As a business owner, the task of managing your team can completely take over your week.  Dealing with day to day issues, questions, dramas and niggles can drain your time, affect productivity and efficiency, and leave you feeling like you’re constantly firefighting.

So STOP!

Maybe it’s time to take a different approach to management and get your business running more smoothly.  The good news is – all you need is just THREE short meetings per week to achieve better team management.  Follow this simple approach, and you’ll notice positive changes in your business very quickly.

You should have these meetings with your key staff members only.  They, in turn, should be having these same meetings with their team members, so thereby, everyone in the organisation is following the same process.

So what is this simple, 3 meeting structure that will change how you manage your business?  In 3 words, WIP, LION, WIFLE!

1) Monday WIP Meeting – 10 minutes

We recommend starting the week with a short WIP (‘Work in Progress’) meeting on Monday. The purpose of this meeting is to establish that everyone is clear on what their priorities are for the week, what are they working on, what deadlines are they working to, what help they may need, etc.

Monday is also a great day for your team to share with you their weekly ‘to do’ list. Get your team into the habit of sharing their ‘to do’ list with you (by text or email is fine), so you can track their progress against it later in the week. Each team member should also be writing a daily ‘to do’ list every evening, for the following day.

2) LION Meeting – 30 to 60 minutes

Mid-week, get your key staff members together for a LION meeting, with the following agenda:

  • Last Week – what did you achieve last week?
  • Issues  – what issues did you face, and how did you solve them?
  • Opportunities – what opportunities have you spotted this week?
  • Next Week – what do you commit to achieve next week?

This meeting is invaluable for helping you to make continuous adjustments and improvements in business performance, and feeds into your strategic planning.

3) Friday WIFLE – 15 to 30 minutes

The WIFLE (“what I feel like expressing”) is a useful tool for team members to let everyone else know what they are excited about at the moment, share best practices, suggest fixes, air concerns or highlight blockages.

Each person in your team will take their turn of having a WIFLE (1-2 minutes), and while each person is speaking, no one else can interrupt. This can be a great opportunity to celebrate success or to brainstorm solutions together as a team. If you find recurring issues or common themes during the WIFLE meeting, it may be worth sitting down to see what can be done to deal with these in the future.

Friday should also be the day that every member of staff compiles next week’s to do list, so that everyone is starting Monday with a clear idea of what needs to be done that week.

So now you know how to manage your team in less than 2 hours per week, so go on – take ACTION, and get your team meetings working for your business!