Using your all team meetings well – Agency Management Tip for Owners

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from my home office in Denver. You know, the start of the year is an opportunity to really rethink how you're going to show up in the new year. And we think about it from a goal perspective. We think about it from a resolution perspective. I want you to think about it from your team meeting perspective. So if you're not doing an all-team meeting at least once a month, then number one, that needs to change. You need to be bringing your entire team together, whether it's virtually or physically, to have a conversation around big picture things. This is not a production meeting. It's not a traffic meeting. It's a hey, let's talk about how the agency is advancing meeting. So there are going to be some key elements that you're going to report on. You're going to report on any initiatives that are going on, whether you're changing project management software or you're initiating a new program. You're going to want to update on BizDev, you're going to want to update on financial metrics and goals for the quarter and the year. And you're also going to want to do some celebrations, right? New business wins, great work, birthdays, all that sort of thing. But too often I think agency owners and leaders think of these all-team meetings as being informative and yes, they should be informative. But what I really want them to be is educational. This is your opportunity to help your team understand what our goals are for the quarter and the year, and how each of them individually by role, contribute to the accomplishment of those goals or to the detriment of those goals. So you need to be thinking about applying context and example around the goals and celebrating things that you've done since the last meeting that have pushed you closer to the goal and acknowledge and dissect things that have happened inside the agency that have gotten in the way of you getting closer to those goals. So if you're mapping out the agenda, the lion's share of an all-team meeting, you can call it whatever you want, state-of-the-agency meeting, an all-team huddle, whatever it is, the lion's share of the agenda should be around educating your team and do not hesitate to reeducate on something you've already educated. Number one, odds are you may have new employees. Number two, understand that just like for you, it took multiple reiterations of learning some of the things around running an agency before you really got it. And you could really sort of apply it to your daily choices. Same thing for your team, even more so for your team. So don't be shy about repeating what is AGI or why is that our goal? Or why are we focused so much on growing new business from existing clients rather than just going after new clients? All of those conversations are important to have in your state-of-the-agency or all-team meetings, so now's a great time to look at that agenda. I'm guessing most of you haven't done one for January yet. It's probably towards the end of the month, so now's a great time to tweak that and get it lined up for 24 to actually serve you and the agency to make your employees better informed, better team players, and now also have them help them feel more connected to the goals and why they matter. All really worthy goals. All right? I'll see you next week. Thanks.