In almost every operational improvement programme I’ve been involved in, setting up a powerful daily routine to focus on performance and improvement has been at the core. Done well, these gatherings involve everyone in the business and keep them focussed on the things that matter by providing a simple, yet powerful, structure to their day.

In previous articles we have focussed on:

the PURPOSE of the routine – to focus attention and drive action (read here)
the PEOPLE dimension – leadership action to create the right conditions for everyone to engage and succeed (read here).

Having laid the foundations, in this article we’ll get down to the practicalities of the routine, in particular organising and carrying out the daily “huddle” meetings, where in 15-20 minutes per day you can set up every team in your organisation to have a successful day.

The daily “huddle”

The daily “huddle” is the foundation of the daily routine. Very different from most meetings, it is a short (15-20 minute) “stand-up” meeting (experience shows that sitting encourages a slower pace) held near the start of the working day, once everyone has had time to prepare.

In many organisations, meetings are organised in several “tiers”, with tier 1 being the frontline production teams, which then feed upwards to departmental and factory level. They take place at the same time in the same location every day.

Preparing for and following through on the actions from the meeting will then form the core of activity for team leaders and other key members for the rest of the day.

Whatever the level, all meetings have a similar structure and purpose, allowing information to flow up and down the organisation to the most appropriate level for action to be taken. Ideally everyone gathers around a team information board (more about those later) or online with cameras on and access to the same information.

There is a standard agenda, so everyone knows it and comes to the meeting prepared to play their part. I recommend the following.

Step 1: Check-in

Before diving into the formal meeting content, it’s a great idea to establish meaningful connection with each team member. This can be informal, for example, as they arrive, or more formal, such as by going round the group to check in.

Make “how are you?” a question, not a greeting. Expect genuine answers and take an interest in the response. It’s important that this is meaningful and not just paying lip service.

I’ve seen some teams use “smiley face” 😀 😐 🙁 or 👍 👉 👎 as a quick way of getting top level feedback on a display board. Not only quick and easy, but adds a sense of fun too and avoids this aspect getting over-serious and uncomfortable!

Of course, there is the “danger” that this could start some long conversations, which should be avoided at this stage – the goal here is more to get a sense of where everyone is at and ensure follow-up for anyone who’s struggling (for whatever reason) at some point later in the day.

The key to success here is to ensure that everyone in the team is comfortable to be totally open about how they are feeling without fear of the consequences and confident that they’ll get understanding and support from the team and the organisation.

Step 2: Reflect on yesterday

The next step is to review the previous day. This should not be a long, drawn out process. With practice, it can be short and snappy and extract the key information needed to identify any necessary actions. Remember, the purpose is to drive continuous improvement rather than get into a long debate about what went wrong.

Check on Actions Due

First, check whether actions from previous meetings due today have been completed. Agree what to do about those that were missed, determined by the significance of the consequence of the ‘miss’.

For urgent actions, there may be an issue of capacity that needs to be addressed to ensure that the lack of action doesn’t have a negative impact.

For less urgent, I often use a “three strikes” rule to avoid simply deferring by a day repeatedly. This will encourage more realistic retiming, with a more significant action if a date is missed more than three times. This is not a sanction, more an exploration of what caused the action to be repeatedly missed. Used well, these can be really valuable “coaching moments.”

Review Yesterday’s Performance

Next, review yesterday’s performance. As far as possible, the review should be “data driven”, using meaningful measures that allow the team to know whether they are doing a good job and achieving their goals.

While attention is drawn naturally to performance that is below target (we’re human after all and it seems to be a tendency that’s hard to over-ride) take time to celebrate success and learn from it. Acknowledge everyone’s hard work. Identify what went well, improvements made and significant achievements.

From the review, get to any problems or challenges that arose. At this stage, simply record these then agree the action needed (what, by who and by when) – this can be on Sticky Notes, cards, whiteboard or similar – so everyone knows what they have to do and there’s a list everyone can see.

Some problems have an obvious fix, others will require a simple investigation and a smaller number will require more in-depth study. If it’s immediately clear what is required, great - action that. If not, make deciding what level of investigation is necessary part of the action.

Actually working on the problem or getting into a long debate about prioritisation should not be part of the meeting. Rather this should feed into other parts of the structured day/week.

In larger organisations, the action may be to escalate the issue to the next “tier” for the most effective action. However, it’s important to be careful that this isn’t used as a way to avoid taking responsibility for actions that the team can tackle by itself. Action should be taken at the lowest level possible in the organisation to encourage ownership and accountability.

Step 3: What is planned for today?

In this setting, most plans for the day will have been made already, so this is a time for sharing and review so that everyone is clear on what’s required and is working to the same version of the plan.

Step 4: Identify blockers

This is the point in the meeting where anyone can identify known difficulties or risks. The key questions are:

Is everything in place to achieve the plan?
If not, what action is required? Agree who needs to do what, by when. Add this to the action list[GS13] and agree how progress will be tracked during the day if required.

Step 5: Put your plan where you can see it

In every step above, what is recorded in the meeting is displayed in “real time” for everyone to see, typically on a physical or virtual board in a central location. This way, everyone is clear what has been agreed and has their personal action list.

These days, there are elaborate electronic systems available for such purposes and they can be really useful. However, beware the danger of “out of sight, out of mind”. Even where actions are recorded on a digital system and[GS14] everyone has their actions and the wider system on their personal device, I remain a great believer in the value of a centrally located screen or display board as a constant reminder to people.

Step 6: How did we do?

The final minute or so of the meeting is a quick review of how the meeting went. Typical check questions are:

How well did we stay focussed on the agenda?
How well did everyone contribute appropriately?
Where did we get distracted?
Where could we do better?

