We all know what it’s like to sit in a meeting for three hours, only to get back to our desk afterwards and wonder if any useful decisions were made at all.
It’s hardly a recipe for productivity and as a business coach, it is a situation I see regularly. Not only is valuable time being wasted, but it can often be counter-productive with your team becoming confused or even unmotivated, resulting in no action being taken until it is discussed at the next inevitable three-hour meeting.
Instead of long, unfocused meetings that go nowhere, try implementing daily seven-minute meetings (or seven-minute huddles as I like to call them).
Seven-minute huddles are laser-focused meetings where each person is driven to achieve results each and every day. They allow business owners and managers to keep their finger on the pulse of the business and respond to challenges quickly.
The idea of seven-minute huddles is to gather your team get together at the same time every day to answer three questions:
- What did you achieve yesterday?
- What are you focused on achieving today?
- How are you going to do that better tomorrow?
Or:
- What is working?
- What is not working?
- What are we doing about it?
Everybody should show up to the meeting prepared – there’s not enough time to be vague with your responses. After just seven minutes, you and your team will have a clear understanding of what your team is working on, if there are any problems that need to be dealt with and how you can improve your team’s performance as a whole.
The daily huddle also has an enormous positive effect on your team culture with your team feeling valued, involved and understanding how their role contributes to the business.
If some pressing issues arise out of the huddle, deal with these as they occur, but don’t derail the entire meeting to do so. Finish the huddle first, and then immediately deal with these issues with the relevant team members. If the huddle starts to get taken over by one person or one issue, keep the meeting moving and address that issue later.
You need to ensure that everybody contributes to the huddle and that everybody is clear about their outcomes for that day. This will motivate your team to tackle their most important tasks and I guarantee that you will see a noticeable improvement in focus and accountability.
It’s quite a simple idea, but you will be surprised with just how big a difference having the daily huddle will make to your business.
Stefan Kazakis, Founder, Business Benchmark Group
