The same document as a printable PDF – share this with your team, attach to the meeting invitation.

The same document as a printable PDF – share this with your team, attach to the meeting invitation.

The Routine

1. Make sure everyone who brings in new work (sales team, key account managers) knows when you’re having the weekly staffing meeting. Share the agenda ahead of time (see below).
   • Share the basics on how to add new work to everyone – at first, adding upcoming plans may feel intimidating but it’s the best practice! Just be ruthless about archiving far-fetched tentative ideas, because only probable client needs deserve to be in the list.
2. Lead the staffing meeting with Operating visible to everyone (on a big screen or screen-sharing in a video call). Zoom in (with cmd/ctrl + if needed). If someone is unable to attend, process their cases to the best of your knowledge.
3. Keep adding and editing work allocations and tentative ideas in Operating throughout the week. Extend confirmed allocations if ongoing work continues into the future.
   1. Remind and motivate consultants to update their plans regularly: when doing so, they will be reached out when the opportunity arises, and the company’s capacity forecast is accurate. This makes it easier to recruit their next colleague at the right time!
4. Use Slack or Teams to share what’s going on – link to Operating if major decisions are made outside the recurring meetings – ideally, the “Monday routine” is never surprising or confusing – much more of a “shared understanding” session, helping you focus and align the efforts.
5. That’s it, that’s the routine.

The Agenda

Agenda for a weekly recurring staffing session, e.g. on Monday at 11-12.

1. Projects to be staffed (team setup + allocations)
2. People with availability
3. Capacity forecast + conclusions

For the first couple of times this will take a little bit longer, but once you get into the habit, a 60-minute meeting should be enough. Remembering to do Step 0 will keep the meeting tight.

STEP 0

• If you have new tentative allocations in your accounts, add those as tentative in Operating before the session
• If you’ve connected your CRM, remember to refresh the connection to get the most up-to-date cases to Operating
  • Match projects with their owners and groups under project details in Horizon.

STEP 1 / approx 20 minutes

• Discuss each project to be staffed: all tentative needs in Operating Horizon, top to bottom
  • The horizon toggle “Open / All” should be left Open, otherwise you have a long list of ongoing confirmed work filling your screen. Sort the list either by CRM pipeline status or by Owner.
  • See which roles would fit the need best (in terms of role and skills) ⇒ build the team setup for every case that is on the horizon. Your best guess is good enough.
  • Decide on the names for the teams that must be decided – make sure you communicate with every team member and arrange time for preparations before the work begins (e.g. schedule an internal kick-off).
• Move over to the Staff timeline and decide which projects should be scheduled now
  • The Staff timeline shows you both the projects and the people, allowing you to see who’s available and fits the team setup
  • Add names to all roles that don’t have names yet
  • Best practice: if you know the project duration, paint the allocations. If the project gets postponed, reschedule the start date – that will shift all allocations accordingly.
  • Assign action points, who contacts whom
  • Confirm cases when you’re sure
  • Archive lost cases, discuss if the freed up people could fit other potential projects
• Ask everyone attending: anything that’s missing from the staffing puzzle? You can always add new projects from the bottom left + button. (If you add a project to Operating and only afterwards to your CRM, you will have two items of the same thing, right? Just merge projects into each other and you’re good.)