We’re really pleased to feature a guest blog from our friend Jim Panton, CEO of Panton McLeod. He visited our studio and was so inspired by the way we run our Monday Morning Meetings (MMM for short ) he implemented our process into his own organisation within days. Here’s what happened…

“So having first met Lauren on the Entrepreneurial Development Programme at MIT in Boston earlier this year, it was great to get a chance to visit the Snook Studio in Glasgow yesterday.  Since the MIT experience, we have made a lot of changes to our working environment in our head office.  We converted our canteen into a 12 desk open plan office and closed all other small offices in our building, apart from our small finance team.  We have a variety of things on our walls in this new shared office, including posters with Pirates, write-on boards all over the place and a rotating permanent projection of our work on site schedule, our latest live performance charts and a daily office cartoon.  
 
So it wasn’t a huge surprise to our staff when I returned from the Snook Studio with a picture of the weekly “Snookspiration” wall chart.  The chance for all staff to pin a note each week under; “last week I learnt”, “I am grateful for”, “Work most important thing”, “Personal most important thing” and “This week I need”.   Without great ceremony, the headings and my own answers were up on the wall and by just after lunch time we had 16 lines completed with only two or three needing a bit of encouragement from others.  Later in the afternoon I asked a handful of staff what they thought of the idea.  Feedback started with comments like, “it’s ok, but you’ll only see what people think you want to see” and “people aren’t really going to be honest on something like that”.  Then one or two started to ask me, “what is it supposed to achieve anyway?” and having done a class on fielding that kind of question years ago, I turned it back by saying “what do you think it is supposed to achieve for us?”.  A few seconds of wheels turning inside heads and then what happened totally blew me away… 
 
Someone said, “well, I guess it helps us to see what others are thinking about, worrying about or challenged by – things we might not otherwise know anything about” and a tonne of similar comments followed.  Within minutes the feedback was suddenly broader than the board, and incredibly honest.  For ten minutes we talked about the positives and negatives (but mostly positive) developments within the team over the last two to three months – since we ripped the roots up and moved everyone into the canteen.  It was amazing to hear folks suddenly talk about how unsure they had been about being thrown into a shared office the CEO and senior managers all mingling together and how they were now reflecting how good it was (give or take one or two good critical observations). ” 
Our Monday Morning Meeting has been a source of much prototyping and debate over the years. We have Suzanne Miller to thank for creating the core idea of the MIT  (Most Important Thing ) structure which has really worked for us. As a team we’ve reflected on it over time and added new aspects such as ‘One thing I’ve learned’ and ‘One thing I’m grateful for’. It’s not a fixed or set process and as people come and go we gain new perspectives on what works and what doesn’t work.

We’re happy to see it working well for Jim and his team and I encourage you to try this in your own organisation. Please let us know how you get on and take pictures!