Earlier, I gave you Key Points 1 and 2 of the Workshop Rhythm Advantage™. Here now are Key Points 3 to 5:

Point 3. Keeping it Relevant

This is a big part of it. If you’ve got e-commerce business, like everyone in this call has, there are different areas of the business, right?

Let’s just say, it depends on the size of your company. If there is just one of you right now, you can still break it up into having a period in the week to take a step back and look of what’s important and where things are and what needs to be done.

If you have a team of 10 and you got 2 customer service staff, you got 2 bookkeepers, for instance and you’ve got 2 people that work on graphic design then depending on the size of your team, it’s going to be relevant to break up the different parts of the business.

For example, one workshop that you are going to hold is, when you have a launch manager, is having a launch manager meeting, which is basically the project manager meeting where you and the project manager get together and the business partners get together, preferably at the start of the week, and hold a 30-minute meeting to go through the VOTAs, which is what we discussed in the launch manager advantage. Basically, you look into the projects of what’s open, what people are stuck on and what are the obstacles and what are the next actions. (I’m going to show you some agenda and you can show them as well as a template in your business and tweak them to fit your needs.)

The point is, keeping the meetings and workshops relevant to specific areas of the business. You could have a launch manager meeting, customer service meeting, and product launch meeting. All the stakeholders that are involved of the product launch from the people that are deciding on the opportunities, the bookkeepers analyzing the margins and the financials, the designer who is designing the packaging, the launch manager (of course), all the people that are involved in that process need to be in that call to discuss the current products that are being launched, where things are in the pipeline and what are the next actions.

We talked about launch manager meeting. We talked about customer service meeting. We talked about product launch meeting and another really really important one is whole team meeting. What we do and what we’ve done over the years is have launch manager meeting on a Monday for half an hour. We actually start with the financials meeting, the high level stuff between you and your partner, and the bookkeeper or CPA and then we have a launch manager meeting and the whole team meeting. So that’s how we’ve done it and it depends on how your setup is like.

Then we have the different areas of the business like customer service meeting in the week. We have product launch meeting throughout the week at set time and that is in the calendar as recurring. A great way to drive execution as well, within these smaller teams (customer service team) is to have a daily stand up.

It depends on how big your team. If there are just 2 of you right now then a daily 15-minute stand up or scrum is great to ask 3 questions. Everyone goes around the room, it’s a stand up meeting. We will share a win or something we are grateful for and we will say, “What did I work on yesterday?” “What am I working on today?” “Is there any impediments that is stopping me moving forward?” If somebody has an impediment then somebody else on the team can say I can help you with that and they can take out of the meeting and they can solve it. There is a great way to have regular touchpoint to drive execution and results.

Keeping it relevant is key so you are not having one meeting as we are talking about all these different things and the meeting goes on for hours. Ultimately there is not a lot of productivity in there. If you can keep them solid in different areas. There is no reason why if you have one big meeting once a week we are talking about everything which is messy. You got huge agenda, you got no focus, you’re having customer service issues being talked about and the bookkeeper’s sat there and they are like, “This is not relevant for me.”

Depending on what your company size is at, try and silo them into different meetings and at specific times. People that have issues for the week they bring them up to the meeting to debate and decide what the next step is.

Point 4. Keep it On Track

Keeping on track is super key. There is a meeting, as you know, you have been in a meeting before, i’m sure, and time and time again it goes on and it goes on and it goes on because there is no restriction, there is no timer set, and there is no specific outcome. The point is there’s need to be somebody holding on the meeting which is their role to be like, “OK, this should be taken out of this conversation.”

If 2 people start talking about a solution or an issue and it’s not getting very far from the call, “OK, please take that offline and just have a quick conversation so we can keep moving for the agenda.” One thing I would advise you is to have a clock timer on the screen. Set an hour for the meeting and just be done by half an hour. That gives you a bit of time either side. Half an hour should be more than enough to keep productivity up. Keep it relevant to this specific area of the business.

Point 5. Collaborate and Evolve

This is really, really important because I mentioned earlier for to create an environment where people are heard and it’s about creating that buy-in. And I have mentioned, if you have a team of Filipinos it can be a bit more challenging for them to bring their ideas and speak up but through time and having the right team members on board, in the first place, you can create an environment where people feel safe to share and collaborate and bring their best self because you don’t have all the answers. Your team and the trenches, a lot of time, have a great perspective on it than you.

I’ll give you a high level on what this means. This is about brainstorming an area to improve and this is why it is important to create that safe place.

If there is an issue, you brainstorm. If you’re looking to improve an area of your business ongoing, if you create that place where people throw out all ideas and brainstorm together and you highlight, you have a list of things to improve and you debate and decide, “OK what’s the one thing that we can take from this list?’ To which is going to further and improve this process of customer service or customer love system or the product launch system. “What one thing on this list could we do to improve the system?”

Once you have debated and have decided of what that one thing is which is ultimately going to give you the biggest leverage and the biggest progress. And it is about brainstorming and listening to ideas on how we can improve that area.

Let’s give some context, let’s say the customer love system. If you’ve got 2 customer service agent and you’ve got all your systems outlined and this is a problem that keeps arriving with a certain process or if you got the customer love system and then you’ll say, “Guys, how can we improve this area?” And you just have a workshop where you just brainstorm and you’re just jamming together and you are collaborating and you build a list. You’ll say, “OK, which one has a bigger impact?” And you highlight that one thing that is going to ultimately improve the customer experience with your company.

Once you have highlighted that is brainstorm ways to improve it, agree on the new test process. Let’s say for instance, you have a new customer that have just bought from your new Shopify store and you have a process, a system where they buy from your store and you don’t really follow-up on them to see how the product is.

An addition to improve that could be you’re going to send a personalized video of you or of a team member, the customer service agent, to that customer saying “Hi John, I really, really appreciate you trusting us and buying our XYZ widget. This is just a message from our team brand. Let you know that we appreciate you and we are here for you if you have any challenges or anything whatsoever.”

A face video and you send it to their email address. If John opens up in his email and sees it from a customer experience point of view then he is blown away by this personalized video from this company. I just bought this random thing from this website. So that’s one way on how you can improve that process.

There’s a tool called Bonjoro, if you’re looking to do that it’s amazing. That would be the test procedure. We are going to test using this video to send to each customer that buys from our website to create that amazing client experience. You could test it for a few weeks. Once you have seen results and this is working really, really well it then becomes a formalized procedure. SOP is created and is added to the customer love system.

That wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t come as a team and collaborate. That’s the power of coming together, throwing ideas on the table and listening to people getting their buy-in, you are taking all their actions away to test. Once it becomes successful this is going to be rolled out and is a formalized part of the company. The SOP is added, to the workflow, so when new customers start to come aboard they understand that is just a daily step they have to do for every new customer.

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