Building alignment on startup teams
How to run great EOY planning meetings for startup operators
With many teams doing end-of-year wrap-ups and FY24 planning, well-facilitated meetings and building alignment across cross-functional teams is essential.
I’ve been lucky enough to be part of startup teams where we had ex-management consultants, “MBAs”, and experienced workshop facilitators demonstrate how to get teams from Point A to Point B exceptionally well. With the right facilitation skills, what could have been a soul-crushing few weeks of sprint planning have turned out to be an invigorating and energizing mind-meld — giving our teams the motivation and clarity to plan ahead for the next year.
I’ve been so impressed by these strategic planning sessions that I decided to geek out and spend my professional development budget last year on a 4-week “Essential Facilitation” bootcamp. So on a long flight to visit family for Thanksgiving break last week, I dusted off my digital PDFs and notes, and I’m summarizing two simple but powerful facilitation methods I’ve learned here.
Method #1: Plan the meeting POP (Purpose-Outcome-Process)
The first step to any productive meeting is to have an agenda or a meeting POP: Purpose, Outcome, and Process. Sounds simple enough, right? But you’ll be surprised at how many meetings I walk into where there is no agenda! Here’s what it entails:
PURPOSE: Why are we meeting? What’s the purpose or goal?
OUTCOMES: What are the desired outcomes (e.g., a decision, a plan, a working model) from this meeting? What is the thing we’ll want to have when we finish this planning sprint?
PROCESS: How will we run the meeting?
This could be as simple as one person presenting a plan, getting feedback from the meeting participant, and revising the plan post-meeting.
If there are juicier topics that need some debate, there’s a popular “Open-Narrow-Close method” that consultants and trained facilitators run for when you need to generate ideas and make a decision. I’ll go through that in Method #2.
Other important logistics to consider:
Who are the participants required for the meeting?
What are their roles?
Who will facilitate the meeting?
Who is the tie-breaker/decider?
How much time do we need?
Is this a one-off meeting, a full-day session, or a series of meetings over 1-2 weeks?
Where will we hold the meeting (e.g., Zoom, IRL)?
What tools do we need to run this?
For example:
Miro or FigJam (virtual white-boarding tools)
White board and Post-its
Recorded vs non-recorded
Method #2: The “Open-Narrow-Close” Method for building agreement
A popular method used by professional facilitators (but less known to mere mortals or “regular” startup operators) is to come to an agreement by having an Open-Narrow-Close discussion. This process entails spending time on opening the discussion, narrowing down the options discussed, and closing the meeting by making decisions or deciding on next steps. Below are some prompts for each step:
Open the discussion (~25% of the allotted time)
Choose an opening
Proposal: Do this if you have a good idea of the outcome you want and have limited time for new ideas (e.g. “We think the strategy should be A. Does that make sense?”).
List: Do this if you have a general idea of the outcome you want and some time for new ideas (e.g. “We think the strategy should be A, B, or C. Does anyone have anything else to add that we should consider before we narrow down to one?”).
Brainstorm: Do this if you want to start with all ideas on the table (e.g. “We need to figure out the strategy from square one. Let’s list all the ideas we have!”).
Clarify — Check and make sure everyone understands what the options mean.
Narrow down the options (~50% of the allotted time)
Combine duplicates: Start to combine similar suggestions so you only have a handful of options to consider.
Prioritize by dot voting (N/3): Vote on the most popular options to see what’s important to the team, without making a final decision.
“N” is the number of participants, and you divide that number by 3.
For example, if there are 6 participants, divide by 3, and you get 2 dots each for voting. You can give the decision maker one extra dot.
Folks can choose to use their dots for one option or spread it across several.
Advocate: Check with the participants if there’s one idea that someone feels strongly about, even if it wasn’t a popular vote, and have them explain why. Based on the response, you can upvote this option if the reasoning is strong.
Close (remaining ~25% of the allotted time)
Negative poll: This step is meant to narrow down on a decision by removing options that may not be as popular.
“Is anyone opposed to removing X?”
Build up / Eliminate: You can start to combine a few options that are similar to get to one option.
“Is there a way to combine option A and B so it’s one option?”
Straw poll: Check in with the team to see if we’re close to making a decision by doing a poll.
“How many of you want to continue pursuing this for another 30 mins”?
Both / And: See if you can compromise on a combined path forward.
“Do we need to chose between A and B or could we try both?”
Action items and next steps
Finally, write down the decisions you’ve made, and/or
Identify additional next steps required to get to the decision or resolve outstanding issues.
These last two steps often get glazed over, but they’re the most critical part of moving the team forward. It will save you a lot of time and headache to be able to refer back to your “decisions made” document the next time an issue comes up again. However, you do have permission to revisit and adjust a decision made when you’ve learned something new or identified a breaking point.
I hope these two methods help you and your team have more productive end-of-year planning sessions. Give it a try – there’s really no right or wrong way to do this, and it does take some practice. I’m optimistic that this will make your meetings more engaging, rather than having people zone out and start multi-tasking on their Slacks and emails. Let me know how it goes!
Such a simple and straightforward guide yet I do not doubt that it will be absolutely effective. Saving this for the day it will come in handy. Always like to be prepared.