Managing a team with these 9 essential rituals (number 8 might surprise you)

These past few years, after having worked with different teams in various companies, I think I have found the right balance when it comes to leading a team, with just the right amount of rituals and meetings. A ritual is a repeated, prepared and dedicated moment with your team. It serves to build and reflect on your values and culture.

In this article, you’ll discover the rituals I put in place within different teams, for day-to-day management as well as for creating team cohesion. Each ritual can be accompanied by documents providing valuable records or precious knowledge accessible at any time and easily shareable. Obviously, the aim here is to find the right balance: avoid processes that are too time-consuming as well as excessive (and sometimes unnecessary) documentation.

Rituals for Strategy and Operations

1. Product Meeting

⏱️ When: once a week

📓 The Product Meeting is a key moment for suggesting and challenging new ideas. The central element of this meeting is the creation of a product map, which brings together all the necessary information to implement an initiative. The main aim is to validate the “WHY” (or the “final boss” as a colleague would say). This involves convincing the team with the help of data, insights, strong conviction and a clear projection of potential impact. The second part of the meeting is devoted to illustrating the initiatives and ideas, incorporating both design elements and the various edge cases. If you’re interested, I could share a basic template for structuring this meeting, which is extremely useful for moving the right direction and staying on course.

2. Roadmap

⏱️ When: every two weeks

📓 The roadmap serves to answer one of the most important questions in profession (see my article on building an efficient roadmap): “When are things going to happen?”. In my opinion, a roadmap should be pragmatic, clear and ambitious, while staying in synch with operational teams. There is no magic recipe for creating it because it depends on your business and team velocity. The most important thing is to be realistic.

What topics were approved during Product Meetings? Which ones are in line with your quarterly objectives? What uplift are you hoping to achieve? Who is responsible for each topic? What are the interdependencies between each project component?

These questions need to be addressed as a team to build a roadmap that best meets your needs and that is supported and driven by all involved. Not only does this give teams a sense of responsibility, but it also ensures that the roadmap is truly applicable and useful.

I worked in companies where we used to prepare roadmaps over three months, and even up to a year, but today, our roadmap is only valid for a week tops, in line with our quick delivery pace. “Push for speed”, as they say!

3. Feature Kick-Off

⏱️ When: for each new feature

📓 The kick-off meeting for a new feature is a crucial opportunity to ensure common understanding and alignment among all stakeholders of the project regarding objectives and requirements.

Feature overview

• Provide a general description of the feature and its objectives.
• Outline user problems or needs that the feature aims to address.
• Discuss expected outcomes and potential impact for your users or your company.

Scope and requirements

• Detail the feature’s scope, making sure you specify what is included and what is not.
• Go over the functional and nonfunctional requirements to be met.
• Address and dependencies or constraints that could influence feature development.

Q&A

• Open the discussion to any questions, concerns or clarifications from team members.

💡 Tip: Create a dedicated channel to discuss specific elements and organise more in-depth meetings such as a technical knock-out (TKO), specific discussions around intermediate stages, challenging interaction elements, QA sessions and checking your data management plan (tagging, tracking table). Make sure you also coordinate the various releases. The key word here is synchronisation.

4. Design Critique

⏱️ When: every six weeks

📓 The Design Critique (sometimes known as design review) is a time devoted to constructive discussions, where designers can present their work in progress (WIP) before finalising elements. This ritual aims to encourage open and collaborative feedback, which is essential to ensure a qualitative UX process. While sharing unfinished work can be uncomfortable and even spark some tension at times, proper facilitation creates an effective and honest feedback loop. It is crucial to take into account the context and constraints of each project in order to provide relevant and constructive feedback.

💡 Tip:

Don’t hesitate to invite people from other teams, such as tech, growth or CRM to broaden the discussion with a variety of perspectives and valuable insights. If you’re interested, I could go more into detail on this topic in a dedicated article (let me know in the comments).

5. Product Demos

⏱️ When: every two weeks

📓 Product Demos are an opportunity to communicate the product’s latest features and improvements with all teams involved. This ritual ensures that everyone is aligned, up to date and informed about product progress.

Team Spotlight: Spotlight the people or teams responsible for each new feature or enhancement.

Selected Features: List features and enhancements recently deployed or under development.

Team involvement: Identify who will be most impacted or concerned by each feature.

KPIs and measurable objectives: Present Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or key objectives that each new features aims to achieve. This will provide a clear idea of the expected impact and allow you to easily monitor the results.

Rituals for Team Cohesion and Individual Growth

6. One-to-ones

⏱️ When: every two weeks

📓 How long: 20 minutes per person, or longer if necessary, option to organise a dedicated “Level Up” session.

These one-to-ones are quality time spent individually with each member of the team to discuss specific issues, reflect on important milestones and take a step back. It’s the ideal opportunity to prepare next steps and make sure everyone is aligned.

💡 Tip n°1: Keep a little diary to log any topics to be discussed. This will make it easier to prepare ahead of time and help ensure that these discussions are fruitful for everyone.

💡 Tip n°2: Don’t limit yourself only to planned one-to-ones. If you feel that such a meeting is urgent, don’t hesitate to make time for an extra session.

7. Weekly team meeting

⏱️ When: once a week

📓 How long: 30 minutes

Working in full transparency is a fundamental value that I systematically instil in the teams I work with. During the weekly team meeting, we discuss key figures, ongoing recruitment, as well as current and future challenges. It’s also a time for open discussion, where everyone can ask questions and get answers. If some topics require particular attention, a specific meeting can be organised at another time.

8. Retro + Open Mind

⏱️ When: once per quarter

📓 Caught in the hectic pace of everyday life, with the constant pressure to deliver, it’s easy to fall into an almost mechanical routine, where even our interactions are increasingly automated. Working remotely has, unfortunately, not helped in this.

This quarterly ritual is the perfect time to take a step back with the whole team. It’s an opportunity to discuss both structural and operational topics, to challenge past situations and deliverables, and to questions ourselves, individually and collectively.

The idea is to create a privileged and dedicated space for discussion around issues selected in advance, while providing each and everyone with the opportunity to express themselves freely. Here, we cover more strategic topics, larger than just the day-to-day business. We review the objectives we set for ourselves (looking at key figures and transparency), as well as the overall performance over the quarter both team-wise and company-wise, and we assess whether we are still in line with our initial ambitions. This meeting is also a time to review current recruitment (if any), progress made and future projects (our why, our thoughts and action plan). As an organisation, we must never underestimate the risk of each team working in silos, with their noses to the grindstone. The aim of this ritual is transparency and alignment.

9. Level Up

⏱️ When: once every quarter

📓 This Level Up ritual is designed to focus on broad issues, regarding interface, product, human interaction or any other industry-related issue. It’s a great opportunity to learn and share new practices, which are essential to our constantly evolving line of work. Adopting a culture of continuous learning is an invaluable asset if we are to remain agile and innovative. This individual ritual allows us to explore in greater detail subjects that require more than a simple one-to-one. The idea is to encourage individual and team growth while optimising work environment. It is essential that all participants prepare this session in advance in order to maximise its benefits.

One last thing: each ritual should adapt to and evolve with the time and needs of your team. Question what exists, what is already in place, and improve upon this, allowing your team to concentrate on their work rather than spending all their time in meetings.

Finally, don’t forget that a good meeting is a meeting which has been prepared in advance, that should be cancelled if it proves unnecessary (the infamous “meetings that could have been an email” sorta thing) and where the necessary context and background should always be provided to all participants.