Introduction to Meetings

How Ninety's Meeting tool improves accountability, productivity, and engagement for teams.

Written by Tommy Mains

Updated at June 27th, 2024

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Table of Contents

What Is the Meetings Tool? How Improving Meetings Supports Your Organization's Goals How Meetings Supports Ninety's Other Tools Ninety's Default Meeting Agendas Helpful Resources Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What Is the Meetings Tool?

Use the Meetings tool to manage your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings. We've pre-populated proven agendas to ensure your meetings are efficient, effective, and documented. Team leaders can also customize or create their own agendas to tailor meetings to specific needs.

Ninety simplifies meeting management with the following:

  • Segment and total timers
  • Integration with Ninety's tools
  • Issue-solving performance metrics
  • Automatic recap emails
  • Built-in notes capability
  • Mobile-friendly interface
  • And more

You can learn how to get started with the Meetings tool from the video below.

 

How Improving Meetings Supports Your Organization's Goals

Our Meetings tool brings additional accountability and productivity to your organization. We've designed it to optimize your team's weekly meetings and made it scalable for any meeting you need to run.

People are far more engaged in meetings when they know what's expected of them and what they'll be accountable for once the meeting ends… At a basic level, we bring people together for five reasons:

  1. To get information or opinions.
  2. To give information or opinions.
  3. To solve Issues (by making decisions and committing to actions).
  4. To create and work on ideas.
  5. To maintain or increase trust.

From our blog, More Than Just Talk: The Purpose and Benefits of Meetings

 

How Meetings Supports Ninety's Other Tools

Ninety's tools integrate directly with the Meetings tool, so your team can quickly review their Scorecards, To-Dos, Issues, and more. Click through the tabs below to learn more about how the Meetings tool supports other core tools.

Data

Our Data tool brings all your team's Scorecards to your meetings. Cycle through weekly, trailing, monthly, quarterly, and annual Scorecards as needed to get a pulse on team and organizational health.

 
 

Rocks

Reviewing Rocks as a team gives everyone a chance to report on their progress, share impediments, and raise any Issues for further discussion. During quarterly and annual meetings, teams will discuss long-term Issues or new ideas for Rocks. In general, Rocks are quarterly goals outside the scope of daily work. Rocks can involve new projects, fixing something, or a portion of a larger initiative, like an annual goal.

 
 

To-Dos

Reviewing your team's To-Dos in a meeting promotes accountability and transparency. Typically, teams will only need to review any past-due items and check for impediments for anything due in the next seven days.

 

 
 

Issues

Raising, discussing, and resolving Issues is one of the primary reasons for bringing team members away from their work and into meetings. Ninety's Issues tool creates two Issues lists for every team in your organization.

  1. Short Term Issues List — problems, obstacles, ideas, or opportunities to discuss and solve each week to keep teams moving forward.
  2. Long Term Issues List — Issues that don't have priority this quarter, but should be discussed in the future (usually during a quarterly or annual meeting).

Each list has it's own page in the Issues tool. You can move Issues between each list be right-clicking the item and selecting the opposite list from the dropdown.

 
 

Headlines

Headlines are announcements that usually don’t warrant a discussion or need additional action items. Any licensed user can send Headlines to other teams as a Cascading Message.

Since Headlines and Cascading Messages are reviewed as a team, they offer accountability and assurance that everyone understands the information presented.

 
 

1-on-1

Our 1-on-1 feedback tool is designed to transform performance reviews into a chance for a team leader and direct report to have a conversation around the latter's roles, accountabilities, responsibilities, and more associated with their Seat.

This tool utilizes forms for each party to fill out before the conversation begins and has its own meeting portal to conduct and archive the discussion.

 
 

 

Ninety's Default Meeting Agendas

Use our time-tested agendas to help your meetings become as engaging, productive, and efficient as possible. Click through the tabs below to review our default agendas. Learn how to edit these agendas or create a custom one here.

Weekly Team Meeting

For a full breakdown of the weekly team meeting agenda, read our 90u Library brief.

Agenda

  1. Segue (5 minutes). A time to transition from working in the business to working on the business and a chance to connect as people, build trust, and improve team health.
  2. Data (5 minutes). Review, at a glance, the health of your team's Scorecards. Celebrate KPIs that are performing well and make an Issue of any that need to be discussed.
  3. Rocks (5 minutes). Offer a chance for each team member to declare their Rocks as on or off track. If any conversations are necessary, right-click the Rock and select Make it an Issue from the dropdown.
  4. Headlines (5 minutes). Read through team and company announcements together. Typically, Headlines do not require formal discussion, but if your team wants to discuss one further, right click it and make it an Issue.
  5. To-Dos (5 minutes). Most To-Dos are seven-day action items. Use this time to review the past-due or soon-to-be-due To-Dos. If any discussion is needed, just right-click the To-Do and make it an Issue.
  6. Issues (60 minutes). Resolving Issues is the primary purpose of team meetings. Issues are the problems, obstacles, ideas, or opportunities to discuss and solve as a team. 
  7. Conclude (5 minutes). You can use this time to recap next steps and additional action times. Before sending the team on their way, everyone provides their rating for the meeting.
 
 

Quarterly Planning Meeting

Quarterly planning meetings (QPMs) keep our 90-day world turning by providing a space to reflect and celebrate on the previous quarter, then assess and plan for the next quarter to continue progressing toward the organization's Vision. For a full breakdown of this meeting, read our 90u Library brief.

