It was the winter of 2016, and we were burned out. Every staff member at eLeaP was working hard to wrap up the 4th quarter and close out the year. We were all busy. But that was just the problem. We were all busy doing busy stuff, and none of it or very little of it mattered. Our sales were anemic at best. Our tech support was so-so. Our product roadmap was frankly pathetic as we had great ideas but were spinning our wheels. We had to find a better way. Explore how eLeaP®’s Performance Management Platform can simplify evaluations, boost productivity, and drive measurable results.

Why we switched to an agile way of working - Weekly Status

If this describes your workplace or team, it can improve. As president, it is my job to turn things around fast. I didn’t want to discourage team members from being creative. They were working hard – on pet projects, what they thought was necessary, and what I might have said to work on. So the problem wasn’t on them. The problem was that there was no transparency or way to measure our progress. However, even more fundamental than that was that what we were working on wasn’t what we should have been working on. The alignment of individual objectives, goals, and projects did not jell with what, as an organization, we really should be paying attention to.

Like any good CEO, I asked our CFO to find a solution. She was feeling a similar disconnect and searched for what she thought would be a panacea for our ailment. This tool helped us understand the concept of Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs. Here’s a quick primer on OKRs. Some trace OKRs to 1954, but they became popular in tech when Google, Larry, and Sergey incorporated them into their young company in 1999.

Now, some of the concepts of OKRs weren’t new to us. We had just stopped doing them, and when we attempted to resurrect the practice, we ended up half arsing it. We didn’t deal with the simple but critical parts of the weekly planning and review meetings. These concepts come from agile methodologies, the weekly sprint where cycles are broken down into weekly cadences made up of planning at the beginning and reviewing at the end of each week.

Weekly Status - Dashboard

Planning your week

I want to share this with you. Our organization adheres to this with dedication and zeal. It is our Weekly Status program. Some might ask, but why are we so serious about this? By agreeing to meet for 15 minutes every Tuesday at 11:00 am EST and reviewing our week every Friday at 12:15 pm EST, we made a pact to be accountable to each other and our company.

Why meet on Tuesday? Here’s a secret: It is up to you and your team or organization. We tried meeting on Mondays but found Mondays too hectic to allow us to dedicate the quality time needed for our weekly planning. Tuesdays turned out to be much better. If your team agrees to a Monday, then make it work. Each organization is different. Remember, one of the reasons this process works is commitment. If your team collectively agrees to a specific day and time, you can hold each other accountable for attending these meetings.

What happens on Tuesdays at 11:00 am EST? We hoop on Zoom and start the meeting. One thing to share. These meetings are not led by top leadership. Let someone else lead these meetings. We meet on Tuesday to share what we intend to work on for the week. We will add all those to the [What are your plans this week?] section of the Weekly Status module in the eLeaP PMP. This system is pretty sophisticated but intuitive, enabling any organization to get up to speed quickly.

Expanded capabilities

What can you add to your plan items? You can add attachments to the plan item. You can even use fun emojis in your plan (personalize it however you want). Something important to be aware of. While this exercise is simple, it is also incredibly powerful. We challenge each other to link our weekly plans to our existing goals as much as possible. Remember I mentioned Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) earlier on. OKRs are Goals in the eLeaP PMP. By linking your weekly plans to goals, you indicate and align your short-term activities to the goals and objectives of your team, your organization, or even your personal goals.

Weekly Status - By User

Linking your weekly plans to Goals also brings about incredible transparency. We get to ask and challenge each other on why one is working on this or that. How are the items team members are working on connected to our goals? How is what you are doing going to help us move forward as a team? How is this going to help us achieve our quarterly goals? This is the genius of the Weekly Status system. It works with the Goals (OKRs) system to deliver precise goal alignment and, more importantly, a sense of working together to achieve common objectives.

