Meetings are the heartbeat of the organization. If you’re changing fast you need more meetings not less. Most rookie managers get this backwards. They think “I need more operational output so we should stay working instead of meeting.” But, they’re wrong. Managers get results from their team. The meeting ought to produce and environment where more results are accomplished following the meeting.
What is the number one thing that prevents more operations from happening faster? More efficiently?
You don’t know. You have to ask.
What is the question that gets it from your team?
“What is blocking us right now from doing more?”
Then, ask each person this question. Give each person the respect and voice to pull the cord that stops the assembly line. Let them voice it. Let it be heard.
If each person is fairly independent of each other person, you can ask “what prevents you from succeeding today?” What’s blocking you?
If this is too much too fast then ask, “What do you have in your day ahead?”
What happens if the meeting goes sideways? Most managers won’t do a daily huddle because they fear the team will mutiny and throw it into disarray. Here’s the bad news –they’re doing that when the boss isn’t looking anyways. The boss simply has their head elsewhere. Get with the program and do your job. Run a good daily huddle. And listen!
What if my employees don’t talk? the opposite of the out-of-control daily huddle is the waste-of-time huddle. No one says anything of any substance. “I’ll do what I did yesterday.” Blah. Pops any energy that might be building in the team. How to fix this? Coach in the Weekly 1:1’s misc section. Invite the dulldrum to bring up his or her blocking issues in the private 1:1 and then coach them to resolve this sooner in the daily huddle.
What if it takes too long? Maintain clarity and focus by limiting the content to forward facing stuff. Don’t allow bitching about yesterday. Ask for plans for the future. Speak of KPI for the future. Hone the team for positive change in the future. If a big topic comes up that cannot be handled very fast then “take it off line” with a smaller group of people. Keep the meeting sharp.
Whack-a-mole –most small business owners and managers play a game of whack-a-mole throughout their day. Employees bring up crap as the day goes by and the boss is expected to solve it. Some bad bosses tell employees “don’t bring problems to me without a solution.” I hate this trend. I want to hear problems –sometimes I can solve them, and sometimes someone else on the team can solve them. If you know of a problem but don’t bring it up in the daily huddle you are hiding shit. Don’t hide shit. Clear the shit from the business. Get it out. Tidy up. Don’t bring up shit outside of the huddle that could have been handled without interrupting me. But, if something just happened and you don’t know what to do, call me. Let’s solve it now. If I cannot solve it and it’s starting to spread like wildfire throughout the team then I’ll simply call another huddle. I’ve been in businesses that were changing so fast we did two huddles a day with the whole team. Morning stand up and another whenever people started freaking out. The boss has a pulse on that and can simply reset the day once again by calling a huddle. “Huddle up” works pretty damn well. Then, “here’s what we’ve got for the rest of the day. This is what I’m doing about it. Joe, what are you doing? Kim? Ronnie? Okay. We ready to do this? Break.” Clap and walk away. Or, as one teammate likes to say: “Okay, now get to work!”
If you are not doing daily huddles and want to install them, I will help you. I will teach you, role play with you, then do one, then watch one, then make sure you are doing them right. If you run a good daily huddle you won’t ever stop. It unifies and clarifies and clears issues so efficiently that it saves you hours per day of interruptions.
What if not everyone is in the same location? You can have people dial in. In that rapid changing business we had several people working remotely. I literally set my cell phone on the reception counter and we did a midday huddle. It’s just as effective. Just make sure everyone is fully present. Shut off “other work” when you’re in a huddle.
What if customers are present? Have them watch. It’s actually pretty impressive. They’ll trust you more. Most are faster than a phone call hold.
What if someone keeps bailing out? Consider firing them. If they don’t want to be part of the team they will rot the company from within. Rogue whack-a-mole is a pest.
What do you listen for? The key element you, as the manager, are listening for is blocking issues. The absence of any issues is bad, and the super detailed airing of dirty laundry is bad. What you want is actual blocking issues that the team can solve quickly. You also want everyone there. That’s a huge part of it. “okay, we’re all here. Let’s do this” is part of what is communicated. Tone is set.
What is someone is consistently late to the daily huddle? We use a wig of shame. Yes. Shame. If you’re going to be late you are a bad teammate and can be publicly shamed or fired. Which one would you prefer? Be there.
What is someone is waiting around for super long beforehand? We recommend starting the daily huddle within 30 minutes of the last teammates arrival. This is early enough to set the tone but also allows for some early start people to get some work done before the later arrivals appear. I like to say if you show up more than 5 minutes early you’re obviously not being as productive as you ought, and if you’re more than a minute late we’ll post for your job. New teammates are like “dang.” but old teammates know that they get to post for my job –which has happened. We all make mistakes and when the CEO is 2 minutes late and the team says, “we are posting for your job” you know you are doing it right.
The Daily Huddle can clear hours of work off a manager’s plate in <5 minutes. How? You get help from your team. And you prevent problems from showing up. The combo is powerful.