Traps to avoid boring huddles

When huddles don’t seem productive

One of the time-saving communication enhancing habits we promote is the daily huddle. It’s the regularly scheduled eight to twelve-minute stand-up meeting.

Huddles take advantage of three tools a leader has in getting better performance from a team:

• Peer pressure
• Collective intelligence
• Clear communication

When Verne Harnish updated “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” in 2014 by publishing “Scaling Up,” one of the mysteries he set out to address was the reason that firms had trouble with implementing the daily huddle.

Verne wrote: “If the daily huddle is so powerful, why do organizations start and then stop it? In a word, generalities!  As teams tell stores and share information, it’s critical that they include specifics.”

Here are the traps to avoid.

A) Avoid generalities. Get specific with your stories.

B) Stick to the agenda

• What’s up? (in the next 24 hours what are you trying to make happen?)
• What are the daily metrics?Where are you stuck? (if someone is never “stuck” they’re either not participating fully or they’re not trying to accomplish much). People should share “stucks” even when they believe no one on the team can help them.