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MEETINGS.md

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This page is archived. Please visit https://countable-ops-manual.readthedocs.io/

Meetings

Purpose

Ensure meetings actually help accomplish our mission.

Scope

Define all the meetings at Countable

All Meetings

The meeting organiser (chair, or guild leader) is responsible for a) taking minutes in Google Docs and b) that follow-up actions (acc. to 3W rule) are noted in the minutes, and shared as Trello cards.

Date and Time of Meetings

  • Our calendar is the source of truth regarding meeting times, attendees and cancellation status. All updates to meeting times go directly in the calendar.
  • Meetings start on time and stop on time. If someone is late, start without them.
  • Anyone who is late should notify the team in advance of the meeting so they can proceed.
  • When meeting with external stakeholders, book 50 minutes meetings generally (or 25) so there are 5 mintues for the team to discuss how the meeting could have been better.

Clarity of Purpose at Meetings

  • The purpose and agenda of the meeting must be clear, and listed in the meeting event details on the calendar.
  • Recurring meetings should review the previous meeting's follow-ups/action items. Open up the last week's minutes (or Trello board) and review them.
  • If you are presenting in a meeting, send out the meeting goal, agenda and materials (such as slides) in advance so the attendees can get in the right headspace. Ask for feedback on your agenda, such as topics they group thinks will help with the goal.
  • In general, try to make meetings shorter and more specific. If possible, make the goal and agenda visible in the meeting.
  • Do not attend meetings if you don't have a good reason to be there.

Record of Meetings

Meeting minutes template: (copy this for each meeting)
Date: (202X-XX-XX)
Agenda (topics discussed, with headlines): 
(add bullets here)
Follow-ups (who does what by when):
(add bullets here)
  • Minutes are just the "headlines". What's the important point? Action items can be noted, but should be should be transcribed into Trello.
  • Send a follow-up email with the minutes too, if it includes any external stakeholders.
  • 3W rule: Meeting follow-up actions must contain the three Ws: WHO does WHAT by WHEN

General Meeting Guildlines

  • Work to create an atmosphere of psychological safety. Detect concerns of individuals and shed light on them.
  • The maximum number of people at any meeting should be limited to 7 (except occasional company-wide meets).
  • Avoid speaking for more than two minutes without pausing and letting people respond, so you can listen to your audience and steer your material to be more helpful. Meetings should be interactive, not monologues.

Sprint Meetings

All active projects should have a Sprint meeting every 1 to 4 weeks.

  • Each team member updats on their work, and how it impacted OKRs.
  • Discuss how the current sprint will accomplish our "OKR" for the project.
  • See Scrum for full instructions

One-on-one Meetings

One-on-one meetings between each manager and reports should be once per month. This is our chance to catch up on what matters, and think about how we can work better together. People mentioning problems even once is a gift: We can't fix systemic problems if I don't know about them.

As an Employee

  1. This is your time to talk about whatever is on your mind. If you want to talk about what's going on with your life, hobbies, etc, that's fine. If you want to talk about work or issues at home or career progression, that's fine.
  2. Give feedback about what went well last month, and what didn't. How can we do better from now on?
  3. The discussion is confidential by default, unless there are suggestions or requests that come out of the discussion to relay to the team.

As a Manager

  1. Practice listening. Try to contain the impulse to give advice unless they specifically ask for it for at least the first 10 minutes of the meeting.
  2. Raise anything you felt was a problem. Say how you feel about it, and let them lead.
  3. If they don't bring it up on their own I'll ask questions about emotional state and emotional reactions to situations. E.g., "How did you feel about what happened at Countable last month?" (be specific), "Are you feeling sufficiently challenged?", "What would you like to learn?", "What do you enjoy working on most?"
  4. TBD: Review job levels. Employees should check off each job level requirement, and self-promote when they reach completion of their current level. Give the employee a simple desription of what you think would really get them "to the next level". Make this as actionable and objective as possible, and frame it as a mentor.

The First One-on-one

  1. On first one-on-one, ask "tell me about your life starting in kindergarten". Write down moments of change, decisions on direction and why they were made. 45 mins discussion.
  2. What are the person's dreams? Ask "what would you like to do most after Countable, if anything was possible? Provide 3 possible visions". Make dreams columns and put rows for skills necessary for each vision. Ask questions about everything fits together. What skills can be developed in their role?

Themes

Some ideas to pick from, not needed every month.

  1. Give each other (employee first) you'd like the other to "continue" doing, and something to "consider" changing.
  2. Ask: Who did you work with this month, and how did that go? Why did it go that way?
  3. Ask: What are you learning, and from whom? What are you teaching, and to whom? What would you like to learn?

Performance Reviews

Each year, the one-on-one should include performance review self-assessment. These questions are answered by the employee in advance.

  1. Is the purpose of your job clear to you? What is it?
  2. Write a paragraph describing what it would be like if you did extremely well at your job?
  3. What objectives did you have this quarter?
  4. What were some good key results, and some bad ones? Why did they go that way?
  5. Do you feel you took ownership of understanding and meeting (or exceeding) customers' needs yourself? Or expected to be given clear tasks.
  6. Did you seek feedback from metrics, team members, customers and end-users on your work?
  7. How do you feel about your performance?
  8. How do you feel about your learning and professional development?
  9. What would you like to get better at?
  10. What would you like to learn, or do more of?

The manager should answer:

  1. What can you do to get to the next level in your current role?
  2. What's holding you back?

Guild Meeting

We currently have a UX, DevOps, and Developers guild meetings, periodically. The purpose of this meeting is:

  • Standardize, train, and define how we work in key technical disciplines to become the best in our fields.
  • Present and review each others' work and provide peer feedback.
  • Hold collaborative design activities such as "Mob" programming to create something together in the meeting.

Discuss goals for each guild and roadmap for meeting them:

  • UX - improve the end-user experience of all our work.
  • DevOps - make our work delivery automatic, frequent and reliable.
  • Developers - write better code, minimize technical debt.

All-hands Meeting

The entire team meets once per month to plan work pipeline and roadmap at a high level, and practice new processes together.

  • Review OKRs and calculate score.