5 steps for any meeting

This works with one precondition - If it’s not going to be a one way presentation and you want to have constructive discussion, don’t make it obligatory, invite only those who wants to contribute. There are different ways to achieve that and approach must fit your company culture.

  • Set the stage of the meeting
    • Ask people to say several words. It can be names, how the feel or anything else. This simple trick involves people into a conversation. Or it can be just a simple question at the start of the meeting
    • When people don’t speak early in a meeting, they may not contribute later at all and may not buy into team’s insights and decisions
    • Set working agreements upfront
  • Gather data
    • Without common picture, individuals tend to verify their own opinions and believes.
    • “F word” - feelings. It’s not easy to talk about feelings for engineers, but questions can be put in different way, e.g. When were you excited/mad/sad?
  • Get insights
    • Ask why. Looks at causes and effects. Think together how to change/improve.
  • Decide what to do
    • Pick best action that brings most value with least effort
    • Avoid do nothing retrospectives
  • Close
    • Decide what and how to document and formulate next steps

p.s. this model proved itself working perfectly once again when we were setting up “POD framework”