Visual Management – the Key to Success

At the core of an effective daily meeting is what many refer to as a “team information centre” – a visual display of the key information needed to manage the meeting.

The aim of the various display boards/screen is to give information and trigger action. The content of the boards should be updated daily or more frequently to drive pace, and should be visible to everyone.

Typically the various parts of the information centre are:

Key metrics that will give as objective a view of performance as possible. Typical frameworks include SQDCPE (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, People, Environment) and SQDIP (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Inventory, People). These will mostly relate to customer requirements (internal or end customer).

In my experience, charts are generally easier to grasp than tables of numbers – both easier to see at a distance (as long as the lines/columns are thick enough 😁) and trends/patterns are more obvious.

In the example above, a 3 seconds@3 meters requirement has been indicated, i.e. someone standing 3 metres away should be able to grasp the status in less than 3 seconds.

A schedule board that shows what work is to be done today/this week/this month. These often have indicators to show whether the team is on plan/ahead/behind or to highlight potential/actual problems.

A board showing what actions have been identified, who will do them and by when. Often referred to as an accountability board, these can have each action on a card/sticky note correctly located on a matrix of person/function vs. date.

A problem solving board for issues where the action required is not immediately clear. Typically these will track problems through stages of investigation to identify root cause and put in place corrective actions to prevent the problem recurring.

A team skills board (often called a versatility matrix) showing which team members are trained in which tasks, useful in case of illness or absence.

Getting Started

15-20 minutes – really??!!

While this may seem like a lot to cover in 15-20 minutes, it does come with practice. The “trick” - if there is one - is to avoid getting drawn into lots of debate on specific items.

It is rare that longer discussions need or benefit from the involvement of everyone, so simply define who needs to get together for what and move on, encouraging that subgroup to identify a time to meet before they leave the meeting to go on to their next task.

In this way, the meeting can progress quickly and focus on identifying and assigning action based on the inputs from everyone present.

Keep it simple

You don’t have to start with a full agenda. What I’ve outlined above is a “mature” version of the process used by organisations that have been at this some time.

It can be better to stick with a simpler version that can be done in the time until everyone gets used to it and then add in other topics as you build experience and confidence.

As an example of “simple”, the first such daily meeting I was introduced to in my corporate career was little more than a printout of stock levels for all required parts highlighted according to criticality for replenishment. This was then reviewed with the planners for each production location on-site to identify issues and agree priorities. Follow-on actions during the day then focussed on resolving any challenges and dynamically altering production plans to avoid or minimise impact on customers.

Another team started with a simple schedule board showing ToDo, Doing, Done for each work centre, which quickly became a focus for discussion with other departments on priorities and an easy way for team members to know what to work on next.

Explain Why, What and How

Before introducing the daily routine, it’s important to get everyone on board. At the most basic level, explaining why the routine is being introduced, what will be done and how, may be sufficient.

Where possible, I’m a huge fan of allowing teams to create their own boards as this can hugely increase the sense of ownership and engagement. However, this can be in tension with a desire to have a consistent approach across the organisation. A good middle ground can be to take the time to collect ideas from all teams and then bring them together, using a variation on the “catchball” method I described in my series on goal setting.

PDCA (Plan Do Check Adjust)

In any case, in the spirit of continuous improvement, the format of the visual management system and the meetings themselves will evolve over time.

Minor adjustments can be triggered by the quick review at the end of each meeting. On a less frequent basis, it can be helpful for the whole team or representatives from each team across the department/organisation to take a “time out” to review how the routine is going and whether adjustments need to be made. The latter can also be a great forum for sharing good practice between teams.

Other routine meetings

While the daily gathering at multiple levels / tiers is at the core of a high-performing system, there are other topics that do not require daily focus and a longer cycle is appropriate, generally weekly or monthly.

As a broad principle, the balance between daily, weekly and monthly shifts towards longer time intervals higher up the organisation. Senior leaders generally only need to get involved in daily activities where there are significant issues that cannot be resolved elsewhere.

Weekly routines

Even in a team focussed primarily on repetitive, daily tasks, there will be some activities that fit a weekly cycle.

In some organisations, I have seen a “theme” for each day work well, e.g. Monday Safety, Tuesday Quality, Wednesday Cost, Thursday People, Friday Environment.

A weekly meeting for more in-depth problem solving on the more difficult issues can involve more team members. Equally, a dedicated time slot each week for improvement activities will reinforce the “proactive” nature of the business in addition to responding positively to day-to-day challenges.

A key part of the week will also be the opportunity to step back and look at performance for the week as a whole, with a focus more on “lessons learned” than the more “problem solving” nature of the daily meetings.

Monthly Routines

In a similar way to “theme of the day”, at senior level there may be a “theme of the week”, where one or more topics gets covered on a monthly cycle in addition to a weekly “operations meeting.”

In all cases, I suggest that the same principles as the daily huddle apply - standard agenda and focus on action recorded in the meeting. Realistically, these meetings will be longer and require time for discussion, so are less likely to be “standing meetings.” That said, a brisk pace and attention to timing should not be forgotten!

A virtuous cycle

The more I reflect back on instances where I have been involved in teams adopting such a routine, the more I see how powerful they were in shifting the whole mindset of the team. Everyone stopped running around just “chasing stuff” to get today’s work done.

✅ - Everyone was working from the same information, so there was less confusion and uncertainty

✅ - Underlying problems were identified and fixed rather than everyone patching over the same symptom over and over again

✅ - Teams quickly moved from ‘overwhelmed to ‘in control’

✅ - Teams could spend more time thinking about the future and how they could make things even better

So, if any of those are things your teams could benefit from, give this approach to a daily routine a go. What have you got to lose? It’s only going to cost you 20 minutes!

How can just 20 minutes a day transform the life of your teams?