Planning
The Monday meeting that replaced five others
One forty-five-minute meeting, the same agenda every week, and a rule about what may not be discussed in it.
Most of the businesses we work with have too many meetings and too little decided in them. The fix we install most often is a single weekly operations meeting.
The agenda
The agenda is the same every week: last week's numbers, this week's capacity, the three things most likely to go wrong, and who is doing what about them.
The rule
Nothing is discussed that does not need everyone in the room. Anything else is taken offline, with a name next to it.
Why it works
Because it happens every week, people stop saving problems for the next crisis. And because it is short, people come.
Tom Brannigan
Partner, operations
Tom ran factories for twenty years before co-founding Lodestar. He leads our manufacturing work and most of our operations reviews.