Agenda

  1. Objectives (5 minutes).
  2. Check-in (15 minutes).
  3. Review previous quarter (30 minutes).
  4. Vision and goals review (60 minutes).
  5. Rock creation (120 minutes).
  6. Raise, discuss, and resolve Issues (180 minutes).
  7. Next steps (7 minutes).
  8. Conclude (8 minutes).
 
 

Annual Planning Meeting

Once per year, core teams revise their quarterly meeting into an annual planning meeting. Here, they can revisit their Vision and long-term goals. For a full breakdown of this meeting, read our 90u Library brief.

Agenda

  1. Objectives (5 minutes).
  2. Check-in (30 minutes).
  3. Review previous quarter (30 minutes).
  4. Review prior year (30 minutes).
  5. Team health (165 minutes).
  6. Proficiency in the 9 Core Competencies (30 minutes).
  7. SWOT assessment (60 minutes).
  8. Review Vision (60 minutes).
  9. Review 3-Year Goals (60 minutes).
  10. Conclude (5 minutes).
 
 

Foundation Setting Session

The foundation setting session is part one of the three-step process we recommend for upgrading your organization's Business Operating System (BOS). For a full breakdown of this meeting, read our 90u Library brief.

Agenda

  1. Check-In (30 minutes).
  2. Hitting the Ceiling (30 minutes).
  3. Org Chart Structure (180 minutes).
  4. Rocks (120 minutes)
  5. Meeting Cadence (45 minutes).
  6. Data, Scorecards (60 minutes).
  7. Next Steps (7 minutes). 
  8. Conclude (8 minutes).
 
 

Vision Setting Session

The Vision setting session asks the leadership team to answer essential questions and outline the next decade of your organization's journey. For a full breakdown of this meeting, read our 90u Library brief.

Agenda

  1. Check-in (30 minutes).
  2. Review foundation session concepts, tools, and disciplines (60 minutes).
  3. Review Org Chart (60 minutes).
  4. Set Core Values (60 minutes.
  5. Set Purpose, Passion, and/or Just Cause (60 minutes).
  6. Set Industry and Niche
  7. Agree on Compelling and Audacious Goals (60 minutes).
  8. Document Ideal Customer personas (30 minutes).
  9. Decide on Unique Value Proposition (30 minutes).
  10. Next steps (7 minutes).
  11. Conclude (8 minutes).
 
 

Goal Setting Session

After aligning around a unified Vision, the goal setting session details the path for getting from here to there. For a full breakdown of this meeting, read our 90u Library brief.

Agenda

  1. Check-in (30 minutes).
  2. Review foundation session concepts, tools, and disciplines (60 minutes).
  3. Review Org Chart (45 minutes).
  4. Review Core Values (15 minutes).
  5. Review Purpose, Passion, and/or Just Cause (5 minutes).
  6. Review Compelling and Audacious Goals (5 minutes).
  7. Review marketing strategy (10 minutes).
  8. Set 3-Year Goals (60 minutes).
  9. Set 1-Year Goals (60 minutes).
  10. Set Rocks (120 minutes).
  11. Raise, discuss, and solve key Issues (45 minutes).
  12. Next steps (7 minutes).
  13. Conclude (8 minutes).
 
 

 

 

Helpful Resources

To learn more about our teachings holding great meetings, check out the following:

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Can teams run their own meetings and create different agendas?

Yes, each team can run a variety of meetings. In addition to our default agendas, teams can customize existing agendas or create a custom one — learn how here. 

Here are some common examples of custom meetings:

Weekly Touch Base

Department and team leaders often set up recurring meetings with their direct reports to discuss individual Issues, build a high-trust relationship, and coordinate professional development. Our goal is to power these meetings with our platform, which will allow for a customizable agenda, Issue lists, Measurable tracking, and more.

Leaders can create a customized agenda for these meetings to increase their effectiveness. For example, some touch base meetings may not benefit from reviewing their team's Scorecard, especially if the team as a whole reviewed it the day before or will review it the day after.

Project Teams

Project teams, often called Tiger teams, are formed to complete a specific, non-recurring task. These teams may benefit more from reviewing website analytics or a project management board than Measurables on a Scorecard, so customizing their agenda keeps them moving toward their goal.

 
 

Does Ninety record our meetings?

Ninety does not record any audio or video.

Our Meetings tool captures the following for recap emails:

  • Headlines and cascading messages covered
  • Issues solved
  • To-Dos created
  • Notes taken in the platform
  • Time spent in each agenda section
  • Meeting ratings

You'll need external tools to record the audio or video of your meeting.

 
 

Do we need to pay for every user who attends a meeting?

If you want team members to have access to Ninety and attend meetings for free, add them as users with the Observer user role. While Observers cannot be assigned items like To-Dos, Issues, Rocks, or KPIs in Ninety, this shouldn't stop you from keeping them involved in meetings and allowing them to view information you're sharing in Ninety.

📖 Learn more about adding users to teams here.

 
 

Will Observers receive the recap email from our team meeting?

Yes, as long as you've assigned Observers to teams, they'll receive the recap emails after those teams conclude their meetings.

📖 Learn more about adding users to teams here.

While Observers cannot be assigned items like To-Dos, Issues, Rocks, or Measurables in Ninety, they benefit from attending meetings and receiving the recap email in several ways:

  • Transparency
  • Accountability
  • Productivity

📖 Learn more about what's included in the recap emails here.

 
 

 

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