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One way to maintain a balance between leadership teams and systems when organizations and brands seek rapid growth is to implement a "Monday meeting." A certain type of meeting that can result in reducing work and increasing a company's metabolism.

The simple idea is that company executives meet once a week with a promise: at this meeting, no matter how long it takes, they will work to remove any barriers that are preventing key players from doing their job.

This type of meeting (which does not have to be on Mondays) has four immediate advantages. First, it signals to the entire organization that the company's problem-solving cadence is now four days. Managers can no longer blame the organization (or new systems and processes) for delays. Second, it forces the executive team to speak in an integrated way about the issues that make it difficult for key players to get their jobs done. Executives cannot hide. Third, the meetings keep the senior team action-oriented and shorten the cycle time from decision to action. Team members cannot leave the meeting until they have resolved problems. Hence, they learn to deconstruct problems and make big problems small enough to be fixed. This is exactly the kind of propensity to act that enlivens a founder's mentality.

Les Wexner, founder of L Brands, has made the Monday meeting one of the most important management routines. It helps to keep the cycle time for solving problems short, he told us, and it removes blocks to action. The fold at L Brands that makes it an even more powerful management technique is the follow-up on Tuesday, a check-in on the progress of decisions and any new bottlenecks. This strategy is used by one of Wexner's most successful CEOs, Nick Coe, who runs Bath & Body Works and the new start-up White Barn. Coe attributes much of his success to these meetings. “The Monday and Tuesday meetings are company-wide, fifty-two weeks a year,” he said, “and you never miss it. It's the most disciplined thing we do. It has turned into "We can't live without it". It is done for every company, no matter how new it is. "

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Chris Zook with permission from Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpt and adaptation of the founder's mentality: How to overcome the foreseeable growth crises.

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