The Meeting Kit

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How to use this kit

Most small companies don't have a meeting problem, they have a rhythm problem. Direction gets set in hallways and text messages, which means it gets set constantly and never really sticks, and you're the one resetting it every day.

This kit gives you three meetings that fix that: a weekly, a quarterly, and an annual. Each one has a fixed agenda and, next to each agenda, the exact words I say to run it. Those are the copper boxes marked SAY THIS. Read them out loud the first few times if it helps. After a month they're yours.

Three things before your first meeting

01
Same agenda, every time. The sameness is the feature. When the agenda never changes, the meeting stops depending on you to run it.
02
Make a copy for each meeting. The sand-colored boxes are fill-in fields. Duplicate this file (or print it) so each meeting has its own filled-in copy you can look back on.
03
Two words you'll see a lot. A rock is one of the few things that must get done this quarter. Your scoreboard number is the one number that tells you, without a meeting, whether you're winning.

You don't need a big leadership team for any of this. In a small company, the room might be you and two people, and that's exactly who it's built for.

In this app the sand-colored boxes are the fill-in fields, and each meeting you start becomes its own copy under History — saved to your account as you type.

The shape of it

How the three meetings connect

Each meeting feeds the one below it. The annual decides where you're going for the year, the quarterly decides what this ninety days is for, and the weekly makes sure this week moved it. Run all three and your team always knows what matters right now, without asking you.

  1. Annual

    Once a year · Half to full day
    What it sets
    The one-year number, the year's rocks, and Q1's rocks
    What it feeds
    The four quarterlies
    5 agenda itemsGo to the annual
    feeds the

  2. Quarterly

    Every 90 days · Half day
    What it sets
    Last quarter scored, next quarter's rocks
    What it feeds
    Every weekly for 90 days
    7 agenda itemsGo to the quarterly
    feeds the

  3. Weekly

    Every week · 60 minutes
    What it sets
    This week's execution and the issues in the way
    What it feeds
    The actual work
    6 agenda itemsGo to the weekly

Don't wait for January to start. Hold a short annual this month, set the one-year number and this quarter's rocks, and let the rhythm begin from wherever you are in the year.

Start with the weekly

Sixty minutes, same day and same time every week. It's the one you'll run the most, so run it first. If you're setting the year from scratch, hold a short annual first — you can do that this month.

Go to the Weekly MeetingSet the year first

Last thing

You're done when

The weekly is a recurring event on everyone's calendar, the next quarterly has a date, and you've run each agenda at least once as written, without skipping the parts that felt awkward the first time. The awkward parts are usually the ones doing the work.

Run these three meetings for one quarter and the change is hard to miss: your team reads the same numbers you do, brings issues to the room instead of to your phone, and knows exactly what this ninety days is for. That's a different company to stand in, and it's the company that keeps moving when you step out of it.

When you run your first one, tell me how it went. I read every message, and watching an operator run a meeting she used to dread is my favorite part of this.

— Summer

A Sandbox Resources tool · The Meeting Kit · by Summer Mulder