Another powerful reason for these Weekly Status plans is that they are not much of a surprise when performance reviews come. You can see how a team member contributed to achieving your goals every week. I can tell you this has reduced the tension and uncertainty that some staff and management experience in many companies. The question of why you are even working on something seems to be answered through this system.

Another invaluable component of the Weekly Status system is the existence of communication and collaboration tools. Using the file-sharing feature or the commenting and tagging system, team members can share resources, collaborate, and notify each other of important project and task management issues. By the way, when you are tagged in a comment, you will see a notification in your [Feeds] section of the PMP. DDon’tDon’ty. We will not overwhelm you with email notifications that disrupt your work day.

As managers, there’s nothing more frustrating than figuring out what team members are up to. Use the PMP’s filtering options to quickly see what individuals are working on, their progress, or their challenges. This is how you can replace unworkable, stress-inducing reactive management with proactive, productive leadership.

You might wonder what happens after you enter all these plans into your Weekly Status. Simple. You get to drag and drop plans to move them to [Accomplishments] or [Challenges], or if you feel they aren’t the current week, you can move them to [Next WWeek’Week’ss.

One-on-Ones and Check-ins

Check-ins to support your weekly tasks

Sometimes, we need more targeted meetings to work on certain items, some of which might be directly related to achieving our goals. In these situations, setting up meetings using the Check-ins tool automatically adds them to your calendar and weekly plans.

Once your one-on-one is done, the system emails participants a summary and closes the meeting based on your weekly plans. This is how eLeaP supports our team members in accomplishing goals and continuing to punch above our weight class.

We built the eLeaP PMP to solve our challenges. We want you to experience the same transformation and realize the incredible results we achieved using this system.

Closing out the week:

On Fridays at 12:15 pm EST, we meet to review our week. Each team member shares their weekly accomplishments, challenges, and other news. This is a chance for team members to also set up meetings for the next week in case they need one-on-one time with each other or groups need to meet. This FFridaFriday’sing is also crucial for celebrating big and not-so-big wins. As a team, it is vital to acknowledge difficulties and challenges, but you must also not forget to celebrate victories and achievements.

The Weekly Status system enables us to move forward together. It allows us to plan our week specifically and align with our OKRs and goals. It also ensures that we meet to review our week and prepare for the next week.

Our Friday meetings discuss new sales and customer onboarding, appointment-setting challenges, marketing programs, and partnership opportunities. The idea of these Friday sessions is also for management to share important information regarding company happenings.

Lastly, we ask team members to write a weekly happiness score. What is a happiness score? It is our way of asking, “How “satisfied are you with your progress this week?” “We” “invite and monitor this because it is an essential barometer of your team and, even more importantly, your mindset. Since the pandemic, we have heard about how workers want what they do to matter. They want to see the impact of their activities. They want a chance to be heard when things are good and when they are not so good. This gauge provides crucial feedback not just to management but also to team members. And yes, we support each other through the ups and downs.

You might be wondering how you will do this in your organization. You have several thousand team members. They are all spread out. Guess what? You can set up team meetings to review your week. It does not have to be all hands – even though you can do that. Sometimes, folks have to miss the meeting, but they ensure that their weekly plans advance to the proper new status: accomplishments challenges or moved to next week’s. The idea is that this process is maintained (without fail if you can).

What has been the outcome? Our team has been aligned and productive in ways that will shock you. We tell people that if you compare our productivity with other companies that are much more significant than us, you will be amazed at how much we can accomplish. It does not mean there are no challenges. It does not mean the meetings are always fun, as we sometimes deal with challenging subjects like slacking team members. I will tell you, though. I want to return to how we used to wing it, and I hope things work out.

Please get in touch with us if you want to try this process and have questions. We are happy to answer them. I encourage you to try the eLeaP PMP, as this process truly needs a platform to support it and achieve the best results.

To answer the question we raised at the beginning of this article, my weekly status tells me how productive, engaged, and happy my team is, and I would not trade that for anything.