A “troika meeting” refers to a gathering of three key members within an organization. The purpose of this meeting is to solve challenges, raise ideas, and get feedback from peer-to-peer brainstorming and coaching.
Even amidst busy schedules, Michael Tobin, Randy Brouckman, and Jan Vesley have a standing weekly troika meeting, and all of them credit it with being a major factor in enabling quick decisions and advancing the business.
Here’s what they have to say about the process.
“This standing weekly call enables us to talk on a more strategic and holistic level about how we can continue supporting customers, employees, and the planet while simultaneously continuing to grow our business together. On a day-to-day level, it’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of what’s going well and what’s not, but having this time set aside to ask those larger-picture questions and brainstorm those broader solutions on a weekly basis means we’re much better positioned to remain agile and grow at a rapid pace. It also means we have more oversight and insight into how we can best continually leverage our collective assets for the greater good.” —Jan Vesley, Partner of EQT Partners
“The EQT principle of having a troika call every week is a cornerstone of EQTs value proposition for all portfolio companies. It serves as a ‘safe space’ where the CEO, Principal, and Chairman can air issues and brainstorm solutions as a kind of mini committee of the board in order to allow decision making at pace and continuous awareness for EQT in all matters. The Race to Scale program in Edgeconnex depends on this highly agile instrument to strike the perfect balance between speed and governance.”—Michael Tobin, Chairman of EdgeConneX
“It’s a great tool in the toolbox that EQT employs. It allows us not to lose sight of the forest through the trees. We talk about big-picture questions: What JVs should we pursue? What new markets should we pursue? How is our pursuit going? In terms of big land and power banking, we need to do? Are there major customer trends we’re seeing? Are there supply chain issues that we want to address? Every day and there’s thousands of interruptions, crises, and things that have to be managed, and this meeting pulls you out of those and ensures you haven’t lost sight of the big things that need to be done. It also creates a no-surprises environment. Sometimes things go bump—we need to anticipate where that might happen as much as we need to know our strategic priorities for navigating what we do when it does.” —Randy Brouckman, CEO of EdgeConneX
