Recurring Meetings

Part of our organizational model is having structured meetings so we spend less time in meetings and more on actual work.

Meeting Roles

Assign two roles at the start of the meeting; the facilitator and the secretary.

Meeting Facilitator; facilitates meetings

• Helping everyone stick to the meeting structure
• 'Calling it' when a discussion should be moved to a different meeting
• Appointing the secretary role for each meeting

Secretary; meeting reporting

• Taking meeting notes
• Distributing meeting notes

Tacticals

A short, focused session that every circle starts their work week with.

• When? Every monday for the circle and startup.
• Purpose? The circle aligns on how to accomplish their goals for the week and to clear any roadblocks.

In our studio model it makes sense to view each startup as it's own circle. So each monday you would have;

• a meeting for the general company circle; the studio
• .. and a meeting for the startup where you are co-founder.

This is the script for a typical tactical meeting

1. Go through the recurring tasks in the checklist, to ensure they are all taken care of. They are not discussed unless there is a problem with them.
2. For each person: What did you do last week? What will you do this week? Is anything blocking your progress?
3. Any other issues collected in the Agenda task in Asana

If the meeting trails of into details it's wise to move the discussion to an issue specific meeting. Here we discuss issues with just the relevant people.

Issue-specific meetings

These are set up on a case-by-case basis to resolve issues are not a good fit for a tactical.

• When? Whenever needed.
• Purpose? To resolve the issue in question with the least number of people possible.

Governance meetings

To accommodate discussions about the organizational principles themselves. One for each circle.

• When? Every 1-3 months for each circle and startup.
• Purpose? Review and revise the circle purpose, and the roles and accountabilities needed to attain the purpose.

Governance meetings are also the right place to bring up long standing tensions. What does this mean? Say someone has encountered a problem that is keeping them from fulfilling their accountabilities. That is a tension. Or say someone spots an opportunity for the circle to better pursue its purpose. That is also a tension. We discuss these kind of tensions in governance meetings. And based on them we create new projects, roles or accountabilities.