You’re standing up. But what are you saying?
You’ve heard about the “stand-up meeting” or “daily huddle”, which promises to help us spend fewer minutes in meetings, and stay more aligned throughout the day. But how exactly do they work? The key is that it’s a different conversation than your “usual” meeting.
Take the Finance team at a logistics company. They were meeting every single day at 8:45, diligently logging into Teams for 30, 45, even 60 minutes. They got the habit of daily frequency. But the meetings weren’t producing any results, saving any time, or entertaining anyone. Over time, attendance became patchy, and the meetings trailed off.
You’ve been on this meeting before – the “roundrobin” where every person talks at length about what they did yesterday, what they’re going to do today, and what they brought for lunch. Did everyone else on the team need to know about exactly what everyone else’s tasks were? Were these activities the right ones? What were they trying to accomplish, exactly? Were we on track with larger goals? In this case, it wasn’t clear.
We reoriented the meeting around a few simple questions:
1). Connect first - how is everyone really doing today?
While it’s tempting to dismiss this first question as a waste of time, it is critically important in our management practices that we respect the humans involved. We all walk in the door with experiences and feelings of the day, which can influence our engagement and contribution.[1] Understanding where the team is at sets context, and helps build trust and connection that is critically important to an effective meeting. Try to challenge the common answer “fine” or “good”. See this article for more on how to design a higher quality check-in.
2). What are we trying to achieve?
Getting clear on what’s expected gives us something meaningful to measure and track progress on every day. See my prior post about how to choose these metrics. Mature organizations will likely set targets for a “balanced scorecard” of metrics across delivery (speed), production (output), safety, quality (defects), and even morale. If you’re new at this, just pick one thing. It’s important that whatever metrics are being discussed can actually be impacted by the people at the meeting. The daily stand-up is not the time to talk about annual net margin numbers from audited financial statements (unless you’re on the audit team), but to talk about whatever it is that you can move the needle on in your daily job function.
3). How are we doing today - are we “winning”?
Once you have a specific, measurable objective for what it means to win, you can then look at your actual performance relative to that target. See my prior post on how to visually depict the target and actuals, thereby clearly illustrating the gap. If you come into a meeting with this information already updated, there is no need to verbally explain – everyone is already up to speed on the current performance.
Back to our example of the Finance team, the first two metrics they chose to look at were # of potential errors caught in the forecasting process (i.e. future problems prevented), and # of people who worked more than 12 hours the prior day. These were important indicators of how well they were doing their jobs (accuracy), but also the toll it was taking (effort). They were easily measurable every single day with no software or fancy calculations, with the “gap” instantly visible via a simple run chart.
4). If we aren’t winning, why not?
Whenever there is “Red” on the board, i.e. a gap between our target and actual performance, this should trigger action: the team should “go see” the process, observe where it is breaking down, and conduct further investigation if necessary (such as root cause analysis). The goal of this step is to gain a thorough understanding of what’s causing the deviation from expectation.
On the Finance team, any error detected was a source of investigation – what had they missed, and how did it happen? Did everyone now understand what was supposed to happen? When an employee worked over 12 hours, what was on their plate that was driving this burden?
Redesigning this meeting only took about 10 minutes. It paid off every day since.
5). What are we going to do about it?
Once the team understands the “reasons for red”, they can turn to problem-solving. This is the fun part! What will we try today in order to get things back to target performance? Depending on the size and nature of the problem, the team may be able to trouble-shoot on the spot and fix the problem as a group, in the meeting. Most problems will require a bit of follow-up to fully design and run the experiment, and see whether it works or needs further adjusting. The key to keeping the stand-up short is to clearly assign the action (using names, not general roles), and decide when the team will go see what was learned from taking the step – either later that day, or at tomorrow’s stand-up.
If there are no gaps, this portion of the stand-up can simply cover our focus for today. How much of what are we going to produce? Are there any special circumstances to pay attention to? Are we fully resourced and prepared to tackle the day, or are there barriers or concerns?
In the case of the Finance team, the group tried to better prioritize or redistribute tasks so that no one was working into the night. This built team camaraderie, but also helped sharpen the focus of the work to what was truly most important that day.
6). What help do you need?
It’s possible that the team either can’t figure out what’s causing the problem, or can’t move forward with a solution on their own. The stand-up structure should include a clear escalation pathway, so that whoever CAN provide that help is engaged immediately following the meeting, and can support the team in further understanding or resolving the gap. This is the role of the most senior person at the meeting - not to run the meeting, but to figure out how to support the team in taking the next step.
Other good agenda items to consider include:
Team recognition: Who can we celebrate for raising a problem, running an experiment, or sharing a learning?
Safety moment: What special tip can we pay attention to, to increase our chances of an incident-free day?
Improvement updates: If the team is working on longer-term improvements, the stand-up can be a good time to share progress and learnings. If these updates get too long, dedicate a separate weekly meeting to improvements.
The Finance team was able to shorten their meetings and increase their impact by following these 6 questions. So can you! For help getting started or to evaluate your own stand-up, schedule time with me.
[1] Smith, Renee. “Make Meetings More Human, Please! Part 2 - The Check-In”, A Human Workplace, 4/17/24.