Need to generate the most amount of benefit for the least amount of effort?

One of the best aspects of my work is that I get to see the warts-and-all inside of many businesses. It also gives me the opportunity to discover which business practices hit the mark in real life.

Top of the list of those generating the most amount of benefit for the least amount of effort has to be “the daily huddle”.

Before I get into detail about the daily huddle you need to know that this is incredibly simple, phenomenally effective and is as applicable to small business and large corporations alike.

So what is a daily huddle? Well, it’s just a meeting. But it’s not any old meeting. Its short, its sharp, it has a standing agenda and everyone in the business attends one every day.

To understand why you need a daily huddle you need to know what’s on the agenda and that’s easy because there are just three items.

The first agenda point is “what’s up?”. This is where you ask employees what they are going to achieve today. The idea is to get them – and you – thinking every day about doing those things that move the business forward rather than just shorten the to-do list.

The second agenda point is to take a look at your daily number. You do have one don’t you? If you don’t here’s a tip – find something that you can measure in your business on a daily basis to get a sense of how the business is performing.

The third agenda point is to ask employees what roadblocks they are facing. You will find that the collective wisdom of the huddle group will be incredibly effective at finding solutions.

I know no one wants more meetings, but the daily huddle is important because it gets results. When you have everyone in your business thinking, on a daily basis, about the three agenda points, productivity will go through the roof. To make the daily huddle a success though you want to keep it sharp and focused. Here are the rules:

• Hold the meeting at the same time each day.
• Get people to dial in if they can’t make it in person.
• Be very strict about timing, don’t let the meeting go on for more than 15 minutes.
• Stand don’t sit at the meeting – try it and you will see why.
• Take it in turns to chair the meeting, it shouldn’t always be you.
• Don’t waiver from the agenda.

So go on, what’s stopping you? Get huddling.

Julia Bickerstaff’s expertise is in helping businesses grow profitably. She runs two businesses: Butterfly Coaching, a small advisory firm with a unique approach to assisting SMEs with profitable growth; and The Business Bakery, which helps kitchen table tycoons build their best businesses. Julia is the author of “How to Bake a Business” and was previously a partner at Deloitte. She is a chartered accountant and has a degree in economics from The London School of Economics (London University).

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