You shouldn’t try to communicate all of these things during your huddle. Start with a few of these items and ask your team to stick with them. Review your morning huddle process regularly and see if it’s still fulfilling your team’s communication needs. After a while, you might find that as your company and team evolve, you might have different things to communicate during your morning huddle. Also, be respectful of other team members’ time. If they’re not directly involved with the problem you’re trying to solve, why would you waste time during the huddle? Instead, prioritize information sharing instead of consensus building and problem solving. If the meeting takes a turn toward discussion, quickly interject and suggest that folks debating a topic need to schedule a separate time to talk. Then ask for the next person’s update. WHENANDWHERE? The shorter your team huddle, the better. Keep it under 15 minutes, but also allow each team member to touch all the points you’ve decided to talk about during your meeting. If huddles turn into 45-minute discussions, then you’ll start to get a lot of glazed over looks from everyone who doesn’t need to be part of the discussion. If your team huddles go on too long, then try scheduling your huddle right before lunchtime (11:45am). Your team will have extra incentive to wrap things up quickly. Beware of making your team huddle a way to start the day. Some team members might feel like “work” doesn’t actually start until after the morning huddle - you don’t want that!
If your team works flexible hours, choose a core time when all members are present. Be consistent as much as possible. Daily team huddles are not just for teams that share the same workspace. Remote team members can also benefit. The biggest advantage for remote teams who do daily team huddles is the commitment and task accountability that comes from sharing status updates. within the company to praise another employee for something they have done that was outstanding. When another team member gives praise, it is more effective than the boss standing up and trying to make something up for each person. CORE VALUES Ways to communicate your core values is to acknowledge when people are showing those values throughout the day. HOWTOMIX ITUP? UTILIZE PUBLIC PRAISE Allow others
NUMBERS OR METRICS Everyone is to have a number that is their most important to report on each day. For instance, Acquisitions might report on how many appointments they went on yesterday. Lead intake might report on how many appointments they set the day before. Each person should report on whatever metric moves the company forward. PASS THE BALL Keep a ball (any size) in the office. Whoever has the ball from the previous day starts off the morning huddle. The person with the ball is the one who decides who speaks next by throwing the ball to that team member. Your throwing/catching skills should improve significantly with this method, and since nobody knows where the ball is going next, everyone will be on their toes! •
Gary and Susan Harper are the owners of Sharper Business Solutions.
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