The 15-Minute Daily Huddle

In Verne Harnish’s article, “Daily Adrenaline Meeting,” he discusses the reasons a daily huddle is so crucial to the success of a company. “There is one indispensable routine; one absolute essential habit more important than any other I can teach an executive team; one discipline that is non-negotiable—and that is an effective daily meeting rhythm.” A daily huddle is key to communication and helps refocus staff to maximize performance.

Staff Involvement

Keeping staff and management engaged means communicating at the most primal level. When asked about their No. 1 pain point, staff members will often cite communication, or lack thereof. This is easily remedied. By requiring daily, routine structure, you instill a sense of commitment, buy-in and collaboration. Let’s face it, the HME industry today is enduring unprecedented challenges. There’s no better time to reinforce the need for control and focus.

Communication and Participation

The daily huddle is not the time to delve deeply into problem solving. It is merely an opportunity to convey information and guide employees in a given direction. Daily goals afford staff the ability to stay on track, while structure creates successful outcomes. No meeting should start without an agenda, and the daily huddle is no exception. Specifically, the meeting agenda must be succinct and flow smoothly so that there is an obvious beginning, middle and end. See below for a sample agenda.

• 2-5 minutes – Discuss what’s new and the day’s priorities. Divulge specifics about activities, meetings, accomplishments, customer noteworthy news, etc.
   
• 2-5 minutes – Daily measures. Review goals from the day before and set your goals for today.
   
• 2-5 minutes – Where are you stuck? Where’s your bottleneck?
   

If you haven’t already instituted daily huddles, you may meet some resistance from busy staff members. But the daily huddle is the perfect way to get the staff focused and structured for the day.

Meeting and Exceeding Goals

According to Harnish, “teams that huddle daily find they interrupt each other considerably less the rest of the day.” Meeting daily clears up issues that otherwise linger to clog up the weekly meeting. Further, it helps prevent unnecessary phone calls or interruptions, gets people’s attention and helps focus employees on their core functions and responsibilities. These short meetings keep the company concentrated on strategic goals and provide a forum for questions, while also provoking and imposing accountability. The byproduct is an inherently respectful competition. Although healthy competition produces positive organizational improvement, “the heart of executive performance is a rhythm of tightly run daily huddles and meetings,” says David Rippe, author of Why Do You Need Daily Huddle? “These meetings provide the opportunity for you to focus your executives and staff on what is important…You achieve better alignment with strategic decisions, and you will communicate more effectively.” By meeting daily, you will gain a routine and consistent opportunity for communication. You will ensure information is disseminated in an easy-to-understand way, and you will show staff that you appreciate and value their input. In addition, staff should gain an understanding for goals and desired outcomes. Morale and performance improvement should follow, both of which we need in HME today.