• Ensure there’s an opportunity for you both to share, collaborate and comment on the agenda ahead of the meeting.
• Take the time to prepare. Revisit any actions assigned to you from the previous meeting, review your notes from the last meeting, bring forward anything you want to discuss as a priority or feedback, and ensure the agenda is still relevant. There’s nothing worse than showing up unprepared. 
• In a busy startup or scaleup, things sometimes crop up and demand our immediate attention, but there’s rarely a good excuse for cancelling at the last minute. It’s a big no-no! Show them you regard this time as essential. If you have to, always prioritise re-scheduling over a straight cancellation, and always drop them a quick note to explain why. We get it - cancellations will occur, but take the time to communicating why and trying to avoid repeat cancellations.

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During the meeting:

• Always take a few minutes to understand how things are going. Ask about their general day-to-day, and don’t be afraid to ask about how things are outside work.
• Allow them to take the lead. Remember, the talking points are there as a guide. If something urgent needs to be discussed, take the time to do so.
• If a concern or difficulty is raised, ask for context. Ask them to give an example, outline the impact and encourage them to look for possible solutions to the problem at hand.
• When discussing progress on goals, always link their contribution to the wider company mission and recognise wins. Show how their progress is directly impacting the company’s success.
• Regardless of how the tone of a particular 1:1 goes, always look to finish on a positive.
• Summarise items discussed, take private notes and create action items for follow-up.

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After the meeting:

• Document a summary of the points discussed and share it with your team member. Do so promptly and not weeks after the discussion.
• Where you have action points, clearly outline what the other team member can expect from you and when.
• Remember that your work post-1:1 is equally, if not more, important than the prep.

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Weekly Kick-Off Stand-Up

The best way to kick off the week is to get everyone involved in a team-wide company stand-up. When the team is of a suitable size to do this, it’s an excellent opportunity to hear what each team member is focused on and a way to come together and collaborate on solutions to potential blockers some team members may have. 

As the team grows, this will become hard to facilitate in one group. Consider a weekly kick-off update video or email from the CEO focusing on things achieved last week, plans for the week ahead, and specific notable updates across the teams. The bigger the company, the less dense the information shared becomes, shifting focus to more significant news and functional updates.

Keeping this rhythm ensures that, no matter what your size, each week starts with a clear, company-wide overview and time to focus on progress.

Weekly Business Reviews 

This is a weekly meeting of the leadership team to review progress against the key metrics and priorities of the business. It should follow this format;

• Aim for 45 minutes to an hour in length with a clear agenda.
• Lead with a round table on any pressing or urgent matters, followed by any relevant news.
• Spend dedicated time reviewing progress against business-level OKRs or KPIs and update the progress of each accordingly. 
• Try and dedicate time to deep dive into one specific area of focus (e.g. fundraising, sales, product roadmap).
• Make sure each member of the team is given the floor for their update. 
• Stay on time and where further detail needs to be provided, set a clear expectation that preparation should occur before the meeting.

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All-Hands Meetings

Whatever your size, holding regular all-hands meetings is the most important thing you can do. They offer an opportunity to connect your people and their work to the business priorities, celebrate wins across your team and provide a space for your people to ask questions and address any concerns they may have. 

Start with a monthly meeting with the entire team and share a full update of goings-on across the business.

Here are some of our top tips;

• Make it interesting, short and collaborative (we suggest a 45-minute duration)
• Ideally, the CEO should lead out on the main update but consider involving different team members in a one-slide update on their team's priorities. This keeps it fresh and gives different perspectives and experiences to your people.
• Be clear and transparent in the information you share in this meeting with a common theme of progress, celebrations and positivity.
• Aim to make these meetings interactive and allow plenty of time at the end for Q&A.
• ​​As you establish your rhythm with All Hands meetings, seek feedback from your people on the format. This allows you to iterate and improve.
• Postpone rather than cancel, and only if you absolutely must.

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Regular Investor Updates 

If your company has investors, there’s likely a formally agreed-upon cadence around investor updates and what an investor pack might entail. 

One simple rule of thumb is, “no surprises.” Share a consistent set of key metrics on how the business is performing but also don’t wait until the next formal update if something significant happens and needs to be discussed. 

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Social Meetings

When working in a remote or hybrid environment, most of our time is spent in structured meetings, usually online. It’s important to schedule opportunities for people to socialise and talk about non-work related topics if they wish. 

Here at Frankli, we host a regular video meet-up called Electric Coffee, where there’s half an hour in our calendars to catch up over a cuppa. There’s no commitment to attend and certainly no structure. It’s a space for people to pop in, say hello and connect with each other.

Social and informal meetings are where meaningful conversations and relationships are built, and trust forms. But it’s worth noting that social catch-ups are only worth running if our people feel they have the bandwidth for them, so this has to be done in conjunction with regular conversations about workload. Leadership needs to acknowledge this and invest in making it happen. This also means agreeing on what budgets are available for social activities, clubs, or working groups.

Thinking about how you physically connect and being intentional about investing in these events is so important. Many remote-first companies come together in the same place twice, maybe three times a year. As your company scales, think about clustering meet-ups by location or teams. Nothing beats an in-person opportunity to connect!

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Action Points:

Immediate Action Points: 

• Review your company’s current schedule of meetings and make any necessary changes.
• Establish whether all of your managers are holding regular 1:1 meetings with their people. This information is automatically generated in Frankli.

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30-Day Action Points:

• Survey your people on their biggest challenges around 1:1s. 
• Host a session for managers on how to a) run effective 1:1s and b) communicate their value to their team members. 
• Survey your people about the current schedule of social meetings, including an open-ended question prompting suggestions.

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90-Day Action Points:

• Revisit the changes you made to the meeting schedule and make any necessary tweaks. 
• Make changes to the schedule of social meetings based on your employee survey (mentioned above).

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