What is the perfect meeting cadence for your remote team? It's an important question to answer, and one that many managers struggle with. Every team has their own unique needs and constraints, so there is no single right answer. But we can help you find a meeting frequency that works best for your team with this template!
Your meeting schedule is a very important part of how your remote team communicates. You’ve probably had times where you have been trying to decide what meeting or meeting frequency would work best for your business and your team members.
How often should you meet with your remote teams?
What can be an asynchronous update vs a synchronous meeting?
Here's how to decide how many meetings you need.
Meeting cadence template are used to keep teams aligned towards a common goal, to keep everyone informed, and ensure work momentum.
How often should you meet with your remote team?
What can be an asynchronous update vs a synchronous meeting?
Here's how to decide how many meetings you need.
You might think that the more frequently you meet with your team members, the better. But meeting too often can be counterproductive to work momentum and efficiency.
On the other hand, meeting less frequently might make it difficult for teams to stay on track or feel disconnected from their teammates.
A good rule of thumb is meeting with your remote team at least once a week if you have more than five team members. This meeting is called the “Daily Standup” meeting, or daily check-in meeting.
It should not last more than 15 minutes at most and ideally take place right after your team members have arrived to work in order for them to still be fresh from their morning routine.
The other type of meeting that you might consider meeting with your remote teams is the “Weekly Check-in” meeting.
This meeting cadence template should ideally take place and last no more than 30 minutes in order to give team members time to prepare for their weekends after checking in about what they accomplished at work that week, what they plan to accomplish this coming week, and any obstacles or challenges they have faced recently.
In addition to meeting with your team members on a weekly basis, you might also consider meeting more frequently as needed or as requested by some of the team members themselves depending on project type and size.
For example, if your remote team is working on a very large project that requires constant team communication and updates between multiple people within the team, meeting more frequently might be warranted.
This is particularly true in the case of outsourced or freelance projects where meeting with your remote team members on a daily basis may be very helpful for keeping everyone informed and up to date on what they are doing.
Other factors that can affect how often you should meet with your teams include the size of the team, the type of project you are working on, and meeting locations.
For example, if some of your remote teams have not met each other in person yet or don't work closely together but they need to communicate more frequently about one specific topic then meeting with them face-to-face might be necessary until everyone gets comfortable communicating online all the time.
And meeting locations can also affect meeting frequency and meeting cadence for your remote teams.
If you don't have a common meeting place or if team members live in different time zones, then it might be more challenging to meet with them on the same day at the same time since everyone may not wake up early enough to attend an online meeting at the same time.
So meeting with your remote teams should be a priority, even if it is asynchronous communication at first until everyone becomes more comfortable communicating online all the time.
It will help keep work momentum high and give you an idea of how often you need to meet with them in person for face-to-face meetings based on project type and size, meeting locations and meeting preferences.
You'll have to decide which meetings should be asynchronous (with delayed responses) and which should be synchronous (in person).
You want everyone on your team to know what they're working on, but you also want them to be able to work independently.
Here are a few examples of common meetings and the frequency with which they occur.
Weekly meeting cadence for one-on-one meetings
Quarterly meeting cadence: All Hands
Every day, there is a standup meeting.
Leadership Teams: Meetings are held once a month.
There are a few crucial things to consider if you're seeking to establish a great meeting rhythm.
Before requesting a new meeting, ask yourself these five questions.
Before we schedule a meeting, we like to ask the following questions.
Is the objective of this meeting cadence template to provide new information to key participants, or is it merely for people to keep the team up to date?
We'll go into the topic of information giving vs. information seeking a little later in this article, but this is always a good question to ask yourself when starting a new cadence.
Here are a few instances of how this question could influence the frequency of a meeting.
Consider the information you'll need and the time it will take to get it done if it's a short check-in or update. And that's in addition to the given time.
Consider the scheduling back-and-forth. Before the meeting, there is preparation to be done, and then there is the meeting itself.
You have more freedom as a remote or distributed team, and you don't have to rely on old defaults. Consider how you can operate differently now that the work environment has changed dramatically.
Some meetings (for example, huge projects or crucial decisions) necessitate a lot of different stakeholders to weigh in in real time, which is always easier to conduct in person or over a Zoom call.
Setting aside time for an in-person check in is unnecessary for meetings that are primarily motivated by updates.
In fact, these are best suited to be done asynchronously and in that case, can be done more frequently.
The goal of the new project meeting is to launch a new marketing initiative.
Weekly check-ins for a status report and next steps are part of the meeting schedule.
Stand-Up Meeting Goal: Regular updates with the manager and/or team lead Meeting Schedule: Daily stand-up to see what everyone is working on Project Updates.
