Episode 6
· 17:16
Hi. It's time to open the c suite. I'm Corey. I'm Mike. Today, we're gonna talk about leadership meetings, and it's a loaded term because it could be the executive leadership meeting, could be company wide leadership meetings.
Corey Ferengul:It it it can take on a lot of different forms in organization. So let's start off talking about the executive team and and you as a CEO leading your meetings with your executive team. So when you hear about that, Mike,
Mike Shannon:what how do you handle that? It's it's such a personal topic to me. I'll I'll lay a scenario for you. So 2019, fall of 2019, which is Pre COVID. Pre COVID.
Mike Shannon:Yeah. About 2 years after our series a.
Corey Ferengul:Yep.
Mike Shannon:And so at this point, we're, 75 or so employees, and there's a, like, a real leadership team. Right? Yep. There's maybe 7 of us on the the leadership team. And this moment occurred where I just came to the realization, helped by feedback toward me, that I was running terrible executive meeting.
Corey Ferengul:I mean I'm gonna people gave you the feedback at least.
Mike Shannon:It I mean and and I say I was running a terrible, you know, weekly executive team meeting. Half the time they weren't even happening because it was a low enough priority, that it was like, well, it's gonna be a crappy meeting anyways, and so let's all do our own operational thing. In in the mindset shift for me was part of the reason I was running a bad executive team meeting was I believe that I viewed the exec team and myself as sort of, like, overhead to the company. Right? And so if something was going wrong, we were behind on sales or something, I was more likely to wanna jump into a sales call than go go be in the meeting.
Mike Shannon:So sometimes I would say, hey. I can't make it. Whatever. You guys go have coffee or something. Got it.
Mike Shannon:The mindset shift, I had, like, this this drawing that I I drew. At first, it was, like, exec team up here going down to the company as overhead and, like, what we should go down into the trenches when we can. I flipped that just in my mental model of, like, the exec team and the quality of them that meeting being the nucleus of that team is is, like, the seed from which everything else, you know, kinda kinda spawns out of. And as soon as I've made that shift, I remember going finding 3 books on meetings. Okay.
Mike Shannon:Terrible, boring books. But one had, really good insight, the book traction. It's not commercial for traction, which is entrepreneurial operating system. But they had this format of level 10 meeting. And as soon as I shifted to, okay, I'm gonna put real effort
Corey Ferengul:Yep.
Mike Shannon:Into format of the meeting, the prep, what everybody's expectations are, I literally brought a timer. Yeah. That would keep us, like, on the agenda and move. And when that shifted, our CTO Craig said, Mike, you went from having a bad leadership to a good one, and I feel like I'm part of a stronger company. So it's a very personal topic.
Mike Shannon:I'll stop with that story and we can go into it. But, yeah. A huge part of whether the whole company is effective or not is that leadership exec team music.
Corey Ferengul:So there's a couple of important things you said in there. 1st, you believe in having a regular executive leadership meeting. I personally believe that weekly does matter. I think I know companies that do it less frequently than that. I'll come back to why I think it's week weekly.
Corey Ferengul:You also talk about it being sharing across that team. Right? And I think that's the really important part. For me, that executive team meeting is about the executives understanding what's going on in the other parts of their business. Yes.
Corey Ferengul:It's it's not about them looking good to the other executives. Yep. It's about what do we all need to know to get our business done. Yes. And then, you know, how do we that to me is the first step in disseminating information is that leadership team meeting.
Corey Ferengul:Yes. How do we get out, you know, how do we find out if we're on time with this? How do we find out if we're on target with these metrics? How do we find out if the numbers are on track? Yes.
Corey Ferengul:How do we find out that, you know, the insurance stuff is coming up and everybody's gotta do something. Right? That should be that executive team meeting.
Mike Shannon:Yes.
Corey Ferengul:Another point you made, time invested in making the meeting work. Right. It's not free.
