Ever wonder how the strategic services team at NewSpring starts their day? Probably not, but I’m still going to show you. Suzanne will explain the process in this video. The meetings usually only last about 5 to 10 minutes. We did end up discussing a couple of Florence campus items after the video ended. And, regrettably, Joshua (web), Howard (Greenville campus) and Jonathan (database coordinator) were not a part of this morning’s conversation. Let me know what you think.
Putting Lencioni’s Death By Meeting into practice! Love it.
Such a simple idea, but I don’t know how many days go by that I am off doing my own thing and don’t really know what anyone else is up to. Gonna show this to my Exec. Pastor tomorrow morning.
Thanks for sharing…
Brook Sarver
http://www.two10eleven.com
I love it! So much that it might be the next thing I implement.
To echo Chris S., are you pulling this straight from “Death By Meeting?” If so, are you trying to implement the other types of meetings as well?
The meetings would be complete, but they need a good intern to help it be complete. But also, we have a daily meeting system at my company that each small team (6-15 people) in the IT Department do to keep an update among the team members and to notify others of any impediments that team members are experiencing. We also have a huge team wide task board that we use to let everyone know about the status of all of our current projects. Tell the team I said hey and that I miss you all.
Love being a fly on the wall during a meeting. But HATE that we missed out on Florence campus info. Dying for info about Florence as I am Florence person desperately anticipating Newspring’s arrival. Throw us a bone?
I love the fact that the daily meeting is short (no longer than 10 minutes). I find it easy to get bogged in minutia :)
Tony, would you mind sharing with us some of the methods you use to manage your team’s tasks? If I remember right, you use Backpack from 37signals for your logistics, but what I’m interested in is how you communicate with your team on an interpersonal level regarding your workflow.
Thanks for sharing your insights man!
marcushackler.com
Marcus, we use Basecamp for long-range projects/tasks (e.g. one week out or more) but find it a bit too much for anything short-term. Short terms projects tasks are frequent (e.g. “I need that web graphic” or “can you make this text change” or “I need that artwork for that random sign”) and we use a combination of email, a shared harddrive for assets and yelling at each other to get those done.
I’ll speak up for Tony a bit by saying he’s not really in the loop on most of the minor stuff, because he doesn’t need to be. Suzanne, our Communications Director, does a great job of managing tasks and traffic for that stuff and we have a great deal of leeway in making those decisions ourselves. Tony tries his best to check-in during the day or right at the end of the day to see what we’re up to, and asks specific questions on longterm projects via email or in-person as needed.
I’m sure he’d rather hang out with us all day in the thick of it, but the reality of his day looks more like a ton of strategy meetings than knowing all the specifics of what the rest of his team is working on.
Love this! Thanks for letting us sit in. Would love to see more of things like this.