A good monthly cadence keeps teams connected without bogging people down with too many meetings.
A good monthly cadence keeps teams connected without bogging people down with too many meetings.
"A bad meeting is one where you start talking about a problem and never finish it," says management professor Kim Clark of Babson College.
The best choice for your team will depend on the type of work you do, how much it varies day by day, and whether or not most of your team is in the same location.
If your team dumps all its work into a single meeting, everyone will feel overwhelmed. However, a too-small cadence can hinder teamwork. The key is to use the right cadence for your team and situation.
To choose a meeting cadence that's best suited to your team, you need to consider two things: How frequently you have work to discuss, and how much time people need to be ready for the next discussion.
Here are a few different meeting rhythms you can try. Which one is best? That's up to you and your team. However, we suggest that you not mix meeting cadences within. But before that, let us know about the cadence.
A monthly cadence is the pattern of meetings that your team holds on a monthly basis. If done well, it becomes an integral part of how the team functions and works together. It helps connect people across time zones and keeps projects moving forward even when everyone isn't in the same room.
Teams working on shorter timelines and changing goals can benefit from a monthly meeting cadence. For example, agile development teams need to continuously adapt based on customer feedback or quarterly finance meetings.
Quarterly Meetings
This meeting cadence is best for teams that work on projects with long timelines and consistent goals (think: marketing campaigns, rebranding efforts).
Weekly Meetings
Teams that are spread out geographically or have fluctuating goals may find it helpful to hold weekly meetings. This is also a good cadence for teams that spend a lot of time in meetings and need some more regularity once they start wrapping up.
Daily Meetings
Having daily standups is the best choice for teams that meet face-to-face on a regular basis, but don't necessarily need to have another meeting during the week. For example, some dev teams pair up with different agile scrum masters who are located elsewhere, or some marketing teams are distributed nationwide or across the world.
Weekly and daily meeting cadences can quickly become overwhelming, so we recommend keeping it to an hour or less unless the team plans to spend more time in meetings. Keep in mind: your team members' availability and workload will always be a factor in how much time they're able to spend in meetings.
Identify the purpose of the meeting. Why are you doing this in the first place? Define why you need a meeting cadence and what specific goals it will help you accomplish. This is especially helpful for teams working on multiple projects with varying timelines.
Let team members know when they'll be expected to attend meetings. If you need to do weekly standups, set the expectation early in the week that you'll all be available for 10 minutes on Friday at 3 pm. Avoid asking people last-minute if they can make it when you already know their availability.
Overdelegate (if possible) and provide space to let everyone own his or her time. This way the meeting attendees will know when they're expected to be present and can make time in their schedules accordingly.
Determine who needs to be there. For example, on some teams, the product manager attends every status meeting while team members report directly to that person. On others, it's more of a free-for-all where everyone is welcome (but feels more like a chat than a meeting).
Team members will always be running late or getting cut off, so make sure you set firm times. Then ditch the timer (or at least turn it off) and allow people to arrive when they can — just as long as they're not too late for the required part of the meeting.
The length of the meeting should be determined by what level of detail needs to be shared. If it's a high-level cadence like a monthly one, you may only need an hour for everyone to share status updates. But if you're working on projects with targeted goals, this could actually turn into multiple meetings each week (business analysis and design, for example).
Quarterly meetings are best if you have long timelines and consistent goals. Since they can take quite some time, it's important to keep the agenda on point with just enough detail that everyone receives an update. Plus, quarterly meetings align with traditional company planning processes making it easy for team members to understand the need for the meeting.
Monthly meetings are perfect for teams that have shorter timelines and changeable goals. Since there's not enough time to get into much detail, you can start with an overview of what needs to be talked about at length before committing everyone's time. This way, if there isn't anything new to report on, you can wrap up early.
Weekly meetings are the most common among agile teams, but they need to be done right in order for them to work effectively. Weekly meetings should focus on outcomes and help team members establish whether or not their deliverables will hit the mark. If there's no way to make it work, then these standups are the perfect opportunity to discuss what needs to change.
Daily meetings are best for teams who have very short timelines with constantly changing goals. Since most of these are quick check-ins, the time commitment is minimal so you won't need to dedicate more than 10 minutes each day. But daily meetings can also be used for specific project work if needed, as long as it's clearly communicated to the team.
The right meeting cadence can help your team stay connected without bogging them down with too many meetings. Think about what works best for you by researching how other teams are splitting up their time so that you can pick the one that will give everyone an opportunity to have a voice.