Mike Shannon:Right. No. It's not. And there's there's ways to find efficiency in doing that. Yeah.
Mike Shannon:Sure. I've done a few with, like, this new format I had working, it's like, okay. This got down to a pretty good cycle. And there's a way to to democratize the labor into it. Sure.
Mike Shannon:So what I liked about this, like, level 10 meeting format was the the crux of it all is basically the issues list. Yeah. And it was on everybody to contribute to the issues list. Yep. And when we first were doing this, I was nudging that team.
Mike Shannon:Hey. Remember, you know, by 3 o'clock Friday, put in whatever issues you're seeing. You should be doing it throughout the week. But I had to manually kinda nudge myself and others. And then my role was to go in order what I thought was the highest leverage.
Mike Shannon:You know, you got the quadrants of importance and urgency. Right? Yep. And so I had a little score, it's like, you know, it couldn't just be ordered by urgency, you know, I had to have importance in there too. And then I would order the the topics of what we were talking about first.
Mike Shannon:And so beyond disseminating information, it's like, we have this time together. These are the minds that are seeing everything across the company. What are we rolling up our sleeves on? Right. And being intentional around, like, hey.
Mike Shannon:We're giving this topic, you know, likely 15, 24 minutes, and this is what we wanna get out of it, and being, like, quite disciplined on we're talking about the most important things. Otherwise, the meeting happens by accident.
Corey Ferengul:And and so I I have a few other adjustments I make. I I was always big on numbers. I wanted up front. I wanted to talk about where we stood against revenue.
Mike Shannon:Yep. Right? Because Scorecard and OKRs for me.
Corey Ferengul:Okay. It's similar so similar. Right? Where where do we stand? I always was, what are the key upcoming things in the company?
Corey Ferengul:Do we have an upcoming board meeting where we're tracking on the deck as the outline of the board deck done. Right? Yep. We have a company wide meeting coming up. Where are we at with that?
Corey Ferengul:We got a strategy meeting coming up. Did everybody have their assignments and what we're doing? And then also big customer issues list. Right? What any big burning customer issue, anything we gotta deal with, what do we gotta confront.
Corey Ferengul:Right? Those were big elements. I did have individual teams creating their own status reports.
Mike Shannon:Okay.
Corey Ferengul:And, the reason I did that and I always wanted them as tight as candid they can be, and they'd always go a little longer. But I wanted others to hear what were the most important things the other teams were dealing with. Inevitably, what would happen is someone would, you know, the 3rd 2nd person to go would say this, but I really need to know about that. Well, that person's gonna cover that. Right?
Corey Ferengul:Yeah. Right. Right. Because it did matter. Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:And if those people needed to know it, somebody else in that call needed to know it and didn't realize it. Yeah.
Mike Shannon:Right? Well, my way of achieving that was that the OKRs. Sure. Every senior, you know, executive was the owner of at least one of the company level KRs. Sure.
Mike Shannon:What we do is, first, we go through the scorecard which is like the basic metrics, And it's kind of annoying, but actually read them out loud Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:Yeah.
Mike Shannon:So you're never forgetting. And then once it was the OKRs, it was okay. Taylor, you own, you know, this KR.
Corey Ferengul:Yep.
Mike Shannon:Give us a status update in 2 minutes. If something had gone from, like, green to yellow or red. Yep. That got more time, but the format was also that it was automatically an issue. Yep.
Mike Shannon:So I try to go through them fast enough that then, okay, we don't need the full story here. It's gonna be talked about 15 minutes and the issues. Yep. And maybe a breakout meeting after that. But similar thing, different Very similar.
Corey Ferengul:And and and that format can be personal.
Mike Shannon:Right?
Corey Ferengul:I mean, that is that is the key thing. I find a lot of execs didn't like weekly meeting. They felt
Mike Shannon:that it was Well, I my son I wasn't showing up to it or canceling it. Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:I think it's a mistake. And and I thought the weekly meeting was important. 1, that is a group that has to work together. I was taught early in my career It's
Mike Shannon:tight.
