If you want your business to be successful, you need to be setting goals and accomplishing them daily. With so much to do and so little time, priorities are a must. As an online business manager, I help keep things organized and keep everyone on task. Here's how you can apply my methods.

Love them or hate them status meetings and regular check-in will actually determine your project success rate.

These meetings that we dread - actually get-it-done.

If they are strategically held.

When I am managing projects, I have several status meetings a week. They can be 5, 15 or 20 minutes. This is several meetings each week with my team, and one with the end client. The team meeting is to review internal progress, answer any questions and strategize for any problems that have arisen. The client meeting is to review accomplishments and discuss work-in-progress. The client can answer any questions and set priorities for continuation.

When a project is created, we know the scope of work is determined, a team is assigned, and a timeframe is provided. If not, then we have a lot more to discuss, but this focus will be what and how baby steps and teamwork get you where you need to go.

Mompreneur on Fire - Effective Meetings in 5 Steps

The Only 3 Things You Need to Do in a Status Meeting:

Review the current and active week’s activities and goals.
Ask each team member’s progress on their tasks,
Ask if they need support and/or extra time.

This information isn’t about micro-managing a team member or prying too much, it’s about knowing if we will get what we need done this week or not, if that person needs assistance, or if further changes are made.

Once we have an understanding of how each team member’s workload is, I then either try to find assistance from within the team to help any overloaded members, or I make requests to the client based on feedback from the team.

Yikes! I know that last statement probably raises fear in a lot of people. You mean talk with the client about the work, timelines, and productivity?? This leads me to discuss my status meeting with the client.

At least weekly I meet with the client to discuss Accomplishments and Work in Progress.

Note: that my words are specific here. I want to present Accomplishments as a regular thing to my client and to keep our accomplishments on their mind. I want my clients to know all that we have achieved and not surpass it. As they say, we want to acknowledge and celebrate wins.

As I talk about our "accomplishments", note just about everything is an accomplishment. I don’t hogwash things nor am I overly annoying, but I do communicate all of the project activity that is taking place. Me personally, I am a glass is half-full person. I find that clients appreciate knowing, on a regular basis, the work that was involved in accommodating their requests.
- For example, you could communicate: “In order to put together this presentation, it took pulling information from 3 different locations, 9 different sources, organizing it, and formatting it so it will have the information we want to deliver. It took a while but we got it done!”
Also I discuss "works in progress". A client makes a request and you must deliver. What happens when you finally get into your work and find that it will take twice as long as expected? There are 2 reasons this could happen, you came across something unexpected, which causes the extra delay, or you are working on extra tasks. It is completely fair to communicate to the customer what either has or is occurring.
- From there you can request them to confirm their priorities. Do they really really want X if it takes (and costs) this much longer? Or are there other priorities that can be shifted? In my experience – no one has ever gotten mad because things aren’t what they seemed. (One other rule here is: don’t start this communication when the deadline is there. I address all this in another post. Then the customer will rightly get mad.)

In the end, open and active communication with the team and client not only creates a deeper relationship but also actively helps you accomplish your goals.

FINAL FINAL NOTE:

If you are working primarily on your own these status meetings (or regular check-ins) are still quite effective. What is the goal for the week? What needs to be re-prioritized to get it done??