A client of mine in the manufacturing industry recently experienced an a-ha moment about how often their team should meet. They had tried everything under the sun to find the right meeting pulse—daily meetings, weekly one-on-ones, weekly meetings, bi-weekly meetings, monthly meetings, cross functional meetings...you name it. Nothing seemed to be working effectively, and they were getting frustrated. And no matter what they did, they were wasting too much time in meetings, and not getting stuff done.

The a-ha wasn’t just how often their meetings occurred—it was what they were doing (and not doing) in the meetings that was amiss.

When I first meet with a small business leadership team, I always ask them to rate the how accountable their team is on a scale of 1 to 10. The average among teams is a 4. And inevitably there is a comment or statement made that “I wish our people were more accountable.” The question that soon follows is, “Mike, can you help me make my people more accountable?”

My answer is, No.

Freedom. Control of our own destiny. Making your mark on this planet. Financial wealth. Growth. More fun.

These are a few of the many reasons why entrepreneurs and key leaders desire the positions that they’re in. Unfortunately for most small business leaders, they don’t experience the very things that attracted them to the position in the first place. In fact, they are continually frustrated!

Imagine you’ve founded a service business with about 100 employees. When asked, you explain your role as being involved with everything, especially Sales and Marketing, and Operations. One day, as you arrive at your weekly meeting, your right-hand man tells you, “You’re fired.”

It’s no secret that most people cringe when they hear the words, “let's have a meeting.” Most meetings are awful.

When I first took the helm of our third-generation family business, I ran some pretty awful meetings. I knew I had to get the team on the same page with everything that was happening on a day-to-day basis, so I scheduled the leadership team to meet for 2-3 hours every other week.