The topic we’ll be covering today is daily huddles. Or, some people may call them quick daily meetings or tag-ups. This phenomena has transformed the way businesses are run, especially large companies. It’s becoming an increasingly powerful trend, and many small businesses have not caught on yet. So, I want to highly recommend taking a look at daily huddles.
Now, here’s what a daily huddle looks like: It’s a meeting that should take only 5-10 minutes per day, and there are many advantages to doing it.
First of all, it saves your team a lot of time in the long run. Even though you’re spending 5-10 minutes per day on these meetings, you can save up to an hour a day by doing this. And the reason is because it helps prevent the daily back-and-forth between colleagues to get answers, such as through emails, “Got a minute?” interruptions, etc. Also, if you have a specific case with a customer that you need to talk to a colleague about, the daily huddles give you a chance to do so. You can tell your customer, “Hey, I can get back to you at 10 AM tomorrow.” Because you know you’re going to have access to everyone on your team at the morning daily huddle. Without the huddle, you don’t know for sure when you’ll get a chance to talk to your team member, and therefore you can’t promise a time to your customer.
So the huddle helps you provide better customer service. Plus, it also sets the table or stage for your weekly meetings. We’re not going to talk about them today, but sometimes things come up in the daily huddle which you don’t have time to discuss, but you can put it on the agenda for the next weekly meeting.
During the huddles, everyone should be standing up. This isn’t something where you sit down, get comfortable, and start eating donuts. This is supposed to be quick and to-the-point, an overview if you will. I suggest keeping the huddles small, maybe 5-7 people. If you have a large team of people, i.e. 50+, then not everyone’s going to have a chance to talk. With 5-7 people or less, everyone has roughly 1-2 minutes to speak. The topics I recommend are:
1. What’s going on? Each person has a chance to share what’s on their agenda, what’s happening today, etc. It’s very important to be specific. As opposed to saying, “Yeah, I have a prospect meeting today.” Say instead, “Today, I have a prospect meeting with ABC Company of XYZ Industry, located in this part of town. I’m meeting with these people.” Since you’re sharing the information with your group, maybe someone else will be able to contribute to your meeting in some way. If you don’t share the information, nobody can contribute in any way.
2. Share the daily measurements, numbers, or metrics. Whatever your company/organization likes to measure, it’s great to announce these daily metrics. This can be as simple as the number of hits on your website, or how many calls you received yesterday from prospects.
3. Share where you feel like you need help. Maybe you’re stuck or you need someone to help you get through a situation. You can say, “Hey listen. I’m at this point on this project and this is what I want to do, but I feel stuck. I want to move forward and I just don’t know how to do it. I need some help.” That gives others in the group a chance to give quick feedback or, more likely, take the issue off of the huddle. When the huddle’s finished, a team member can spend a little while helping you one-on-one.
So that’s really the overview of the daily huddle. Again, the benefits include saving time in the long run and helping you reach your goals faster. There’s also going to be some peer accountability in these meetings. Go out and start making these huddles happen today!
