Many founders have walked out of a leadership meeting feeling like the team was aligned, only to watch that alignment weaken a few days later. When a leadership team has to keep revisiting the same issues and commitments meeting after meeting, it means something's off.
When I see that pattern, I start by looking at the operating rhythm. Is the team using the weekly meeting to create clarity, or are they just checking in and talking through updates?
When a weekly leadership meeting is done right, it becomes the place where your team can slow down just enough to see what’s really going on inside the business, make decisions about next steps, and help everyone keep moving in the same direction. That’s how leaders spend less time tracking down updates and more time getting smart stuff done.
This is about more than running a useful meeting. It’s about how that meeting can help you build the kind of company where focus, accountability, and execution show up in the way you operate.
When your leadership team protects those 90 minutes every week, the whole company gets stronger.
PERSPECTIVES
“The magic isn't in the agenda. Discipline creates the magic when you show up week after week, quarter after quarter, and do the hard work of running the business well." — Kris Snyder, Meetings Kinda Suck
MARK MY WORDS
There was a time at Ninety when one of our recurring leadership meetings had nearly 20 people who attended. I finally asked, “What’s the objective here?”
With that many voices, it was hard to create real clarity. The leaders closest to the decisions couldn’t move efficiently, and plenty of others were giving up valuable time for a meeting they probably didn’t even need to attend. That’s not a great return on anyone’s time.
Over the next few weeks, we challenged the purpose of the meeting, who truly needed to be there, and what decisions had to be made. Eventually, we retired that meeting and replaced it with a much smaller meeting made up of the right decision-makers.
That’s what a good operating rhythm should do. It should help the right people solve the right issues at the right time.
A weekly leadership meeting shouldn’t exist just because someone put it on the calendar and no one ever questioned it again. It should exist because it helps the team create clarity, strengthen accountability, and keep the company moving forward.
TUNE IN
Building Ninety: 10 Years Through the Eyes of Our First FTE Christine Watts joined Ninety in 2017 and has held five different Seats, including Chief of Staff, and now the Head of Professional Services.
In this conversation, Christine and I look back on the parts of company building that don’t always make the clean anniversary story: product constraints, customer pressure, COVID, all the Plan Bs (when our original plans didn’t work out), and the decisions that helped shape Ninety into what it is today.
If you're reading this and thinking your leadership meetings could be more productive, you're probably right. Take our Rate Our Meetings assessment to see what's working, what's getting in the way, and where you can create more focus, accountability, and follow-through.
In case you missed it, here’s more from Founder’s Framework:
How to Raise Your Leadership Altitude as Your Company Grows
As your company grows, your role has to grow with it. The habits that helped you build the business aren't always the ones that will help you scale it. In this article, I share how to recognize when it's time to step back from the day-to-day, strengthen your leadership team, and focus on the work only you can do.
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