As we talked about previously, the KRAs (Key Reporting Areas) each have an ‘owner’. We need clear roles, responsibilities so we then have accountability. This is not so it can be used in ‘management by fear’, the old autocratic style of how to get people working. Having one role responsible for a distinct corner of the business gives them the freedom to truly own their corners. This is a much more powerful and effective approach to leading and managing.

The weekly KRA Manager meeting is where each owner of a Key Reporting Area (KRA) comes together to share information about their respective corners, collaborate with the other managers and share information and roadblocks faster. The forum can also be used to support managers that are overloaded (a team with excess capacity could take some of their workload for the short-term), and brainstorm solutions to curly issues the manager has not been able to solve themselves. Mostly, the meeting is to share information across the business at a high-level.

Each weekly KRA should be no more than 30 minutes, depending on the stage of growth your business is in. Roughly five minutes for each KRA. When the organisational chart is fully assigned (i.e. your business is big enough so each person only owns one KRA in the business) you will need to full 30 minutes for the meeting. Don’t schedule the meeting for more than half an hour, you can keep it under that if you are a good chair.

The agenda of the meeting is to simply go through the KRA from the bottom-up.

Start with the Production area(s) of your business, then Operations, Sales, Marketing, Management and finally strategy. The reason for this is if the meeting runs out of time, the strategy component can be dropped off (unless there is something hugely important). 

The weekly KRA Manager meeting is more about day-to-day issues and information, than medium-to-long-term changes. Whereas your monthly or quarterly strategy meetings start from the top down.

The chairperson of the weekly KRA Manager meeting will usually be the most senior person on the organisation chart present, usually the Founder/owner/CEO/MD/GM. When going around each corner, the chair can prompt for information from a KRA Manager by asking:

• What are the major issues and wins in the ‘XYZ’ corner Peter?
• Any big topics the other managers in the business need to be across?
• Where is your corner at with XYZ issue/opportunity/project?
• Do you need any help from the other managers with anything?

If people are stuck for things to say in their corner, see the standard activities suggested under each KRA, for specific functional activities you can run through to prod them.

Especially if you have an undisciplined or ignorant High I (under DiSC®) in the meeting, be sure to steer them back onto the agenda if they start jumping all over the place. As they are people-orientated extroverts, they will love talking and often want to talk for talking sake. If they start answering for other people be sure to help them control this behaviour during the meeting, then after the meeting give them direct feedback on being unfocused and undisciplined.