Hi Reader,
Last week, we wrote about the importance of using the start of Q4 as an opportunity to reset: revisiting your priorities, looking at your Vitals, and deciding what deserves your team's attention through the end of the year.
This week, I want to go one level deeper into the rhythm that helps you follow through on those decisions: your weekly Executive Team Meeting (ETM).
We've observed hundreds of Executive Team meetings over the years, and one thing we've learned is that even really good teams can drift away from the fundamentals.
Sometimes it's an overly busy season. Sometimes it's more accidental: the schedule doesn't work one week, then the next, and before you know it, the team is only meeting half the time.
And if we're honest, sometimes letting the meeting drift is simply easier.
A strong ETM requires us to do some of the hard work of leadership: confront priorities that are off track, wrestle with difficult decisions, surface tension, and have conversations we'd sometimes rather avoid. Canceling the meeting or filling it with updates can relieve us of that discomfort, at least temporarily.
But like skipping a workout, avoiding the hard work doesn't make us healthier.
One consistent thing we've noticed is this: when a team's performance starts to slip, you can often see signs of it in their weekly meeting.
A great ETM isn't simply a place to exchange information. It's one of the primary rhythms that keeps a team focused, aligned, accountable, and able to work through the issues that require them to lead together.
Here are three common consequences we see when that weekly rhythm starts to slide.
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1. Team Focus Starts to Drift
Most Executive Teams we work with have done the hard work of identifying their most important quarterly priorities. But setting priorities isn't enough. They need built-in time for the team to monitor them.
When teams stop reviewing their priorities together, the urgent quickly crowds out the important. A few weeks go by, and the priorities that were supposed to guide the quarter aren't really guiding the team's attention anymore.
That's why we recommend monitoring your quarterly priorities in every weekly ETM. This should not be a lengthy status report. The goal is to create a shared understanding of where each priority stands, identify what's off track, surface obstacles, and determine where someone needs the support of the team.
Setting priorities creates focus. Monitoring them together every week protects it.
Few teams can protect their focus through collective willpower alone. Our attention inevitably drifts. That's why you need processes to regularly review your priorities, adjust them, and reflect on your progress.
2. We avoid the Hard Work of Leadership
There's an interesting dynamic that happens when an Executive Team Meeting starts to drift: in the short term, it can actually feel easier.
A strong ETM is productive, but it can also be challenging. It's where we confront what isn't working, wrestle with difficult decisions, surface tension, and have conversations we might otherwise prefer to avoid.
That's part of the responsibility of leadership. Leading an organization is an incredible privilege, but that privilege comes with the responsibility to do hard things. And when you eliminate or weaken your primary venue for doing that hard work together, the work doesn't disappear.
It's a little like deciding not to work out this week. It's certainly easier. But you're not healthier as a result.
This is why we recommend protecting at least 45 minutes of every weekly ETM for important and emergent topics. Some weeks, that might be a difficult personnel issue. Other weeks, it could be a strategic decision, an unexpected opportunity, or tension between two parts of the organization.
You can't predict all of these issues when you set your quarterly priorities, but you can make sure your team has somewhere to work through them when they emerge.
And you're kidding yourself when you say you don't have time. Teams that don't work through tension and resolve ambiguity together usually end up resolving it in far less healthy ways. Instead of one efficient and direct team conversation, the issue spills into a series of back-channel conversations. Conflict grows, and it almost always takes more time to resolve.
3. Leaders Start Drifting Back Into Their Silos
Executive leaders naturally spend most of their week inside their own areas of responsibility. Without an intentional rhythm for reconnecting, it becomes easy to lose awareness of what's happening elsewhere in the organization.
Before long, the Executive Team can start operating more like a collection of functional leaders than a team responsible for leading the whole organization. Your weekly ETM helps counteract that.
Build in space for the key organizational and functional updates everyone needs to know. This isn't an invitation for every leader to give a lengthy report on their department. Much of that can probably be shared asynchronously.
Instead, ask: What does the rest of this team need to know in order to lead the organization well?
The right updates create shared context, help leaders see connections across functions, and reinforce that what happens in one part of the organization matters to everyone around the table.
Your ETM should help leaders walk into the room representing their functions and walk out better equipped to lead the whole organization.
Back to the Fundamentals
There are plenty of ways to structure an Executive Team Meeting. Ours is intentionally simple.
In 90 minutes, create space to:
Connect → Share Key Updates → Review Quarterly Priorities → Follow Up on Commitments → Work Through Emergent Topics
The goal isn't a rigid agenda. It's making sure the fundamentals don't get crowded out.
Notice where we recommend spending the largest portion of the meeting: working through important and emergent topics. Nearly half of your ETM should be protected not for reporting about the work, but for actually doing the work that requires the collective thinking of your Executive Team.
A Final Thought
None of this is revolutionary, and that's the point. High-performing teams don't outgrow the fundamentals. They develop the discipline to keep doing them well.
And sometimes that discipline means choosing the harder path. Showing up every week. Keeping the important priorities in front of you. Naming the tension. Having the conversation. Working through something together when it would be easier to let it slide.
That's part of the responsibility that comes with leadership. Your weekly ETM is one of the places where your Executive Team practices that responsibility together.
So take another look at your weekly meeting. Is it still doing those things for you? If not, you probably don't need to reinvent it. You may just need to get back to the fundamentals.
-Shaun & Joe
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