Good Morning. This is the Method, where we share how we’re bootstrapping 7 figure companies. For you Kiwi’s - enjoy your long weekend!

This weeks we’re looking at:

• Running effective 1:1 meetings🤝 

• How to approach publishing content🗺️ 

1:1 Meetings Framework

The best argument we can make for holding regular 1:1 meetings is this: You can’t get back unproductive time.

The more time your team spends doing irrelevant or unnecessary work the less productive they are; the less productive your business is.

1:1 meetings are the most effective tool we know of to keep your team on target.

There’s many ways you can run them - here’s what works for us.

The A.C.T framework (google it).

ACCOUNTABILITY (goals and actions)

• These are questions you ask your direct report to hold them accountable to their work.

1. Have you completed last week's actions? Yes/No

   1. If Yes, move on

   2. If No, what task didn't you complete and why not? & what habit can you adopt to make sure this doesn't happen again.

2. What will you do this week, to achieve your OKR's by the end of this quarter? (These are individual tasks - your specific next steps)

   1. List these actions here.

Note: OKR’s can be interchanged with Rocks, Goals etc… whatever framework you use to set the big goals you want this person to achieve in your business over the next 90 days.

COACHING (issues and solutions)

• These are actions for your report to complete and questions for them to answer.

1. Show your OKRs in traffic light fashion (green, yellow, red)

   1. Green = on-track

   2. Yellow = lagging

   3. Red = off-track

2. Show your KPIs in traffic light fashion.

3. If I were to dig into these updates what would I discover in your department that is:

   1. Good?

   2. Not Good?

4. Please describe the issue in detail as well as your proposed solution.

   1. The solution should include what you can do to solve the issue and what I can do to help unblock you.

5. Please list any other issues that you see in the business, with peers, with products, etc…

   1. For each issue, please list your proposed solution, even if you are unsure of the right course of action.

Note #1: For OKR’s and KPI’s that are off-track, we ask our reports how they are going to get them back on track - but they don’t necessarily need to be addressed this meeting or via action this coming week.

Note #2: As your report proposes their solutions to issues - you should be providing feedback and suggesting better ways to attack these problems if you can see them.

Note #3: We use scorecards to track everyone's KPIs and OKRs - scorecards are part of the EOS framework and a useful general management tool.

TRANSPARENCY (feedback)

• Get feedback from your report

1. What am I doing well as a manager?

   1. Request specific examples

2. What do you wish that I did differently?

   1. Please include feedback that might hurt my feelings (it won't)

• Give feedback to your report

1. What you're doing well

   1. Give specific examples.

2. What I need you to do differently

Note: Make sure you take onboard feedback from your report with an open mind and act on it (way harder todo than it sounds).

SUMMARY

Make sure all solutions from the meetings are set as tasks in your task manager, assigned to the person responsible with a due date set.

OTHER RULES

Managers should prepare for the call 15 minutes before starting

The employee does 90% of the talking, and the manager does 10% of the talking.

The manager should try to draw the key issues out of the employee by asking good questions.

The manager should take notes and keep promises.

Never cancel on them - it’s okay for them to cancel on you.

Our Content Philosophy

We regularly engage in hearty debates about client content at K&J Growth.

A fly on the wall might think this is part of a rigorous process we go through to determine which content will perform best for our clients.

It’s not.

Although we do enjoy these discussions. That fly, after sitting through a few of them, would see that we are regularly wrong about the future performance of content.

Just recently we had all but unanimously decided a piece of creative wasn’t going to work - but we pushed it live anyway.

48 hours later it had gone viral, clocking up 420,000 views and doubling our clients follower count.

Why did we publish it?

Our in-house philosophy; opinions don’t count, data does.

Notes:

It’s healthy to keep in mind that creative is art and art is subjective.

Beyond obvious exceptions like content that could be controversial (where common-sense should prevail). Further discussions with yourself or your team about content may be fun but likely pointless.

Just push play and see what happens.