Corey Ferengul:That when my when I early in my executive career, the executives are your peers and your team is how you get things done. You're you're not a member of that team of your, you know, the the the those that you're leading. Yeah. You're you're a member of the executive team, and you're leading the others. Right?
Corey Ferengul:And it matters because you are accountable to those other people around the table. They're not and I see this with different groups, like, well, that person's gonna be we don't get along with customer service. So we don't, you know Yeah. Right. No.
Corey Ferengul:You're the ones together making it you have to be a team. Right. And if you don't have regular time together, you'll never operate as a team. Yeah. And and that's where some of the little, you know, silly social interaction and stuff happens, but it matters.
Corey Ferengul:Those little relationships. What also matters is people need to understand more than just their part of the universe. Totally. Because their actions impact others, and I can't count how many times someone was sitting there really bored on a meeting, like, I can't believe I gotta sit through this. And then somebody would say something and be like, wait, what happened?
Corey Ferengul:Right. They didn't
Mike Shannon:know Right.
Corey Ferengul:That they needed that bit of information. Right. Right? And so, yeah. I'm not gonna say every minute of every executive team meeting is awesome.
Mike Shannon:Yeah. Well, and I'll give you I think one witness test whether you're achieving that camaraderie as an exec team is when budget conversations come up. Yeah. Are folks battling over the budget lines or are they on one team, you know, thinking about what should we maybe we should allocate a little more of this off of my team in the product and what, you know
Corey Ferengul:Well, you're a lucky man
Mike Shannon:if it happens I'm not saying it happens all the time. There's always still a debate. But what I'm saying is if you don't do what you're talking about, of form it as a team that is looking at everything, you know, sort of as
Corey Ferengul:that's on
Mike Shannon:the same team versus competing departments, then those budget conversations are way
Corey Ferengul:more needed. And and even strategic conversations, where should we invest in? What should we have happened here? And and and to me, an exec team meeting is it's grounding everyone. It's getting you on the same page, but it is escalation time.
Corey Ferengul:Sure. And what I hate is when I'd see something bubbling in Slack, and I see 3 or 4 emails on it, and I'd be looking around, well, okay. I don't know, you know, which which channel am I paying attention to and so on. Yeah. Let's bring it to the exec team meeting.
Corey Ferengul:Let's know clearly what's happening.
Mike Shannon:Yeah. And and Or my reply became, alright, paste it into the issues. Yeah. Unless it needs to be talked about right now, it's Wednesday, and our next meeting is Monday. Right.
Mike Shannon:Alright. Great. Thanks. Put it in the issues. That's right.
Mike Shannon:Put it in the issues. And and early on, it's I'm taking it all on myself. Oh, I've got a document. It's like, oh, okay. Thanks.
Corey Ferengul:Yeah. Put it in the issue.
Mike Shannon:Yeah. If you haven't done that, then you haven't done your shared labor of prepping the meeting. That's right. I'm going to Friday, you know, 3, 4, or 5 o'clock prioritize the issues. And I may say that, hey.
Mike Shannon:It's number 3, actually. I still think 1 to 2 are more important to talk about first, but put it in the issues.
Corey Ferengul:Yep. And and look. There's all sorts of information that comes out of those meetings that is, secret. Doesn't need to go to the rest of the company. Yeah.
Mike Shannon:So
Corey Ferengul:I had a rule with the exec team meeting. It stays in the room where you don't stay in the room.
Mike Shannon:Oh, it's it's like yeah.
Corey Ferengul:Yeah. So this information Good expectations. Yeah. This information is for us. So you all should talk freely.
Mike Shannon:Which also means don't miss the meeting.
Corey Ferengul:Don't miss the meeting. But when the but when the information leaves the room, I'm gonna find out from who Yeah. And and you don't have a spot on this team. Yeah. But you want that because you wanna be able to speak freely.
