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Submitted by tberge on
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Am a general manager (gm) with an assistant general manager (agm) and 5 directors/department heads (dh).  Two dh report directly to gm and three report to agm.  We (gm/ag) do one-on-ones individually with our direct reports. Would like to roll out weekly staff meetings, but am confused on whether there should be a single combined meeting (gm, agm, 5 dh) or 2  meetings (1-gm and directs and 2-agm and directs). Would appreciate any thoughts, thank you.

tlhausmann's picture
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I opted to have just a weekly staff meeting of my direct reports and their lieutenants. This "flattened" weekly staff meeting has ensured operational reporting (when needed) is coming direct from the associated director or manager. The added membership means we keep our weekly staff meeting on a tighter time budget.

I serve as a VP/CIO with four directors and AVPs. I do O3s and my directs do O3s also.

Private message me if you wish to get into details.

US41's picture

What do you use your staff meeting for? Is it a cascade of information that could have been an email? Are you gathering your folks together to go through problems members of your team or you are facing and enlist their help together as a team to solve and work on? 

It's hard to make a recommendation from the limited information other than you should study up on the info on this site on staff meetings:

This link takes to you to the podcasts on this site and their associated show notes for staff meetings: https://www.manager-tools.com/get-answers?search=staff%20meeting

The next thing I would ask is why the department heads report to you and the agm as separate teams? Your industry may be very different from mine, so that organizational structure doesn't make any sense to me with such a small team. If there are only 7 of you, that's just one team of people with one manager. 

Just off the cuff, if I was the next guy to take over your job from you, I think that would be my first question, and I would flatten the group and have everyone report directly to me, have one staff meeting, and six one on ones. I would work succession planning with one or two of those department heads without an "agm."