Skip level meetings

For part 2 of the Dafacto meeting series I present: Skip level meetings.

I love having regular skip level meetings. For those who have never heard of a skip level, the term refers to the direct reports of your direct reports. I try to hold a 1-1 meeting with each of my skips every 4-6 weeks. In my last organization, I had regular skip level meetings with about 9 people (all of my US folks. I did not hold regular skips with my overseas staff, though I met with almost all of them when I went to visit). Including the weekly 1-1’s with my direct reports, I typically had 7 hours of meetings with various staff members. Obviously, this was an enormous investment in time. Was it worthwhile? Absolutely. Otherwise you are dependent on your directs for information regarding things like staff morale, organizational issues, project progress, etc. I know staff found them valuable.

What did we talk about? Though the skip owned the meeting agenda (notice a theme), the skips were really focused on two things. First, staff development. I wanted to learn the staffs’ career and personal goals. We would use the time to talk about if they were making progress against those goals and what could I do to help.The time was very focused on their careers. In fact, after my first meeting, each person had to put together a development plan so we would have a structured conversation about their development.

Second, we talked about their projects. We talked about what was going well and what was not. People knew that I was fair and that if a project wasn’t going well, they would often tell me in those meetings. There were a couple of times where one of my directs was not living up to his commitment to his staff and the folks on his team needed a channel to be able to voice their concerns. Also, I would get to learn what was going well and use that information to give folks special recognition (I gave bottles of wine and gift cards) and visibility both in the team and to more senior executives.

One last thing. As a manager, it is very easy to move or cancel these meetings. After all, these folks are on your staff and are going to understand that stuff comes up. Right? As a leader, it is a terrible idea. If I had no choice, I would sometime postpone, knowing that this was sending a bad message to the staff member. I tried would make sure that they knew I did not want to cancel the meeting, and reschedule as soon as practical. The worst thing is blowing off the meetings. You wind up alienating the staff instead of helping them.

Staff Meetings

I am amazed at how many managers don't have staff meetings. Do they think they are not necessary? I think regular staff meetings are a critical management practice for, well, good management and leadership. And don't get me started on weekly meetings with direct reports or skip meetings. First things first. Staff meetings.

When I first started managing multiple groups, I found that I was repeating the same news over and over again. Also, some of the groups were working on complimentary projects or were interdependent and I was increasingly acting as the communication bridge between groups. So, I started to have staff meetings. I have always taken the same general approach to my staff meetings. First some general practices.

First, who owns the agenda and runs the meeting? Not me. Never me. Typically, one of my direct reports who I am starting to think about promoting. I want to give them the experience of running the meetings. They are going to need to do it themselves soon enough. Also, I don't see any reason to control the agenda. If I want to talk about something, I'll ask to have it on the agenda or just bring it up in the meeting.

Second, who attends? This depends on the organization and the needs. If you are often talking sharing confidential information, then a small, senior staff meeting is the way to go. If you want to use the meeting for sharing information across groups, then invite the senior folks and maybe their direct reports. I have seen people invite their directs on odd weeks and include the skip level folks on even weeks. I tend to go with inviting the larger group and make it clear that what is discussed does not go outside the family.

Third, how long? Between an hour and an hour and a half.

Typical agenda?

1. Company Updates. I use this time to talk any big company or departmental news that is relevant. Typically, this time was spent explaining why the company, my boss, or myself was doing something that did not seem to make sense to the staff. Some senior folks are pretty command and control. like to have a pretty tight reign on the discussions. I would rather use the time to share information.

2. Ken Rona updates. I give the team a sense of what I am working on. I do this so the staff can act as effective agents on my behalf and bring up any items that would materially affect my work. In this way, the people on the team can proactively participate in helping me solve my problems. Also, I really liked discussing my work in front of the team. Not only were folks helpful and pushed my thinking, it is good for morale. people like having the transparency.

3. Direct Reports update. My directs share their project lists. The agenda keeper is responsible for putting together an update project list for the group for every meeting. Mostly I focused these discussions on time lines. Are we going to meet this commitment we made. I think having to affirm the commitments in public, every week, keeps people focused.

4. Information sharing. We share interesting team outputs. I am a big fan of sharing information across silos. I often find that someone would do an analysis and share with the team, only to find that either there was a better way to do the analysis or that we could reuse the analysis for another internal client.

Oh, another tip. Have someone bring food. We did not use catering. We rotated this responsibility and reimbursed the cost of the food. It would have been easier (and more expensive) to have it catered, but I liked that people could bring their own style to the catering.

Break Down The Wall!

The other day, someone asked me what I do to break down silos between functional teams. First, let me say that I don't think breaking down silos is an academic exercise; you almost always generate value by talking to folks outside your group, department, business unit, whatever. I can think of at least 10 examples of really impactful projects that have come out of "Silo Busting." Second, creating an environment for silo busting is not hard. It just requires some time. However, the way you attack your silos varies depending on the construction material.

Just keep in mind, some silos are harder to bust than others. If structural conflicts (e.g., working together means that a rational person would do worse off by cooperating) or long standing animosity between silos exist, the problem becomes a lot tougher.

Set expectations.
When I first take responsibility for a team, I set the expectation that we are going to make things better. Every day. And that means innovating. And that in my experience, innovation often comes when two people who are very different talk to each other about their areas of expertise and their problems. So, there is just an incentive to getting to know your colleagues and what they do; Opportunity for improvement often results.

As an aside, I actually have an expectations document that I share with all of my staff; innovation in the service of continuous improvement, etc is one the core values listed in the document. Also, I set an example. I am often going out to lunch to meet with folks whom I have no obvious business connection and I encourage my staff to do the same.

Information sharing
In most cases, people are working in silos not becuase they enjoy it but becuase they are too busy to share information. There are some easy tactics that you can employ to facilitate information sharing. A couple of things I do is have whole team staff meetings where and monthly round tables. During these meetings, we discuss the projects we are working on if there are ways that the group can help. Barriers fall very naturally. Also, as I mentioned above, I try to go out to lunch with people outside my business unit and encourage my staff to take their clients (and anyone else they think they should get to know better) out to lunch. To provide an incentive, I offer to pay for it.

Personality or Competence
Other times, it is a personality or competence issue. Here, I run at the problem head on and really set the expectation that the staff has to work together effectively. I then put the staff members in situations where they have to work together to be successful (e.g., some special business initiative.) The expectation of being an effective collaborator also becomes part of their development plans and makes sure the problem gets fixed. If we get to the development plan stage, then I am going to be paying close attention and actively trying to help the staff member be an effective collaborator. Typically, by working together, people reach some accommodation, build some level of relationship, and break down the silos.

If it turns out that the problem is due to competence, well, no amount of relationship building is going to matter. If the staff member on my team is causing the problem, then a performance plan is going to be put in place. If it is a staff member outside my influence, I will likely have a conversation with their boss about their performance. Good luck.