Plan an Effective Meeting Cadence with These 7 Important Considerations

Key takeaways

Choosing the right meeting cadence is an important element of successful meeting management.
Different meetings, teams, and environments require different meeting cadences.
Adapting common meeting cadence best practices to your specific needs will ensure your strategy is successful.

Meeting cadence is the frequency with which you schedule meetings.

Scheduling an effective meeting cadence is essential in achieving high productivity and avoiding zoom fatigue and disengagement.

In many workplaces, it can be challenging to walk the line between excessive meetings and employee disconnection. This is especially true in remote work environments.

While there is no universal schedule that will fit all types of meetings, there are best practices you should be aware of when setting the pace of your team’s meetings. In this post, we gathered the most common meeting cadences and what meetings they’re most appropriate for.

Most common meeting cadences

Different types of meetings often command different meeting schedules, but there are no absolute rules you need to follow. The right approach is the one that works best for you. Below are some of the most common meeting frequencies and the meeting types they are most often associated with.

Daily meetings

These are usually short and focused on the practicalities and goals for the workday. They involve quick status updates, allocating support, or resolving any immediate blockers to pending action items.

Examples of daily meetings are:

Daily stand-up meetings
End-of-shift daily check-ins

Weekly meetings

A weekly meeting cadence has a broader focus than daily meetings. It helps attendees align on what work they will complete during the week, what deliverables they can expect, and what issues might slow down the progress.

Weekly meetings are helpful for project managers and team leaders to coordinate different facets of a complex project and share updates. Weekly meetings are also opportunities for teams, especially remote ones, to interact and stay connected. For managers, it’s the time scheduled to interact 1-on-1 with their direct reports.

Examples of weekly meetings are:

Weekly team meetings
Project team meetings
Revenue or goals updates
One-on-one meetings
End-of-week team hangouts

Bi-weekly

Meetings that follow a bi-weekly cadence focus less on interaction and operations and more on project and business updates.

Examples of bi-weekly meetings are:

Start/end of sprints for agile teams
Department updates
One-on-one meetings for cross-team collaboration
Campaign launches
Leadership team meetings
Management meetings

Monthly meetings

Here we start moving into more strategic meetings, where decisions are made on a longer-term basis and do not involve day-to-day issues or company-wide events.

Examples of monthly meetings are:

Company updates
Performance updates
Monthly company gatherings
Keynote events or meetings with guest speakers
Board meetings

Quarterly meetings

Quarterly meetings usually focus on strategy, reporting results, and future goal setting.

Examples of quarterly meetings are:

Company/business updates
Brainstorming for upcoming campaigns and initiatives
Reporting on KPIs and setting new goals

Annual meetings

Annual meetings usually take place at the end of the year and offer you and your respective team the opportunity to reflect on all the hard work and effort that has gone into the past few months.

Examples of quarterly meetings are:

End-of-year round-up and recap
Team achievements and praise
Goals for the coming year

Now that we know the most common meeting cadences, what should we consider when selecting the right one for our needs?

Selecting the right cadence for your team

Set the meeting goal and outcome

When understanding how to set an effective meeting cadence for any particular objective, ask yourself and your team a few questions as you build your plan. Selecting the proper meeting cadence becomes easy when you understand the meeting goal. You could ask questions such as:

What will be the meeting agenda?
What are we trying to achieve with the meeting?
Do we need detailed check-ins on the next steps and progress?
Is this meeting part of regular project management, or is it more of a business review or all-hands meeting

Do attendees realistically have enough time to follow the proposed meeting rhythm?

Ensure all attendees add value to the meeting

Inviting only those that contribute to the desired outcome is part of a healthy strategy when planning an effective meeting cadence.

While it may feel uncomfortable to omit some people, keeping the attendee list to the minimum ultimately favors everyone. Those who join will find discussion and decision-making faster and more effective, and those that don’t can invest time in focused work.

Moreover, people should be encouraged to reject meeting invitations when they feel they aren’t needed.

When determining who should be invited to a meeting, ask yourself the following questions:

Does this person contribute to the planning and discussion?
Is this person part of the decision-making process? Do they need to take meeting notes? Do they have an active role?
Will this person bring significant value to the objective of the meeting?
Is this a waste of time for this person? Would their time be better spent on something else?
Is their calendar already full?

Factor in the communication styles

To plan an effective meeting cadence, you want to know how effectively your team communicates. Individual communication styles differ. Some meetings may be long-winded, go off-topic, or over time, while others are likely to be brief and to the point.

To help determine how often you will schedule a specific meeting and how to structure it correctly, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the team size?
Does the team typically run over time when discussing topics?
Does the team run out of time and stretch the conversation to the maximum available time?
Does the team set actionable tasks in this kind of setting?
Are the results of action plans and next steps considered during follow-ups?

Assess current meeting cadence

A great way to ensure you have an effective meeting cadence is through trial and error. The right meeting cadence will evolve as projects, teams, and situations evolve. When assessing the current meeting cadence, ask the following questions:

Are projects running smoothly, and would it be beneficial to spread out meetings?
Would team members get more support with more frequent meetings?
Would the meeting efficiency improve if it was shorter?
Are team members disengaged, and could they benefit from more interaction time?

Identify high-priority meetings

Knowing the importance of the meeting’s goal will help you decide how often the team should meet to discuss progress and how much time you should devote to these conversations.

This consideration is more complex than it may seem at first glance. High priority shouldn’t always correlate to a more frequent meeting cadence. This approach might add confusion, stress, and the feeling of being micromanaged on projects that are already complex and time-consuming.

On the other hand, agile teams that follow the scrum methodology see value in having daily stand-ups, even though they aren’t always a true business priority.

Switch to asynchronous communication where appropriate

Are all of your meetings truly necessary? Some meetings are essential for exchanging real-time information, progress, and ideas. However, often many meetings can take place via asynchronous communication. Be ruthless when identifying meetings that can occur asynchronously, as this will help you save time for critical interactions that need to occur in person.

Ask yourself:

Could this topic be discussed via Slack (or other channels)?
Could this project be worked on through a shared document (Notion, Miro, or Google Docs)?
Would switching to asynchronous work positively impact the team?
Do people have to interrupt their focused work to join this meeting?

Gather participant’s feedback and insights

After real-time meetings, follow up with participants to garner feedback and suggestions. Asking your meeting attendees how frequently you should hold specific meetings is sensible and should be an ongoing practice. As the team, business, and projects evolve, so should the meeting cadence. Always keep an open channel of communication.