Weekly Individual Planning Meetings

In this day of every increasing options to replace face-to-face meetings with other options (email, teleconference, webcam, etc.), it's good to understand the benefits of a status updates face-to-face.
Management-Issues featured a recent study by the IRS Employment Review, which found that, while organizations do now use an extensive range of communication methods (online systems, intranets, handbooks, newsletters and memos, team briefings, executive briefing sessions, etc.) employers still value face-to-face sessions the most when it comes to keeping Team Members up-to-date.

But all is not well: The survey revealed that organizations rarely succeed in going beyond these face-to-face meetings to involve employees in improving the company. Just over 50%believe that engagement has improved -- and only 19% think that performance has gotten any better.

BOTTOMLINE: The power of having every Team Member in the organization to create, and work from an Individual Plan (IP) revolves around the weekly face-to-face status update meeting with the Team Leader. Given the importance of good internal communications, organizations should revisit the methods they use or consider introducing more formal planning, status updates and evaluation systems -- to help them execute the company's strategy more effectively - and achieve better results.