Articles on: Teams and Tables

Using the Planner to Manage Teams/Tables

Teams/Tables are charged with moving a body of work forward in alignment with current organizational strategies and priorities. While Team/Table meetings are a critical aspect of this, they are not the entirety of managing a Team/Table's body of work.

A group's Sponsor and Convener(s) should meet regularly as a small group to consider the progress being made on the body of work and to plan the work ahead. These planning meetings can be held directly in the Planner.

What the Planner Does

The group Sponsor and Convener(s) use the Planner to:

Capture and monitor the group's planned strategic Actions
Monitor implementation of the group's Decisions
Plan the cadence and focus of the group's Meetings
Maintain a useful set of Linked Documents for regular reference by participants

Let's take a closer look at each of these.

Capture & Monitor Actions

One of the most important jobs of the Sponsor/Conveners is to break down the Team/Table's planned work into strategic Actions. In doing so, they make the work visible and manageable. This also makes the work easy to report on at key milestones, ensuring that leadership can see the group's progress throughout the year.

Example:

If one of the deliverables of the People & Culture Table is regular feedback loops with the whole staff, the Sponsor/Conveners might put the following Actions on their Planner: Q1 Staff Survey with Target Date of March 31; Q2 Staff Survey with Target Date of June 30; Q3 Staff Survey with Target Date of September 30; and Q4 Staff Survey with Target Date of December 31. On reports, these Actions will show as "planned" until each one is completed and then they will show as "completed."

Tip: Between full group meetings, hold a Planning Meeting among the Sponsor/Conveners to debrief the last Team/Table Meeting and make any adjustments to the Actions list on the Planner.

Monitor Implementation of Decisions

The Planner also holds a list of all Decisions the Team/Table has made. It's critical for the Sponsor/Conveners to review the list regularly to ensure that those agreements to act, which is what decisions are, have in fact been translated into some form of action. Did you add one or more Actions on the Planner to execute the decision? Did a participant make a Commitment to implement the decision on another team?

Tip: Once you feel sure that a decision has been translated to Action and is securely enroute to implementation, archive it from your list to keep only current decisions top of mind.

Plan Meetings

You want to avoid looking at Team/Table work in just a meeting-to-meeting fashion. Instead, based on your group's purpose and planned Actions, you can map out a series of meetings in advance from your Planner. Taking the time to do this will help you consider the relationship between your Action list and the topics you want to cover on upcoming agendas. What Actions will need more group discussion? What Actions will require learning and information-sharing before they can be completed effectively. Questions like this suggest the topics of your upcoming meetings.

Tip: Schedule meetings well in advance so that they are held on people's calendars. For instance, if you are meeting monthly, schedule all 12 meetings for the year in January. That way the scheduling hassle is out of the way and you can focus on agenda design.

Tip: Once you have scheduled the meetings on people's calendars, create the meetings in your Planner. Then you can add and revise the agenda topics for each meeting as the year unfolds.

Maintain a Useful Set of Linked Documents

Most groups have core documents that they reference regularly: a team budget, a style guide, a campaign protocol. Keeping those linked in your Planner makes it easy to attach them to a meeting agenda anytime an agenda topic calls for it.

Tip: Once a quarter review your Linked Documents list on your Planner and remove anything that is outdated or no longer relevant.

Updated on: 05/01/2026

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