Research shows that 15% of an organization’s time gets spent in meetings.
A good weekly cadence keeps teams connected without bogging down people with too many meetings. Conducting effective meetings will help teams focus on tasks needed to boost the revenue.
Now the question arises, ‘ Is your company not sure how often it should conduct team meetings?’
Don’t worry! We will share with you cadence suggestions, the types of recurring meetings that fit each meeting rhythm, and how to determine which ones are right for your team.
Table of Content
What is a Meeting Cadence?
Meeting cadence isn’t a reference to the pace of a meeting once it gets started. It is about the frequency of meetings or how often meetings get conducted.
General meeting cadences are daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly.
Meeting cadence definition: Meeting cadence is how often you conduct recurring meetings to assign action items (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
Let’s say that someone from your team requests that they would like to meet on a weekly cadence. It simply means that they want to hold a team meeting once a week.
A bi-weekly cadence means that a person wants to hold a team meeting once a month.
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Types of Cadence Team Meeting
The purpose of your meeting will decide which cadence and right actions will rightfully suit the business purpose.
Quarterly Meetings
Quarterly meetings are excellent for sharing a high-level view of what projects different teams are working on in the company. Here are some common uses for quarterly meeting cadence:
- Business review meeting
- Planning meeting
- All-hands meeting
- Board meeting
- Committee meeting
- Customer success meeting
Monthly Meetings
Monthly meetings focus more on deeper issues compared to quarterly meetings. This meeting is an excellent choice for management-level check-ins.
- Management meeting
- Manager one-on-one
- Department meeting
- Project team meeting
Weekly Meetings
A weekly meeting cadence is more frequent. Everyone focuses on weekly progress and projections in these meetings. It’s an opportunity to check in on projects and small tasks at weekly meetings. Weekly meetings are very prevalent at every level of a company for a different purpose such as:
- Executive meeting
- Marketing meeting
- Team meeting
- One-on-one meeting
- Leadership team meeting
- Project status meeting
Daily Meetings
Daily meetings can negatively affect day-to-day productivity. It should get reserved only for exceptional circumstances or based on operational styles. Let’s say a rapidly scaling startup might need daily check-ins to keep everyone informed of any situations.
Here are some meeting types that rightfully fit with daily meeting cadence:
- Quick stand-ups meeting
- Agile team meeting
Find the Right Meeting Rhythm
Every team and company is unique. Hence, the right meeting cadence doesn’t only depend on the purpose of a meeting. It depends on the needs of team leaders, members, and the company as a whole.
It’s about trial and error. You can set a cadence and revisit meeting notes after a few meetings to check if it is working. A new team member, for example, might require daily check-in on their first week, then weekly one-on-ones for some months, then bi-weekly one-on-ones after they have settled into their projects.
Different leaders have varying preferences on how their teams devote their time to the company.
A leader who believes in a hands-off approach and trusts their team to communicate when required might prefer bi-monthly or quarterly meetings with them.
A leader who prefers to get kept in the loop for everything may favor monthly or bi-weekly team meetings.
A correct meeting health takes all these factors into account. If you are a company leader, think about your preferences, your company’s needs, and ask your team what they think makes sense or not. More inputs you have, the better decision you can take on an ideal meeting cadence.
Questions to Ask Before Making a New Meeting Cadence
Here are some questions that a manager has to answer before setting up a meeting.
- What is the goal of this meeting?
- Can this meeting happen asynchronously?
- Is this an urgent or high-priority task?
- Do these types of meetings regularly exceed the allotted time?
- Do we run out of topics to discuss in these types of meetings?
Answering these questions will help managers commit to better meetings and form the next steps to reach the goal.
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How Long Should Meetings Be?
The ideal length of a meeting depends on how frequently a manager and their teams conduct that meeting. The closer each one is to the next, the shorter it should be.
Teams often make the mistake of conducting weekly meetings almost an hour or longer. If yours are that long, it is best to push the cadence out to two weeks or shorten it to 30 mins.
Here are some examples of ideal meeting length based on cadence:
- Daily meeting cadence –> 10-15 minute
- Weekly project meetings –> 30 minute
- Bi-weekly cadence -> 1 hour
- Quarterly strategy meetings -> 90 mins or longer working session
Here are some best practices that a group meeting can begin right away:
- Create an agenda. Ensure that everyone knows this agenda in advance before they check in. It helps attendees prepare well in advance.
- Don’t leave room for questions in the end. Use slack and other such effective apps or email for any follow-ups as there isn’t enough time in the end to answer everyone’s questions.
- Have an invite list that contains only the key employees. It’s easier to communicate with a smaller group of employees in a project meeting.
- Avoid going over the allocated meeting time. You can’t allow someone to go over if you want better meetings. It will lead to attendees zoning out, and everyone’s workday will get interrupted.
A cadence in a meeting is an agreed-upon set of rules so that everybody who attends the meeting knows what to do and whether they are an attendee or leader.
Quarterly cadence means a meeting that takes place four times in a year. It is conducted either at the beginning or end of every quarter (a 90-day span). A standard quarter schedule is – January-February-March; April-May-June, and July-August-September.
Conclusion
Figuring out which meeting cadence is appropriate for your team collaboration isn’t a complex process. Be open to suggestions and have a willingness to change the cadence later. It will help you realize which one will work for you and which one does not.
A good weekly cadence keeps teams connected and boosts employee morale. It will work for everyone regardless of team size. To create meeting schedules, documents, and detailed knowledge sharing articles to discuss over meetings, you can make use of CloudTutorial software by signing up for FREE.
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