独立游戏工作室运营指南第五篇：如何开更好的会

In the final part of his five-part guide to indie management, business coach Martijn van Zwieten explains how to host the perfect meeting

If you've made it this far in the series, you now have the building blocks of a functioning studio operating system: a clear purpose, long and short-term goals, a system for catching and solving issues, and a quarterly rhythm that keeps your team focused and accountable. This week, we're looking at the glue that holds all of it together: your meetings.

Most people groan whenever I mention meetings, and I fully understand why. Too many management meetings devolve into endless status updates that could have been an email and discussions that go in circles, leaving participants with the general sense that an hour just disappeared without anything actually getting decided.

The good news is that your meetings don't have to be this way. By being specific about the structure of our meetings, we can ensure that we include the parts that drive progress and decision making, and minimise the parts that end up derailing the meeting and wasting everyone's time.

Three meetings to run your studio

In my work with studios, I advocate for three types of management meetings, each operating at a different cadence and serving a different purpose.

The yearly meeting is where you zoom all the way out. You review the past year honestly, all the hits, misses, and learnings, and use them to inform your planning for the year ahead. You set your annual goals, revisit your BHAG, discuss any major challenges you might face, and come out of it with your rocks for the first quarter already defined. This one takes a full day, and ensures that you've set the foundation for the entire year.

The quarterly meeting is a more concise version of the same meeting. You review the rocks from the quarter that just ended, take stock of what that means for your yearly goals, and set your rocks for the next 90 days. With some practice, you can get this one done in half a day.

The weekly meeting is where your goals should translate into traction. This is the meeting your team will have most often, and it's the one most likely to go off the rails without a clear agenda. So let's look at that agenda in detail.

The weekly meeting: A 60-minute agenda

The three goals of the weekly meeting are to make sure your team is fully aligned on where things stand, to surface whatever is most pressing right now, and to leave the team with clear next steps. Every element of the agenda serves one of these three purposes.

Check-in: 5 minutes

Start by settling in. Before anything else, everyone shares two pieces of good news from the past week: one professional, one personal. The point of this is to start from a point of positivity, to bring people into the room mentally, and to give the team a brief window into each other's lives, which is essential for building trust. That said, we don't want this to become a social event, so keep it brief and keep it moving.

To-do check: 5 minutes

Next, look at the to-dos from last week. Were they done? A quick pass through the list is enough. The point isn't to interrogate anyone, but to maintain the basic accountability that makes to-dos meaningful in the first place. On average, you want about 80% of last week's to-do's to be done to preserve momentum. If something wasn't done, it either carries forward or gets deprioritised. Either way, you decide consciously rather than letting it quietly disappear.

Rock status check: 5 minutes

A brief check on the status of each rock is next. All you want in this phase is confirmation from the person driving the rock that it's "on track" or "off track". There's no need for a full status update. Anything on track is good news, and anything off track is put on the issues list. This gives the whole team a real-time picture of where the quarter stands, and surfaces anything that might need attention during the problem-solving portion of the meeting.

IDS: 40 minutes

This is the heart of the meeting, and it gets the most time for good reason. Using the identify, discuss, solve (IDS) process we covered in Part 3, work through whatever is most pressing for the quarter. Use the rock status check to guide you: if something is at risk or stuck, that's probably where you start. Only reach for broader studio issues if there's genuinely nothing urgent at the quarterly level. Keep going until you run out of time or issues.

Conclude: 5 minutes

Close the meeting deliberately. Summarize what was discussed and, crucially, what was decided. Confirm next week's to-dos and who owns each one. And if anything came up in the meeting that the wider studio needs to know about, take some time to decide what needs to be communicated, and by whom. This way, you get ahead of any small misalignments before they grow into big ones that end up on your issues list.

Why this works

All in all, this weekly agenda helps you do four things consistently. It ensures everyone is fully up to speed before any discussion begins, so you're not wasting time catching people up mid-conversation. It builds a live agenda of what's most relevant right now, rather than whatever was most pressing when someone wrote the agenda on Monday morning. It tackles studio issues in a systematic way, so that nothing gets discussed endlessly without a resolution or at least a next step. And it makes sure that the right information reaches the right people after the meeting ends.

It might take a while to get the hang of it, but before you know it you'll be blowing through them, solving issues and unblocking rocks as you go. And if the feedback of my clients is any indication, you might even start to look forward to them.

The framework in full

With this final piece in place, you now have the complete FIRM framework: by defining your long term vision and yearly goals, you've got a firm grasp on your studio's future; you've got a central place for collecting any issues your studio faces, and a straightforward process for solving them; you're using rocks to translate your yearly goals into quarterly traction; and your management meetings are focused on planning ahead, driving progress and solving issues.

No one can give you all the answers to the questions that come up in running a studio – I certainly can't! But with the right structures in place, it'll be that much easier to find those answers together. That's what FIRM is designed to do – and now you have everything you need to put it into practice.

This week's homework

Together with your team, work through the following:

1. Schedule your three meetings. Put the yearly, quarterly, and weekly meetings in the calendar. If you're starting mid-year, begin with a quarterly meeting to set your rocks, and start running weekly meetings from there.
2. Run your first weekly meeting using the agenda above. Stick to the time allocations, even if it feels rigid at first.

Congratulations, you now have the full FIRM framework in place! All that's left is to stay consistent in using it, and building on it to meet your needs as you go.

Want the full FIRM framework with step-by-step implementation instructions? Visit martijnvanzwieten.com/firm to download the free template.

Martijn van Zwieten is a business and leadership coach, and the creator of the FIRM and LoGOS studio management methods. He has coached over 150 CEOs, founders, and leaders to build better studios, ranging from indie darlings like Rusty Lake and Twirlbound to AAA powerhouses like Bethesda Game Studios and MachineGames.