The first thing you should know about meeting cadences is that it's all about the context.
Your team needs to be doing things differently in order for a new cadence to work. You don't necessarily need to switch from one time-based cadence to another -- maybe just adjust your meetings so they're more efficient.
For example, if you have weekly 30-minute standups but aren't achieving anything, try breaking them down twice a day for 10 minutes each or every other day throughout the afternoon for 20 minutes instead. This way, people can still catch up on their progress and any blockers without having to devote an entire half hour out of the day.
Once you have everyone on board with this approach then move onto adopting a new cadence. One month you might change to daily standups and the next it could be 15-minute bi-weekly check ins.
Try out different cadences throughout the year so your team never becomes complacent with one structure.
If you're having trouble getting everyone on board with the idea of using stand-ups, start small. Start by trying out 10 minutes twice a day instead of 30 minutes once a week.
And if your team works remotely, encourage them to check in by video rather than phone or chat. This way it will feel like less of an interruption and more like a meeting they have to attend--they won't be able to sneak away as easily.
What is the next step?
Once you're used to the 10-minute update, start experimenting with different kinds of standups. For example, try daily meetings for one week and see how it impacts your team's productivity at the end of each day. If it didn't improve anything (and chances are that it won't), then talk to your team about what they were expecting from this kind of cadence.
It may not always be clear which meeting cadence will help everyone get more work done or come together as a team. But by trying out different setups throughout the year, your team can learn what works best for them and figure out how to make it work well in their unique context.
Once you have a meeting cadence in place, the next step is to get everyone on board with keeping meetings short. Stand-ups should not be more than 10 minutes long--if they are any longer, team members will get distracted and fall behind schedule. Consider doing standup meetings twice a day rather than once a week for this reason.
If your team does daily standups then structure them around four key things:
1. Establish the agenda.
2. Review yesterday's task list (if applicable).
3. Discuss today's tasks.
4. Set tomorrow's task list. Punching higher cadences is about better results, not more meetings.
Too many meetings can be overwhelming, but you don't need to attend more of them to accomplish your goals faster or communicate effectively with your teammates--you just have to change what you're doing within those meetings so they become more effective.
Your team may have a daily standup for their first reporting period, but if there isn't enough time for everyone to speak up then.
Fair warning: Monthly reporting periods won't be realistic for most teams. There are three main reasons why monthly meetings aren't useful for every company:
1. It takes too long to get everyone on board with what should be accomplished each month. Make sure your team is ready before moving onto this cadence because it's not easy to make day-to-day progress if people don't have their priorities straight from the beginning of the month.
2. Reporting projects for a single person can take up huge chunks of time, so you'll need more than an hour every month to review and give feedback--which means fewer high leverage meetings throughout the year and more hours spent in unproductive ones afterwards.
3. Group discussions about long-term strategies and other items that would take longer than a few hours to discuss won't be able to happen because of this cadence. Instead, those high-level conversations should happen once every quarter.
This is one of the first things you'll figure out as a leader, but it's also one of the hardest questions to answer correctly. You want enough meetings so everyone can form an opinion about what needs to be accomplished throughout each reporting period, but keeping them too long will drag on your team's morale and keep them from doing actual work.
Checking in with your team at least once a week is usually enough--try meeting daily if you're having trouble getting everyone on schedule or keeping them on task.
If you're struggling to decide which meeting cadence will work best with everyone's schedule, try testing two of them at once. How does this sound: Meet every week but have each person give a 30 minute update instead of 5 minutes so they can share what they accomplished in detail? This will allow team members to get more done without having too many meetings.
If that sounds good, then also meet daily for 15 minutes so they can reevaluate priorities throughout the day--this type of standup should not be longer than 10 minutes, however.
The reason why it doesn't work to have weekly meetings for > 1 person is because it takes too much time for people to give comprehensive updates about what they're doing, and then it takes too long to discuss the details of those reports. Aiming for a daily cadence instead will keep meetings short and encourage an agile, fast-moving environment.
This depends on your team's goals; something like "quarterly" doesn't tell you anything specific about how often your company will be having meetings or how long they'll last each time.
It's good to plan ahead with everyone (including non-managers) so everyone understands what cadence is best for them and why--then if they need to miss a meeting due to work or personal events, they won't feel bad about it.
As a leader, you want to take the time to plan out the right meeting cadence for your team and check in often with them (if nothing else you should do this at least once every week). Doing that will help keep your company moving towards its goals consistently and give everyone enough room to make mistakes without wasting too much time on meetings.
