The Only 3 Meetings You Need | Establish Your Minimum Viable Cadence

Read Time: 3 minutes

I’ve seen a lot of live music.

What separates a good concert from a great one isn’t the light show. It isn’t the venue. It’s not even the crowd.

It’s the pacing. The rhythm. The use of tension and release.

And it happens at different levels:

• Within a song, silence is just as important as the notes played.

• Song selection, carefully picking a slow song to set up a high-energy favorite creates a contrast that makes the latter feel bigger.

• Even the tour, tends to favor weekends over weeknights and move just far enough away that this is our one chance to be a part of it.

In many ways, you’re no different than your favorite band.

Your team needs a heartbeat. A rhythm. A careful pacing that feels musical.

You can let it unfold organically or create it with more intention. And you know my vote. What if I could make it easy on you?

Let’s spend 3 minutes and set a Minimum Viable Cadence. 

Map the Setlist

The equivalent of the song selection for a team are the key interactions.

What do I mean by "key interactions"?

• Building Trust 

• Providing Care

• Sharing Context

• Solving Problems

• Making Decisions

• Resolving Conflict

• Discussing Feedback

• Communicating Information

• Reinforcing Culture / Behaviors

• Offering Coaching & Development

These are my starting point. You will probably have others.

The key is identifying 7-10 most common interactions so we can ensure they happen well. 

Play The Songs

For each key interaction, you need to know how they’re covered.

Meetings, methods, and channels. These are your instruments. Your power trio.

Meetings

• 1:1 check-in

• Team meeting

• Retrospective

• All-hands

• As-needed

Methods

• In-person

• Memos

• Proposals

• Slide decks

Channels

• Email

• Slack/Teams

• Text/WhatsApp

• Team Wiki/Notion

Again, customize this list for your reality.

The key is deciding two things for each interaction:

1. Can this interaction be handled asynchronously, or does it require a meeting? If it can be done without a meeting, do it. No one has ever quite a team because they had too few meetings.

2. When is that interaction considered “done?” This is essential for global or remote teams where the rule is often, "If it's not written, it never happened." 

Add Some Flourish

4 final considerations as you set this up. 

Add sparingly. If you can get it done in a one-off meeting, get it done. Resist making it recurring. Once you add a piece, removing it can be extremely hard. If your goal is to move fast, then your best method is to empower your team broadly so you can meet less.