Have a weekly team meeting. This one piece of advice I give leadership teams every time I speak with them is also the one thing I seem to get the most push back on. Now, often this is because the meetings they are having are unstructured and therefore unproductive so the idea of doing more of them seems like a waste of time. 

Having and sticking to an agenda will add structure to your management team meeting. It’s the difference between sitting around talking about the business and having a purposeful conversation where you leave with actionable steps. 

Here are some helpful hints and tips for a successful weekly team meeting:

• Have a set agenda (topics for the agenda)
• Good news
• Company scorecards (tracking system)
• Employee and customer headlines
• IDS (identify, discuss solve) issues
• Cascading message (what do we need to communicate to the staff)
• Have a leader for the meeting
• Assign specific tasks to each person prior to ending the meeting.
• Have it at the same time each week...

Employees who feel like they are in the know at work are happier and more engaged. A lot of us have heard this before, yet most business owners still do not feel comfortable sharing the numbers and real time status updates with their staff. Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of Business, did the complete opposite and it paid off.

What did he do? He introduced a concept known as the open book management operating system. It’s a system built on sharing business and financial information with employees so that everyone is informed about the status and goals of the business and how their contribution directly impacts the company as a whole. It will completely change the way you look at business and it can really be summed up by doing 3 things:

1. EDUCATE all employees about business in straightforward and easy to understand terms using the analogy of playing a game. 
2. EMPOWER them to use that education to make business decisions
3. ENGAGE employees to drive business success by rewarding t...

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