Every morning, I take off my jacket at work and immediately gather around the venue for a 15 minute morning meeting. At 8:30 a.m., the office simply stopped and the group gathered.
This is not a regular sit in meeting. Everyone was a few minutes late, with freshly brewed coffee cups and small notebooks in their hands. You’ll also see people doodling on paper. There is no itinerary in the diary.
When looking up and down in the open office, all groups are doing the same work. Everyone stands up and shuttles on the floor in the form of a group. Let them stand up for 15 minutes and run according to the same routine.
At 8:45 a.m., after the meeting, when the team resumed its work, the team manager and the department manager started another meeting. At 9 a.m., heads of all departments were having a meeting with senior leaders. The same meeting is held face to face in multiple floors and locations, and remote employees hold meetings via telephone or network
Within 30 to 45 minutes, the core message of the front line was conveyed to senior leaders: “We are all well” or “We must fight today”, so that senior leaders can provide necessary support.
In Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, Verne Harnish said: “Gathering” is one of the core characteristics of any successful enterprise. They have become a common feature of many organizations, covering an expanding range of various sectors.
The automobile industry calls it a “gas station” in the morning, the fitness care industry calls it a “healthy person”, and the banking industry calls it a “cry in the morning”, which explains what will happen if the meeting is not properly arranged.
So, what are these meetings? How should we arrange these meetings?
A crowded crowd
These meetings are often held standing. For a simple 15 minute meeting, you can spend more time looking for a suitable room, arranging chairs, attending a 15 minute meeting, and wasting time on a given task.
The meeting shall be held as close as possible to the actual place of work. The so-called “Gemba” is a place to create value. It is also centered on some form of Huddle board.
Huddle Board：
According to my experience, Huddle Board is the core of leading a successful team every day. For remote teams, it can be a blackboard, whiteboard or electronic dashboard, which can intuitively convey the goals and objectives of the team. Our goal is to develop visual communication tools so that key performance indicators can be communicated quickly. This not only improves the efficiency within the team, but also improves clarity.
One of the best ways to think about this is the three second rule. Let me explain.
If I enter your work field, how can I know if you are doing well or have problems? Is today good, bad or good? Should I roll up my sleeves to help you, or should I see others in other teams support you? Or what is our goal today? Maybe we can hold informal 1 – 2 – 1 or skip level meetings.
The three second rule is just the time it takes me to understand it. It’s time for everyone in your team to know what they did today, yesterday and last week. Therefore, when designing a small tablet, make sure that you have some form of goal, that is, to use green and red, or to use smiling faces or other colors to indicate work progress. It must be part of your visual management and visual communication toolset.
After the chessboard is in place, we can continue the group discussion and the three killer problems!
Three killer questions
What’s your plan?
How did we oppose the plan?
Can we do better?
These three issues form the basis for all quality discussions on outcomes, goals, objectives and improvements. We mentioned these problems in the example of the meeting, but these problems must be the basis of performance evaluation, 1-2, personal action plan and project action plan.
They are very similar to “PDCA”(plan, execute, check and act), which is the beginning of promoting performance improvement, and therefore leads to the development of high performance teams.
What’s your plan?
The first part of the meeting is to look back on yesterday. At yesterday’s meeting, you planned to achieve some goals and set some goals. This could be calling 15 customers or sending all orders received online. The key is the visible plan. Then bite
How did we oppose the plan?
So if we start calling 15 customers, are we successful? Are you sending all orders received online? Or, are there any extended orders that could not be sent due to system errors? Maybe we have received more orders than expected, and there are not enough resources to meet the demand.
Finally, this is an overall idea of constantly looking for better ways to work.
Can we do better?
If the team did not call 15 customers as planned, why would this happen? Did Tim have a long lunch, or did one of the calls take much longer than planned? Maybe someone had to leave early because of a request. Or, we just didn’t plan our resources properly. The third killer question is to study in depth what can be done better to improve work. This starts with the solution of five basic problems to reveal the root causes.
Not all problems can be solved in 15 minutes. Maybe you didn’t send all the orders you received online. Because the delivery process is too long. Alternatively, the delivery time is 2:30 p.m., but the order will last until 8:00 p.m. The reason for the long transportation time cannot be solved immediately. However, whether it’s today’s workload or the second half of the week, you can plan an hour with some key team members to find more detailed ways to view and improve the delivery process.
The key is that everyone participates in the last question. By asking what we can do better every day, you start to create a culture of improvement. You may have finished the plan perfectly yesterday, but can we do more? You can do other things, find new customers, find new ways and do something. Everything can be improved. This has always been the case.
Restart
Obviously, a day cannot be without new plans, so it is better to look ahead than to look back. The team should reach an agreement on today’s plan and identify in advance all the factors that might hinder today’s plan.
It is important to do this forward-looking part. This is so that you can ask the same three killers tomorrow.
target
The goal of the meeting is to let everyone point in the same direction and let us know what the plan is today. Then, any good or bad news will be reported and action will be taken if necessary. But it is also for culture and work. Here, we are always looking for improvement and new ways of working. Just because it is not bad today does not mean that we do not want to improve it.
So there are several rules.
Hold for 15 minutes. Short, sharp, focused
Please give 3 killer questions.
Today’s plan
Start again and try to do better.