Corey Ferengul:You wanna and and you see it. It's inevitable that someone, you know, has a problem and doesn't really openly wanna say it, because that's gonna be about that person and their team, and they might take it wrong. And that's fine. You wanna get to a point where you can have some of that open debate. Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:I think sometimes I didn't do a good enough job of driving the meetings to focus and and dedicate as much time to the issues as as we needed. Yeah. Sometimes you got a little caught up and then we gotta get through the checklist of things. Yep. The the issues, the hot things of the day, the most important things come up with the committee, that's what those meetings are really for.
Corey Ferengul:Yeah. And the numbers. And why do I say the numbers? Because at the end of the day, if the numbers aren't there, none of that matters. Right?
Mike Shannon:Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:They should all be in service of hitting the numbers the company's gotta hit.
Mike Shannon:And I'm not saying to never switch up the format.
Corey Ferengul:No. No. No.
Mike Shannon:I mean, look, you you have to know the pulse of the team and the environment where you're the CEO. So it might make sense to just go out to breakfast.
Corey Ferengul:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Shannon:Some weeks. I also think the, exec team or senior leadership team off sites, and just, like, working, you know, full day, half days on the whiteboard, whatever, out in park, are so important. And doing, you know, about 3 of those a year was typically my my case.
Corey Ferengul:And so that's pulling away now. So we talked weekly exec team meetings. Way up.
Mike Shannon:Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:Then there's these type of and it was an exec team doing strategy meetings, broader leadership team. How did you do that?
Mike Shannon:Alright. So our company, like any, was evolving. Right? So we grow from, like, you know, 75 or so when I finally, you know, fix or take action or fix the exec team meeting. So that brought, like, a 120, 125.
Mike Shannon:We have this other layer of senior leadership. And I think that's where I started the struggle of, like, you want everybody involved within that off-site because so much value comes out of it. Like, we're we're rolling up our sleeves on the toughest, most important issues, coming up with solutions. When I started overpopulating it, I think Right. I I do think it's hard to be that effective when there's, like, 13, 14, 15 people, you know, in that setting.
Mike Shannon:And so I don't have, like, the perfect answer there, but I I think keeping the exec team at the tight whatever you have, 7, 8, maybe you have 10 people that you're saying, like, 7 or 8 is usually my team. Keeping that to an off-site, I think, even if you're doing it in addition to the the full management, it's pretty important. Because I started skipping it, saying the off-site is gonna be the wider team. It's felt like something was lost there in the value we could
Corey Ferengul:have gotten. Break that down though. So you got weekly exec team meetings. That's for tactical day to day driving the business. You were using exec teams in a couple of times a year to talk strategy.
Corey Ferengul:Just that smaller team, let's get out of the day to day. Yep. Let's talk about looking forward. I agree. Did did did the same thing.
Corey Ferengul:And then the other is a broader meeting that included more of the managers across the organization. You bring them into more strategic. Again, out of the day to day, bring them into more strategic discussion. Just And you have to
Mike Shannon:do that. I'm not saying don't do it with the rest of management, but doing it at the cost of getting way out of the day to day That's right. Tight team is too much That's right. Of a price today. You you have to get that small team out too.
Corey Ferengul:And I I just caught up with a friend of mine, gentleman who I worked with years ago, and he is at a very large company now. Okay. And he had he's in Chicago because his company was having the end the buy you know, twice a year leadership meeting. Right? And their corporate was here and he was going.
Corey Ferengul:He's like, oh, it's the top 100 managers in the company. Right? And so that that it's all levels of company do that because you're trying to bring those people in. You're trying to get them under the hood. Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:You're trying what you really want is they have, a, ownership, and b, the information they need to make day to day decisions. Yeah. Right? And that's why you need that. What we're also laying out here is, yet again, this is more effort on the CEO or the c suite Sure.
