One Meeting You Need to Have With Your Team

I'm not a big fan of meetings. I think they take way too long and a detailed conversation over e-mail or the phone probably yields the same results. That being said, I loved the meeting idea discussed in this INC magazine article—so much, in fact, that right after I finish up this post, I want to go have one.

The article talks about the importance of debriefings, post-mortems or, in the U.S. Army, after-action reviews. Whatever you want to call them, these meetings take place a day or two after you finish a project. You assemble the team and go over what went right, what went wrong and what needs to change before starting on the next project.

Reading the article reminded me of a piece I recently finished for MyBusiness that explains the importance of getting and giving employee feedback on a regular basis—not just at a year-end performance review. The idea of an after-action review is the same thing. You can praise employees who did a wonderful job on a project—or help them fix something they did wrong—in real-time. Or you could just file it all away—and probably forget about it—for the year-end review. The article hasn't been published yet—it's in the April/May issue—so check back here in a few days.