Hello and welcome to the 29 new readers of the Office of the CEO newsletter! I’m Mackenzie, and I write about all things Chief of Staff, Executive Operations and the CEO Office.

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5 steps to amazing leadership meetings

Raise your hand if you’ve fallen asleep in a leadership meeting. Heck, raise your hand if you’ve fallen asleep in multiple leadership meetings!

You’re not alone. 39 percent of employees admit they have fallen asleep during work meetings (Source: Inc.com). 

I know I have strategically “rested my eyes” during meetings that went on and on, with no apparent end. You know, those meetings with no agenda, no pre-read, and no timekeeper.

It’s time to wake your C-suite up! Here are 5 steps to amazing leadership meetings.

Do these things and you will keep your leadership team highly engaged and coming back for more. If you don’t you’ll breed disinterest, boredom and dis-engagement at the top.

Let’s get into it.

Effective Meeting Guidelines

1. Pre-Meeting Prep

You ain’t gotta get ready if you stay ready. Meeting requesters should provide context and pre-read documents at least 24 hours ahead of the meeting. Best practice update the calendar invite with the appropriate details and links to relevant docs.

Participants should review materials in advance to facilitate informed discussions and efficient decision-making. Allow folks to leave comments to get the conversation going async.

2. Clear Meeting Kickoff

Your meeting begins with the meeting facilitator presenting the subject, agenda, and desired outcome. It’s like having a hiking orientation the morning of a big mountain climb.

Make sure everyone gets this before you move on. Otherwise your conversation is at the risk of wandering off topic and you’ll end up off the trail.

3. Role Assignment

Assign roles as required, including decision-maker, devil’s advocate and scribe. Clearly defining roles ensures accountability and effective collaboration throughout the meeting.

Rotate the roles! It gets stale if someone is always the idea generator, the note taker or the emperor with veto power. If your team gets ossified into doing business the same way, then you are at danger of slipping behind your competition.

4. Structured Meeting Closure

Close out should feel amazing. If you’ve done the first three steps correctly, you’ve quickly arrived at quality decisions and clear actions by engaging all parties.

The facilitator (and/or scribe, if applicable) closes out the meeting with a 1-minute recap, summarizing key points discussed. Next steps and action items are clearly outlined, including specific responsibilities assigned to individuals.

5. Ongoing Feedback and Iteration

Post meeting, encourage your leadership team to provide feedback on meeting effectiveness and suggest improvements for future meetings.

Continuously evaluate and refine meeting processes based on feedback and evolving needs within the organization.

That’s it, the 5 steps to amazing leadership meetings. If you do this, you’ll never have a C-suite executive doze off again.

PS Leadership offsites are the highest-of-stakes meetings that you must get right. No sleeping allowed.

Need help to design and facilitate a highly engaging offsite that your C-suite will rave about? Reply to this email.

Office of the CEO Happy Hour series, presented by Mackenzie and the Cedar team.

​I'm excited to host a New York spring happy hour for my Office of the CEO community on Thursday, May 2, 2024. RSVP to secure your spot today. We’re counting 46 RSVPs at the moment.

​Who should attend? ​Founders, CEOs, COOs, Executive Assistants, Chiefs of Staff, aspiring Chiefs of Staff, Executive Communications professionals and Executive Operations professionals are all welcome.

​Why come to my happy hour? ​You’ll be able to network with like-minded Office of the CEO professionals. But also it wouldn’t be a Cedar event without some sort of thought provoking and entertaining programming from my team. And I’m making fresh salsa. See you there!

Secure your spot: Thursday, May 2 5-7p ET at a private residence in Manhattan (Chelsea). RSVP.

Share this event with a friend or colleague who’d like to join.

Upcoming Events

Workshop: Turn Your Executive Team into Fast and Fearless Leaders: How to Build an Executive Operations Function Engineered for Speed, EA Ignite, American Society for Administrative Professionals, Nashville, TN, April 23, 2024 (Sold Out)

Roundtable: Become a Fast and Fearless Leader in the Office of the CEO (or Any Executive Office), EA Ignite, American Society for Administrative Professionals, Nashville, TN, April 23, 2024 (Sold Out)

Panel: Mastering Stakeholder Management and Making a Lasting Impact, Women in the COO Community, Armstrong Wolfe, New York City, NY, April 24, 2024 (Private Event). Reply to this email if you are a woman in financial services and you’d like to attend.

Send me a note if you’re interested in booking me as a niche, unique speaker at your next event to speak about the Chief of Staff, Executive Operations and/or the Office of the CEO.

Chief of Staff Jobs

Welcome to our Chief of Staff job board. If you have a Chief of Staff job you’d like shared to 2,000+ readers of this newsletter or need hands-on recruiting help to hire your Chief of Staff, reply to this email.

Sr. Chief of Staff to CMO, Slalom, Atlanta, GA, Consulting, Corporate

PWM Chief of Staff, Morgan Stanley, Long Beach, CA, Finance, Corporate

Chief of Staff/Director of Administration, Harvard, Boston, MA, Education, Non-Profit

Chief of Staff to President and GM of Life Sciences, Ecosystem and Public Sector, Datavant, Remote, Tech, Startup

Chief of Staff and Strategy, Uncommon Schools, New York, NY, Non-Profit

Chief of Staff to CCMO, Freshworks, Bellvue, WA, Tech, Corporate

Chief of Staff to the CTO, WorldQuant, Austin, TX, Finance, Corporate

Chief of Staff, Rex, Austin, TX, Tech, Startup

Help Us Grow

Our mission is to impact 1,000,000 leaders. If this newsletter would help someone in your network learn more about how to hold amazing leadership team meetings, please forward it to them.

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for next week’s edition.

Until next week,

Mackenzie

Mackenzie Lee | Founder & CEO
M: 650.283.4152 | E: [email protected]
New York City, NY
www.CedarChief.com

At Cedar, we turn executives into fast and fearless leaders.

Thanks to technology, changing markets, and demanding investors, the C-suite job is tougher than ever. We help executives find freedom from blockers and busywork.

Our mission is to help 1 million CEOs and their C-suite teams let go and do more of the things that matter. We help you hire a Chief of Staff, build an Office of the CEO, and implement C-suite operating systems.

On average our clients see a 25% meeting reduction, 20% strategic sales increase, and 2x speed-to-execution in their first 90 days with us. Data is continuously analyzed to improve performance and accelerate growth.