Corey Ferengul:Yeah. To manage these processes because each of these meetings take some level of preparation. Yeah. But I think of it as what is my management process for the organization? For example, you know, I'm gonna do my weekly exec team meeting.
Corey Ferengul:I'm gonna do a weekly note to the company. I'm gonna do a quarterly company wide meeting of communication or twice a year with the exec team. I'm gonna and you can map that out.
Mike Shannon:Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:And then you could actually calendar it out. Yep. And and and you see those milestones. By the way, what shows up in my weekly management team meeting? What that calendar is, and which ones of those are coming up, and who's got responsibilities?
Corey Ferengul:Right?
Mike Shannon:Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:It's not all on you. Yeah. But and a lot of CEOs these days I'm seeing bring in chief of staff to help manage those type of processes. Right. Yep.
Corey Ferengul:Yep. Right? That's a way of doing it. But the value the organization gets on that level of communication, those clear intervals, those clear roles and responsibilities of each of those meetings Agreed. It it just it moves smoother, and it just gets more information out into the org.
Corey Ferengul:It makes people more loyal to the company.
Mike Shannon:Well, let me say this is a theme on both exec teams and these offsides or which we should be able to talk about. At least in moments, you are wanting to make the company that continues to get larger feel small again. Yeah. Especially when you're growing from being a start up. And I'm not saying it's the same people when you were the first ten Yeah.
Mike Shannon:To now you're 10 person leadership team. But now you're a 100 plus people, like, that leadership team, that exec team, if you can facilitate the right it's not like every day,
Corey Ferengul:but
Mike Shannon:the right meetings and cadence to where we feel, like, we're actually a small tight knit team Yeah. In some level. Yeah. Yeah.
Corey Ferengul:It's so important. I I think back so I'm an old guy back in the nineties when I was, you know, young guy, first in in in management, getting invited to an executive meeting in Beavercreek, Colorado. And, it was, you know, it was 50, 70 people from the company there. And it was, you know, the company had grown to 1,000 at that point. And, you know, just the invite matter.
Corey Ferengul:Right? And then and then you got to have drinks with some people you don't talk to all the time. Right? And then and it it it matters to those people. And you forget that when you were the executive Yes.
Corey Ferengul:That it probably matters to somebody here in a way that you don't realize anymore Yeah. Because you're not there anymore. Yeah. You know,
Mike Shannon:that's a whole another thing on this. So once you have the cadence down and you have, like, your exec meetings on the rails as I'm gonna say, what a great avenue to then invest in leader development talent. By you know, and maybe it's not the whole meeting, but, hey, you know, so and so. That thing that happened this week. Love for you to come in Yeah.
Mike Shannon:And be the one to speak to this company level PR because of the experience you just had.
Corey Ferengul:That's right.
Mike Shannon:And you've built it, you know, you kinda rotate that here and there. I'm just saying with board meetings. Yeah. And it's just a great way to have the exposure, the the growth moment, you know, the kinda adrenaline. But if you don't have your meetings on the rails
Corey Ferengul:That's right.
Mike Shannon:You know, you're never gonna That's right. Miss all those opportunities.
Corey Ferengul:That's right. I mean, great example. Last company I was at, we had a big government part of our business, and we had to go through a big government certification on a regular basis, the guy who ran that certification process came in and reported the exec team on what's going on, because it touched most parts of the company. Yeah. Now a lot of the execs knew everything going on.
Corey Ferengul:Not everybody did.
Mike Shannon:Yeah. Right. Right.
Corey Ferengul:You know? And, did the head of HR need to know? Yeah. Because sometimes people would ask her, what do you think is going on with that? Is that going as well as you think?
Mike Shannon:Right.
Corey Ferengul:And her knowing, people are looking at her as a cop not the company, and she'd be like, yeah. I heard I just heard up about that. It's going well. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Shannon:So so Different ways to do it.
Corey Ferengul:Right? That's right. And there is no right way, but you have to do it.
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