6 Moves to Structure Daily “Stand-Up” Meetings!
Increasing productivity one morning poop at a time.
Early on in my career, I met a very cunning and odd co-worker. Let’s call him Stan. He prided himself on “working the system,” and one of his many proud exploits was pooping on company time. He calculated his hourly rate and gave his ritualistic bathroom session a dollar figure and created this in various forms; weekly, monthly, annually and lifetime earnings. In a working environment with no bonus plans — he successfully created his own.
I always chuckle over Stan and his very odd desire to “stick it to the man.”
Until…I Became Management!
Once in a management role, I could see that Stan was not an anomaly. He had a following. A club if you will. With a very extensive and diverse membership. “Bonus plans” were being executed at all levels; reading the morning news, catching up on social media, the morning chatter among employees over last night’s reality show happenings and family crisis. The list goes on.
With my management glasses now firmly in place, it was my job to discover a tool to demolish these bonus plans. That’s when I stubbed my toe on something big. The daily “stand-up” meeting. It has several names; scrum, huddle, tail-gates, etc. Regardless of its name, it glowed on the horizon like the promised land.
The Daily “Stand-Up” Structure
My team was in for a shock. Fire up the generator Igor, we got a monster to rebuild. Shortly after my discovery, I implemented a daily stand-up meeting with the following structure.
1. Good Morning!
Booking it 30 minutes into the work morning meant employees had a little time to scrub the crust out their eyes and prepare for the meeting and expected agenda. I laughed evilly while churning my hands together as the marvelous side effects began to take place. Nothing beats tardiness more than a group meeting first thing in the morning. The morning “bonus plan” rituals many employees were engaging in were suddenly a faint painful memory. It gave the team focus first thing in the morning like a hot bullshit mocha latte forcing them to dive headfirst into the workday because they actually had to plan their day. And report on it.
2. Walk of Shame
The meeting always started on time with or without the full cast of invitees. Once this was established, employees avoided the “walk of shame” at all costs. They even started showing up early in an effort not to miss anything.
3. Tick-Tock
The maximum time limit for this daily meeting is a whopping 15 minutes, and it’s guarded by Gandalf himself. “This time shall not pass!” If more time is needed, it’s normally a topic that requires more attention and is booked for further discussion.
Initial resistance to the morning meeting was captured with the aggressor indicating: “it takes too much time every day.” I ducked left and dodged right and countered with the fact we replaced our 1-hour weekly meeting with five, 15 minute meetings…BAM! Down for the count!
4. Daily Means Daily
To build accountability, the meeting was never cancelled — Ever! Every day a different team member hosted the meeting, took minutes and dispersed them. This happened regardless of who was absent. No one person was more valuable than the collective!
5. The 3 Qs
- What did you complete yesterday?
- What do you plan on completing today?
- Are there any roadblocks?
When asked these questions, the team member has to be specific. An answer like “I worked on application ABC” is not acceptable. As a Manager, this tells me nothing in the way of status and deliverables. So I got to dish out push back questions to be more specific. The team was quick to pick up on what was required. The ability to hide within week-long buckets of work with vague status’ were days gone by.
Accountability was the new normal. Struggling employees were rapidly identified. One expressed his high stress level by not having things to report every morning (honesty is the best policy I guess). After a little investigation, it was found he was getting distracted with social media for long periods of time every day. Like sands through an hourglass, it wasn’t long before he had things to report every morning!
The roadblock question was another tool to unearth employees that typically spin their wheels on issues or pass the buck by indicating they were waiting on someone else before their work could continue. By identifying these roadblocks every 24 hours, instead of every 5 days, enabled lightening speed mitigation to keep team members moving forward and the issues of mass deflection destroyed.
6. Kanban Tools
Part of my team works remotely, not uncommon in today’s business world so the “stand-up” meeting required some tweaking. We needed an online tool to enable remote collaboration at various stages of individual tasks.
We found several systems that assisted in task management, scheduling and workflow efforts. The one we chose is irrelevant as a lot of them have the same functionality. What was important? Choosing a system that enabled us to categorize the team’s work into 4 buckets types: To-Do, In Progress, Testing, and Completed. This allowed team members to see where each project/task sat at any given time.
Daily “Stand-Up” Meeting Benefits
Some of the obvious benefits of the Daily “Stand-Up” meeting are accountability, collaboration and productivity. One of the often overlooked benefits is the creation of a new morning routine ensuring Stan’s “bonus plans” gets flushed away!
Checkmate!!
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Scott Kennie is a metro-redneck. He’s worked in corporate information technology management for over 15 years. He considers himself a sarcastic realist. He’s also a Dad. He lives with his wife, three dogs and his alter ego; Bat Hubby who’s a racecar driver. His motto: live life and laugh all the way to the grave.
