Meeting cadence: which meetings an advisory agency needs, and how often

What a meeting cadence is

A meeting cadence is the set of meetings that happen on a fixed schedule, whatever else is going on. Each one has one job, a fixed length and the same agenda every time. Everything else (a case problem, a new hire, a complaint) gets solved inside one of those meetings instead of in a new one.

For an advisory agency, a workable rhythm looks like this:

The lengths and names are a starting point. The part that matters is that every meeting on the list has a reason to exist that no other meeting covers.

Start from the decisions, not the calendar

Most agencies build their meetings the other way round. Somebody books a meeting for a problem, it goes well, and it turns into a recurring invite. Two years later the calendar is full of meetings nobody chose.

Build the cadence from the decisions the agency has to make, and how often each one comes up:

• Every week: whether the agency is on track, what's stuck, and who does what before the next meeting.
• Every quarter: the few things that must be finished in the next 90 days, and whether each manager is growing.
• Every year: where the agency is going, who it needs to get there and what it should stop doing.

Each layer gets one meeting. If a decision has no home, add it to the meeting with the closest rhythm before you create a new one.

The weekly leaders' meeting

This is the meeting that holds the rest together. If you only fix one meeting, fix this one.

EOS, the operating system many founder-led firms use, calls its version the Level 10 Meeting: a weekly, 90-minute leadership meeting with the same seven-part agenda, held on the same day at the same time every week. EOS splits the 90 minutes like this:

You don't need to run EOS to borrow the shape. Three parts of it matter most for an agency.

The numbers come first and take five minutes. EOS describes its scorecard as five to 15 weekly numbers, read in the first five minutes. For an agency that might be new recruits in the pipeline, advisors active this week, appointments booked, cases submitted and servicing requests still open. Read them out as on track or off track. Don't discuss them yet. Every number that's off goes onto the problem list.

Most of the time goes to solving problems. In the EOS agenda, 60 of the 90 minutes are for working through issues one at a time: name the real problem, discuss it, and agree what happens next. Rank the list and start at the top, however recent the bottom item is.

Actions are short and owned. EOS says to-dos should be seven-day actions, and that 90% of them should be done within the seven days. Each one has a single owner, and next week's meeting opens with the list.

The rest of our EOS guide covers the scorecard and the rest of the system in more detail.

The weekly unit meeting

Each manager runs their own unit on the same weekly rhythm, a day or so after the leaders' meeting so decisions flow down. Keep it shorter than the leaders' meeting and keep the same order: the unit's numbers, the advisors' stuck points, actions with names.

What goes into the agenda for running sales itself, such as pipeline reviews and call practice, belongs to the sales side of the week. ActivityTracker has a separate sales meeting agenda guide for that.

The leader's job here is to stay out of most of them. Sit in on a manager's unit meeting once a quarter and watch how they run it, then talk about it in their one-to-one.

One-to-ones with your managers

A weekly meeting covers the numbers. It doesn't cover the person. That's the job of a one-to-one.

EOS sets a floor: a Quarterly Conversation, a structured but informal one-to-one between a manager and each direct report every 90 days, about what's working, what isn't, and development. Use three questions:

1. What's going well in your unit, and what's yours in that?
2. What's getting in the way, and what do you need from me?
3. What do you want to be able to do in a year that you can't do now?

Every 90 days is the minimum. A manager in their first year, or one who has just taken over a unit, usually needs a shorter catch-up every week or two as well. Put it in the calendar now, while things are going well.

The quarterly planning day

Weekly meetings keep the agency on track. They don't decide where the track goes. That takes a longer meeting, away from the day-to-day.

EOS runs this as a full-day session every 90 days. The work of the day is simple:

• Look back at the quarter: which priorities got done, which didn't, and why.
• Check the year's plan: is it still the right plan?
• Set the next quarter's few priorities, each with one owner. EOS calls them Rocks: the three to seven most important things a team or person will finish in the next 90 days.

Hold it off-site if you can, and with phones away. If a full day is too much for a small agency, half a day still works. Skipping it is the mistake. Our strategic planning guide shows how to write the plan this day checks.

The yearly reset

Once a year, step back further. EOS's version is a two-day session where the leadership team refreshes its vision, sets the one-year plan and the first quarter's priorities.

For an agency, the questions worth two days are:

• Where should the agency be in three years, and is this year's plan getting it there?
• Which managers are ready for more, and which seats are empty?
• What did we do this year that we should stop?
• How healthy is the leadership team? Our guide to the Five Dysfunctions team exercise is a good way to spend part of a day on that.

How to trim the meetings you already have

Before adding the cadence above, look at what's already in the calendar. For each recurring meeting, ask three questions:

1. What decision is made here that isn't made anywhere else?
2. Would anyone notice if it stopped for a month?
3. Could it be a 10-minute item in the weekly leaders' meeting instead?

Merge, shorten or drop anything that fails all three. Then hold the ones that stay to two rules: start on time, and finish on time or early. A meeting that always runs long teaches people to arrive late to the next one.

Signs your cadence isn't working

• The same problem comes up three weeks in a row and is still open.
• Managers bring you decisions between meetings because the weekly meeting is too far away.
• Nobody can say what this quarter's priorities are.
• The leaders' meeting is mostly updates, with no time left to solve anything.
• Meetings get cancelled when it's busy, which is when you need them most.

If two or more of these sound familiar, start with the weekly leaders' meeting. Same day, same time, numbers first, problems second, actions with names. Most of the rest follows from that one.