--- title: "Tactical Meetings Overview" description: "Tactical meetings in Talkspirit are structured circle meetings focused on operational work, triaging issues and assigning actions to keep work moving." category: structure-governance section: meetings type: Quick Fix lastUpdated: 2026-08-26 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/introducing-tactical-meetings --- # Tactical Meetings Overview ## Tactical Meetings Overview A tactical meeting is a circle's recurring operational meeting. The circle reviews what it committed to, looks at its numbers, then works through the obstacles in its way one at a time. Governance meetings change the structure of the circle; a tactical meeting uses the structure as it stands to get the work moving. > **In summary:** The **Tactical Meeting** template runs five steps in this order: **Check-in**, **Checklists**, **Metrics Review**, **Agenda** and **Closing**. A stepper across the top of the live meeting shows which step is open. Any member can create a tactical meeting for a circle, give it a recurrence, and adjust the steps in the circle's own copy of the template. ## What are the five steps? 1. **Check-in.** A quick opening round where everyone shares how they are doing. Talkspirit fills in the list of participants for you. 2. **Checklists.** Talkspirit lists the recurring items assigned to the meeting's participants, with their recurrence and who they belong to. Each person ticks what they completed in the current period. This step needs the **Holacracy** add-on and the matching organisation setting, and your organisation can rename "Checklist" in its own terminology, so the step may carry another name. 3. **Metrics Review.** Talkspirit lists the metrics owned by the circles and roles in the meeting, with their frequency and latest value. The owner records the new value and can add a comment alongside it. 4. **Agenda.** The working part of the meeting. Anyone in the meeting adds entries under **Items to Process**, and the circle takes them one at a time, moving each from **Pending** to **Discussion** to **Complete**. Against an open item you can create a task, a goal, a project or a proposal, so the outcome lands where the work lives instead of only in the notes. 5. **Closing.** A final round to capture everyone's feedback before the meeting ends. ![The step bar of a live tactical meeting. Five steps read Check-in, Checklists, Metrics Review, Agenda and Closing; the first three are ticked and the fourth, Agenda, is the current step. Below it the section opens under the heading Agenda, described as open agenda items and discussion topics](/images/structure-governance/introducing-tactical-meetings/01-live-tactical-meeting-agenda.png) ## Who can do what? Any member can create the meeting and give it a recurrence. Whether a guest can create one depends on their guest level. One participant is the **Note taker**. Assign them from the participants list with **Make note taker**, and change them at any point during the meeting. The note taker owns the notes: when your organisation switches on **Note taker only**, they are the only person who can edit notes during a live session, while everyone else can still add and edit agenda items. Starting and closing the meeting are open to any participant, not to the note taker alone. ## Can we change the steps? Yes. The five steps come from the **Tactical Meeting** template, which you install once and then edit as your own. Open **Meetings**, then **Meeting settings** → **Templates**. Templates sit in two lanes, **Organisation** and **Personal**, grouped by category, and **Browse gallery** installs a system template such as **Tactical Meeting**. From there a circle adds a step it wants, **Projects** or **Goals** for example, or drops one it does not use. ![The Templates page of the Meetings module, reached from Meeting settings. Templates are grouped into an Organisation lane and a Personal lane, and within each by category: Standard, Tactical and Governance. Under Tactical, the Tactical Meeting template shows its first three section chips, Check-in, Checklists and Metrics Review. Browse gallery and Add template sit in the header](/images/structure-governance/introducing-tactical-meetings/02-templates-tactical-meeting.png) > **Note:** Who can edit a template depends on its scope. A **Personal** template can be edited only by its creator, a circle template by any member of that circle, and an **Organisation** template only by an administrator. ## What's Next? - [Governance Meetings Overview](/structure-governance/introducing-governance-meetings) - [Meetings Overview](/structure-governance/meetings-overview) - [Creating a meeting template](/structure-governance/how-to-create-a-meeting-template) - [Changing the note taker during a meeting](/structure-governance/how-to-change-the-secretary-during-a-meeting)