With tight schedules, some initiatives will take precedence over others. Only team leaders will be aware of these initiatives and will be able to select how often these check-ins should occur.
However, we've found that the more urgent the task, the more frequently you'll be expected to meet.
We don't believe in allowing meetings to continue longer than they should. Meetings that feel like they are always cut short may be a sign that they should be held more frequently rather than for longer periods of time.
It's difficult to sit through meetings that go longer than an hour, but a more regular cadence could help you get more done.
On the other hand, if you haven't had much to say in a daily check-in call, try merging them into a weekly check-in and making those daily updates asynchronous rather than in-person.
You can personalise your questions, specify the frequency with which they are sent, and have them distributed to the entire team or just a few people.
Once you've determined that one project has a weekly cadence and another has a weekly cadence for an all-staff check-in, that doesn't imply they have to be formatted the same way.
The first stage in choosing the format of your meeting is to determine whether it will be information seeking or information delivering, as previously said. When deciding how to check-in, this is really important.
A new project's kickoff meeting
A meeting of the project team to consider the next stages
Meeting of the management team to assess how the teams are performing.
A one-on-one meeting with a direct report to review objectives and tasks
Many of the people who attend these sessions want to share, but they're also looking for knowledge. In-person or in-person over Zoom meetings are ideal for these types of meetings.
1. A daily stand-up routine
2. An update on the project
3. The annual report of a firm
"We don't need to be in meetings a lot," Jamie Morganstern, Director Of Business Development at ICANotes, explains. "We normally use meetings for working through strategy or higher level planning, never for an update or information transfer."
Giving information to your team is best done by email or a fast virtual update utilising something like our weekly status update feature.
The goal of selecting the optimal team meeting cadence and format for your firm is to reduce low-value meetings and allow everyone to focus on being productive and excited to be at work.
Meetings are better when there are fewer of them.
You might find yourself looking over this list and thinking, "Huh. So it appears that I only require one in-person meeting every week. That can't possibly be correct..."
Although it may be irrational to reduce or eliminate meetings, especially if your company's staff has always been oriented around them, the facts speak for themselves.
Meetings account up 15% of an organization's time, according to research. Imagine putting 15% of your time and effort towards projects that will boost your company's revenue. More money and fewer meetings? It was a simple victory.
During meetings, a startling 73 percent of participants admit to multitasking. Allow your employees to spend more time working and less time idly listening.
According to a Doodle poll, the financial impact of poorly managed meetings cost businesses billions of dollars in the United States in 2019. Billions.
Let's take it a step further now that you've figured out how to build a killer team meeting cadence with fewer but better sessions.
Let's make sure you have all of the necessary tools to ensure that every meeting you schedule is productive.
We've written a lot about how to have more productive meetings, but here are a few best practises you can start using right away.
1. Make a schedule for yourself.
Make sure that everyone knows what will be covered ahead of time so that they can come prepared.
2. At the end, don't leave any room for queries
Instead, use Slack or email for any follow-ups, as there is never enough time at the end of a meeting to address everyone's concerns.
3. Only invite the most important people to a meeting
Smaller groups make communication much easier.
4. Don't go beyond the time allotted for the meeting
If you want to commit to better meetings, you can't let them drag on, interrupting people's workdays and causing them to zone out.
If you don't succeed at first, try a different meeting cadence.
Although we're attempting to explain some best practises for setting up a meeting cadence, how you wish to communicate internally as a team will be heavily influenced by the size of your team and the culture of your firm.
Concise communication, according to Brian Whalley, Wonderment's cofounder, is critical in a startup atmosphere.
"There are only four of us today," he continues, "so we may have one brief daily group meeting." "Every day begins with a 10:30 a.m. check-in, which normally lasts around 15-20 minutes."
Daily check-ins can be very beneficial for small teams, but doing it in person can be a big disruption in a team's workweek for larger firms.
"We also want to keep track of the wider trends of what we're doing as a team and how it's progressing, we have a recap meeting where we individually talk about what went well, what didn't go well, and what we want to alter for the following two weeks," Brian adds.
It's the first day of the week. You open your laptop and glance at your week's calendar. Meeting after meeting, hours of Zoom calls, and Google hangouts will consume half of your workweek.
You can't help but wonder: how many of these meetings are truly necessary?
You're not the only one who feels this way. We believe that fewer, better meetings are the key to a productive work week and a happier team.
Establishing a meeting cadence and a clear framework can help with this.
Your daily stand-ups and status updates can be automated. Ask your teams questions, deliver weekly CEO reports, and be aware of your team's weekly priorities.
