Managing Team Meetings In Your Business
Stand Up Meetings
The upside of meetings is that they share often vital information and decision-making across a team, and place those functions where they are needed. The downside of meetings is that the amount of information and actual decision making is often trivial when compared to the time required to process this. Many people only need to attend meetings to be “put in the picture” and yet having many people attend every meeting wastes resources and creates a scheduling nightmare.
Stand up meetings avoid the downsides of meetings, while delivering their upsides.
Stand up meetings first thing every morning have one purpose: To ensure that there is a high level of communication across the entire team. They share problems among people who can solve them; they share solutions from experience with people who will need them; they support every member present; and they promote a whole-of-team focus.
It is also more efficient to have one short meeting, that everyone involved in or affected by the agenda is required to attend (even if on a video or voice link), than to have many meetings with a few players at each.
The Rules
1. Gather ‘Round:
a. Everyone stands in a circle, facing inwards (just needed to specify that last bit!)
b. Circles have no beginning, or end; no head or tail, and so promote equality.
2. Stand Up: No-one sits and “gets comfortable”; everybody stands
a. A “note taker” may be granted special dispensation to sit if taking notes to record commitments to action, and other decisions.
3. Share Goals:
a. Share information on status, progress and plans (in quick fire form)
b. Identify obstacles quickly (note “identify”, not necessarily “solve”, though that can happen – see below)
c. Set the day’s focus (this is a great way to get everyone on the same page, singing the same song. A lot of high-D leadership types may pooh-pooh this, but if you do a poll of the circle you may be surprised how many people take direction and motivation from this process.)
d. Boost team-ship and camaraderie (look to bring everyone’s energy up to the same level as you launch into a new day).
4. Big Picture:
a. Focus on putting everyone in the bigger picture, with snap reports from key players to colour in some of the details.
5. Run Rabbit Run:
a. Run “against the clock”
b. More than 15 minutes and you’re covering too much ground for this type of meeting.
6. Landscape Only:
a. Narrowly-focused topics affecting few members should be referred outwards to separate meetings consisting of only affected or interested parties.
7. All In:
a. Anyone can contribute any knowledge relevant to the topic
b. Anyone can ask for help (see the next rule)
8. Quick Fix:
a. Look for quick solutions either as “the whole fix” or as the seeds to a more considered approach.
b. Any solution that takes more than a few sentences is probably better outlined as a “seed”, and dealt with in a separate meeting of the affected parties (only).
9. Round Off:
a. Close the meeting with a positive send off, “OK, here’s to a great day for everyone!” or similar.
The daily stand up meeting is not another meeting to waste people’s time. Properly used, it has the potential to replace many other meetings, giving the entire team a net savings that runs to several times its own length.
Tip: When someone comes into your office unannounced and wants time with you when you are pressed, try standing up before they sit down, and create the body-language expectation that they will remain standing as well. You’ll be surprised how quickly someone can think on their feet (and how languidly we tend to think when we are lounging comfortably).
