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TEAM MEETING: FORMAT

The format we advise people to follow has six sequential steps, each one corresponding to an objective that, you'll recognize, is an important feature of the P.R.I.C.E. system as well as of the team-building process. These six steps are to: Follow up, Review performance data, Reinforce, Problem solve, Plan actions, and Communicate.

1.  Follow up. Every good team meeting ends with the team outlining a plan of actions that can be taken immediately to improve the performance picture. And every good meeting begins by finding out what progress has been made on the elements of that plan. This shouldn't be construed - and it shouldn't be described by a team leader - as a "checkup" or "score" of progress. Your goal in following up on the last meeting's business is neither to chide nor to praise, but simply to find out where you are.

It's a simple enough thing to do, and it's essential. Say at your last team meeting you discovered that one thing blocking the data collection process was that an external computer bank on which you relied was having maintenance difficulties. And let's say you had then decided that Joe Marks would look into how they were doing. Obviously, one sensible way to start the current meeting would be to ask Joe to report his findings. What he tells you will affect any decisions you and your team can make now.  So you always start the meeting by following up.

2.  Review performance data. Next, you want to find out, together, how far and in what direction you've come since the last time you met. You do this by bringing in the Recording element of the P.R.I.C.E. plan, and by putting on overheads or easel sheets any relevant graphs or other performance measurements. Then you discuss the data together, looking not only for the progress or regress of individual workers or shifts, but also for long-range trends - the kind of cycles and patterns that I discussed in Chapter 5.

This step of the meeting is a way of getting everyone together to apply the Recording and the Evaluation elements of the system, by assessing where you're all moving, and by considering how to modify the feedback people have been getting to improve the performance results. A good performance data review is not simply a report on the weekly scores; it's a means of assessing those scores against a longer range business picture.

3.   Reinforce. This is probably the most important single element of a good team meeting, and it's the One that's most frequently slighted. Once you've reviewed the data, you've got to provide reinforcement to those individuals and groups that have contributed to any improvement. Again I stress the value of providing positive Consequences for good Behavior, and of doing that in the 4:1 ratio that we've found to get the best results. A team format is particularly effective for this, since it allows your star performers to receive the well-deserved applause of their colleagues, and it motivates slower performers to better effort, so they can avoid looking bad by comparison.

You can also use negative reinforcement in a team setting, but it should be done sparingly, and only when there is no good alternative. Obviously if Joe Marks has not gotten the information your team needs to move on, it's appropriate to say you're disappointed. (And in this kind of a situation, you won't be the only one saying it.) But generally speaking, as the study by Lenk indicated, you're going to get much better results if you concentrate on positive reinforcement.

One thing you particularly want to reinforce is the idea of team cooperation itself. Sure, you want to thank Gene for the 15 percent cost savings his shift turned in last week. But you always want to phrase it in the context of teamwork as well.  "Good job on the cost savings" is fine. But a better way of giving positive reinforcement would be to say, "It's great to see how well your guys are pulling together. They're showing us what good team-work can do."  Never be afraid to reinforce your team members for their specific business contributions and also for their contributions to your team and other teams. That way, you'll be reinforcing the very thing that has made them more productive in the first place.

4.  Problem solve. The point of good reinforcement is not to make folks feel good, but to make them more productive while feeling good. Productivity is still the name of the game, and probably most of your team meeting time will be taken up with tackling ways to improve productivity and/or quality. In other words, it will be taken up with problem solving. If you've been motivating people properly throughout the meeting, this segment will not be the onerous chore it sometimes seems, but an opportunity for rich interaction, creativity, and plain fun. I'll go into this in detail in the following chapter, which is on Creative Problem Solving in the team setting.

5.  Plan actions. After you've "solved" the problem--or laid out some tentative solutions, which is more likely - you take steps to get it under control. Those steps constitute an immediate action plan - your way of ensuring, very specifically,  that you'll start up your next team meeting farther along toward a solution than you were at the beginning of this one.

By "action plan" here I simply mean a list of things that have to get done now, or by a certain designated time frame. Not things like "improve quality" or "speed up reports." Pinpointed tasks that can be assigned, on either a voluntary or a rotating basis, to one specific group member. Your action plan is essentially a list of Pinpointed personal objectives. "Joe Marks to inquire about Comax's maintenance problem by Friday." "Len to post new performance objectives by tomorrow." "Section 3 managers to supervise cleanup through next week."  Each item on the action plan list should indicate who is going to do what, and by when.

A quick aside on task assignment. I say, "Either a voluntary or a rotating basis," but that's an ideal you're not always going to be able to achieve, at least not in the beginning. I suggest that, once your team has decided on what actions have to be taken by next week, you first ask for a volunteer to fulfill each action. If you get dead silence, you can try the "team within a team" approach, by asking for two or three people to work together to complete the necessary tasks. If that fails, too, you simply have to "volunteer" someone yourself, and you can lessen the dictatorial feature of doing that by asking rather than telling: "Would you be willing, Joan, to check into that late delivery report?" Most of the time, you'll get a yes. And the longer your team is in operation, the less frequently you'll have to resort to this method. As your team-building progresses - and that happens as an automatic side effect of the meeting format - you'll start getting the volunteers you need.

Your role as a facilitator of the next meeting requires that you remember accurately what the team has decided in the action plan, so take notes. These notes will be the springboard for the follow-up section of the next meeting.

6.  Communication. We advise the managers we train to end every team meeting with a brief (four- or five-minute) segment on simple communication. I don't mean an encounter session - just the quick, direct exchange of information that can impact the group's current and future progress. This information-exchange segment need not have anything to do with the official "agenda" of the meeting, although of course it may raise issues for future agendas.

The information shared in this format could be as direct to the business involved as, "Mary Wright's going on maternity leave next month, so we have to make contingency plans for her department" or as distant from immediate concerns as, "Did you read the Business Week article on cost-cutting in billing procedures?"  The value of such exchanges is twofold. First, it gives everybody the kind of information they need to make better-informed decisions: in other words, it helps make everybody, not just the leader, a "better quarterback." Secondly, it reinforces the teamwork spirit without which no team can survive: it lets every body know that you're working toward common goals, and that you're trying to get there together.

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