First of all, let’s be clear – there’s a time for ‘shooting the bull’. There is.
I mean, if you don’t take some time each day to touch base with your people, just to ‘visit’, at least for a little while, well you’re really missing the boat and half the fun of owning a cleaning company.
That’s right, if you’re not already, you should start making room for some time for sharing stories, frustrations and laughs at work – even in meetings.
Honestly, some of the best times I can remember, happened in our weekly staff meetings.
One person after another would start telling their own ‘you won’t believe what happened last night’ story about an employee or customer situation; – you know the kind we seem to collect so many of in the cleaning business.
And before you know it, we’re all in tears, crying with laughter.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit a lot of the time, it was nervous laughter, but it was definitely a welcome relief.
Ahh… good times. But, here’s the thing.
We also got a lot of done at those meetings.
Problems were identified.
Solutions were suggested.
Decisions were made.
Plans were prepared.
Responsibilities were assigned.
Progress was checked.
You see, in order to get results from meetings, you need to change what you expect from yourself and your staff at the meeting.
First, of course, you need to be prepared for the meeting. What areas do you want to cover and in what order?
Here are a few to consider:
HR
Sales & Marketing
Operations
Accounting
Customer Service & Quality Control
Safety & Security
Equipment, Chemicals, Vehicles etc.
And as you might’ve guessed, you should have a strategic plan for improving each of them.
Now, here’s the tip:
1. You want to assign someone or some small group to be responsible for making that progress happen.
2. You need to give that individual or group the authority, resources and support needed to be successful.
2. You need a way of measuring progress, or the lack there of.
3. You need to commit to meeting regularly to review how things are progressing (meeting).
Picture your meeting going something like this:
Starting with the person assigned to customer service and asking if all this week’s calls and visits were made.
Then asking the team in charge of safety and security, if they had verified that all accounts had the updated set of MSDS forms and if the new security light had been installed in the parking lot.
And then on to the person in charge of QC, and so on…
Assigning responsibility and creating measures to track are certainly two of the really BIG ways we stopped having meetings that were a waste of time… and they can do the same for YOU.
You Can Do This, You Really Can,
Dan
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