Advancing Your Business With Daily Huddles

A team is only as good as its ability to communicate. Companies have been known to fail due to a lack of communication. This can easily be solved with Daily Huddles. What are daily huddles? They are short team meetings held daily by all team members by functional department. They are purposeful and work to direct every member of your team on the agenda of the day. They offer all members of your team the opportunity to share with each other and also a chance to give the status updates of the projects and priorities with which they are entrusted. The secret of a successful team is not in the instituting and attending of these meetings but on ability maximize their outcomes.

How do you make your daily huddle effective?

• Great Facilitators

It goes without saying that a team is as good as its coach, and the same goes for daily huddles. The success of the meeting is directly proportional to its facilitator. Anyone can agree that it is impossible to hold successful meetings with a facilitator who has to be reminded of the meetings every time. The facilitator must be dedicated to the rhythm of the meetings, setting a good example for the rest of the team members.

The meetings should be held every day, at the same time, same location, and with the guidance of the facilitator.

Also, the facilitator should hold the team members accountable and offer the consistency that will ensure every team member is prepared. It is the facilitators duty to bring the team back to the fold in the case of a deviation from the day’s agenda. Keeping everyone on the team engaged is an essential step towards a successful meeting.

• Agenda

The aim of daily huddles is to solve problems quickly and communicate wins. The team leader is tasked with establishing every huddle’s standing agenda, focus, pace, and placement of the team. If today’s huddle is on wins, all team members are under instructed to stick to the topic of the day without deviation.

For those team members without a win, the rest of the team provides guidance on how to get results on the particular project in question. This way, all team members are inclined to work extra hard in order to have something to bring to the table each day, and this ultimately contributes to the success of the team and firm.

• Accountability And Responsibility

Keep in mind that the meetings are short, team leaders are entrusted with the duty of identifying the action items of each of the meeting. This increases the chances of a successful meeting because reviewing progress made is easier. Action items that arise in the course of these brief meetings are documented for discussion at a later date.

It is important to note that having the same person as the facilitator day in day out could be a bore. To make things more interesting, the duties of a facilitator ought to be extended to all team members in turns.

As a result, the responsibility is taken off the shoulders of one person, giving others the unique opportunity to facilitate the meetings. Furthermore, this approach significantly improves the preparation and participation of these meetings since the leadership mantle could fall to anyone based on the schedule.

Daily Huddle Format

• Stand up- Getting comfortable neutralizes the essence of a daily briefing. Hence, it should be conducted when everyone is on his or her feet, making it a swift and a high-energy exercise.

• Keep it brief- 10 to 15 minutes are sufficient for a daily meeting. Meetings any longer tend to get off track and lose momentum.

• Keep time- Losing even a single minute for a meeting planned to last ten minutes is a great loss. Hence, instituting a penalty for every team member who comes in late for a meeting could do the trick.

• Enjoy- Daily huddles are all about connecting and sharing. It is even more fascinating when one team member opens up and receives support from the rest of the team through encouragement or feedback.

Benefits of Daily Huddles

Daily huddles are essential to all teams for the following reasons.

• They improve the performance of teams due to peer accountability.

• They enhance integrated intelligence and build communication.

• They harness the skills and capabilities of all team players and ensure that tasks are executed quickly and accurately

• They put everyone in a department or team on the same page with daily updates on projects underway by eliminating work interruptions. It also helps increase focus from reduced distractions.

• They reduce team drama. Most team drama comes from a lack of communication.

Daily huddles are all about communicating what each team member is working on as well as their progress, barriers, and solutions on a daily basis. According to the Rockefeller Habits, they create a rhythm for a team. They offer both the executives and team of a company a chance to focus on the important matters facing their company. In turn, the approach significantly streamlines communication and solves problems more efficiently.

Daily Huddles will become an asset to any team. They enable team members to know, understand, and trust each other better. Consequently, the outcome of individual and collective efforts of such a team is like rocket fuel for growth companies. These meetings offer breakthrough insight to anyone who may be stuck on their project by giving them immediate feedback and solutions. Moreover, they improve the understanding of employees on their daily tasks and encourage them to make progress on their quarterly priorities. More importantly, problem-solving in an organization is dramatically simplified through routine meetings.