The daily huddle: how a 15 min meeting saves you 15 hours of confusion.

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YAY, another meeting!

Said no one, ever.

Yet here I am, telling you to host one every single day. Madness.

But hear me out. This is one of the most powerful tools you have to keep your project team aligned and on track!

A 15min daily huddle saves 15 hours of confusion

The roots of the daily huddle go back to the late 1800s. John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, had lunch with his leadership team every day. During this informal meeting, they shared priorities and cleared roadblocks. As the company grew, this daily rhythm became a core part of the management philosophy.

Fast forward 100 years and the idea of Scrum software development was first discussed in Harvard Business Review. An integral part of the framework? The daily scrum. A daily meeting where the entire team shares traction, priorities and roadblocks. Sounds familiar, right?

Scrum software development borrows the name from rugby, where up to 8 players of each team interlock and battle for the ball after a restart.

While you won't be banging heads with your project team anytime soon, this united feeling is what you're after. Shoulder to shoulder, everyone involved, eyes on the ball.

Before we continue: daily huddle, daily standup, daily scrum - we're here to discuss the idea, not the term. Use what works best for you.

Big goals, small steps

Pyramids were built by breaking big goals down into small, individual steps.

Building something with a team means you have an established rhythm to plan work. The daily meeting does not replace that. The goal of the daily meeting is to ensure alignment and traction against your plan.

At the end of the daily meeting, everyone knows the overall status, priorities, and their individual contribution for the next 24 hours. If someone is stuck, they can share that and get help. It builds transparency and accountability. The team builds momentum by celebrating each other's success.

But what if you don't build software? Same thing. Daily meetings are used from Rockefeller's Standard Oil to construction sites, and from tech firms to governments.

Without further ado, here are the 3 steps to a great daily huddle:

1. Logistics

Who should attend

Everyone who owns a deliverable. If your project is large and has teams of people working on deliverables, have their team leader attend. It works best if it's the same person each day, and they take full ownership of their team's work & deliverables.

The same goes for external suppliers or subcontractors - this is a team effort. They should be part of it, just like internal parties.

Other stakeholders are welcome to listen in, but they should stay quiet. You should try to keep executives out of the daily meeting. This is a team event, not a reporting meeting. Everyone should feel safe to speak freely.

When to have your meeting

Every single day. Build the habit, this is not optional.

Most companies find that the morning works best, as it gets everyone going around the same time. For companies with flexible hours, or those spread out over multiple timezones, find a slot that works best.

To encourage starting on time, pick an odd time. Starting at 9:02 or 7:46 will be more memorable than 9 AM. People will see it as a gimmick, joke about being 1 minute late, and then it just works. Try it!

Where to have your meeting

Ideally, your project has a team room where everyone works from. If that's not the case, gathering everyone becomes even more important. Find a place that works for you. A meeting room, the coffee corner, or online, every organization is different.

Four crucial things:

1. You're building a habit, so be consistent. Same place, every day. Finding a new place every day takes time & energy, and increases friction for attendees.

2. Reserve the location a little longer than your meeting. This allows people to talk 1:1 about a problem after the meeting.

3. Choose a location that has the materials you need. This can be a Kanban board, a set of drawings, or a whiteboard for example.

4. If one person is remote, everyone joins the call individually. Having half the team in a physical room means those dialing in will miss some side conversations and feel left out.

2. Preparation

Preconditions

The team should know what they're working on for that week, and how that contributes to the overall project. A strong team is aligned and collectively moving towards a goal, within known constraints. If that's not the case, address that elsewhere.

Goals and expectations

Make it clear to everyone attending what the goal of the meeting is: traction, roadblocks, metrics & successes. We're here to stay on plan, connect dots and offer team members a place to raise an issue.

You should go over the ground rules of the daily huddle at least once at the start, and when team members change.

If someone's energy is off or they go off topic, have a chat with them - project management is people management.

Roles

Everyone should know what they're bringing to the meeting. As the project manager, you're the lubricant. Your role is to:

1. Keep the meeting going, on track & productive

2. Spot any issues in deliverables, relationships or interfaces

3. Make sure everyone speaks, and that everyone feels heard

This is a team having a conversation, not a group of individuals taking turns to say what they did.

3. How to run a daily meeting

Stick to a strict agenda - MVPC:

• Metrics

• Victories

• Priorities

• Constraints

You start the meeting by covering metrics on a team level. After that, every individual covers their own victories, priorities, and constraints.

Metrics

A good project has measurable success criteria (discussed two weeks ago!). As such, you should have a way to measure success within your project. Don't take too many, 2-3 is plenty. Make them relevant and meaningful, and select something that shows progress every day.

Think of benefits, not work done. Bugs solved over lines of code shipped.

As the project manager, review the day's metrics and make any brief announcements. Then, it's time to move to the team.

Let people speak 1 by 1, aiming for 30 seconds each. Let them go over the following 3 things:

Victories

Each person starts by saying what they accomplished yesterday. Remember, we're after outcomes and benefits. This is not the same as reporting work done: don't say you attended a meeting, explain what was decided there.

Encourage specific outcomes, and don't hesitate to ask for confirmation. It's done, or it's not. If it's not done, blame the problem, not the person. The goal is to build a culture in the team where it's normal to be clear and open if something didn't work.

You'll notice quickly enough when people can't keep up, or struggle to share an accomplishment or issue. If you do, it's your job to coach them back on board.

Priorities

After sharing what they've accomplished, everyone states what their next priority is. Again, make it as specific as possible. For example: don't say for 3 days in a row that you're writing a newsletter. Instead, say that you'll write the first draft on Monday. On Tuesday, you edit and review with X, etc.

Whatever is shared as a priority will be either a success or an issue tomorrow. This loop creates accountability and transparency and keeps the pace up. As an added benefit, it creates mutual understanding in the team for each other's expertise, complexity, and workload.

Constraints

The last thing everyone addresses is if there is anything stopping them from accomplishing their priority. Are they waiting for someone else, or do they need a certain decision? This forces people to think ahead. If they don't raise an issue, everyone expects their priority to be accomplished tomorrow.

This is a goldmine for you as project manager. It helps you identify roadblocks before they become an issue, and you can act accordingly. You can connect two people or decide where you have to get involved yourself.

A consistent daily meeting, where constraints are discussed before they've stopped progress, is a crucial piece of project risk management.

In summary

A well-run daily meeting can save you and your team hours of confusion. It sets everyone up to win the day, and the momentum compounds. One extra meeting can eliminate 10 ad-hoc calls during the day.

To run a great daily huddle:

1. All contributing team members attend, every day. Same place, same time, same format.

2. Explain the ground rules of the meeting, and set expectations with the team.

3. Be specific, use achievements and not work done.

4. Strict agenda:

   1. Metrics

   2. Victories

   3. Priorities

   4. Constraints

5. No planning or problem solving

And finally, don't forget to keep it fun. Bring surprise pastries, celebrate someone's birthday, and don't take yourself too seriously.

But what if someone doesn't deliver? Or if someone goes off-topic every day? Then it's time for feedback. How to do that in a constructive way, is what we're diving into next week!

Thanks for reading!

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That's it for this week - until next Tuesday!

Cheers,Jasper