Your organization’s leaders need to get together each day for a brief meeting to update one another on what they are doing and seeing in the business. These leadership huddle meetings only take 15 to 20 minutes each day but the benefits can be huge.
The huddles result in:
- Leadership alignment
- Early identification of scope overlap between leaders
- Early identification of areas of concern or areas that no one has covered
- Open communication between business leaders
- Team building and relationship building
I have found this tool to be very powerful. I started using it many years ago on a distressed project that I had taken over. I found that the project team leaders were not communicating with each other because they were so busy trying to get caught up on their individual scopes of work. They had essentially turned the project into a bunch of silos that only communicated when a deliverable was due. The problem with this approach was that the deliverables required collaboration between the silos for a quality output. Without this communication and collaboration the project was requiring a large amount of costly rework.
I solved the problem by scheduling a 15 minute mandatory, stand-up, leader huddle every morning in my office at 7:00 AM. We went through everyone’s tasks for the day and identified overlaps, gaps, conflicts and areas of collaboration. This meeting brought the team members together, build relationships, prevented future issues and solved existing problems.
What exactly does the 15 Minute Leader Huddle look like and how should it be set up?
- Only the top leaders for the organization, project or initiative need to attend. This is not an all employee meeting.
- Set the meeting up for the same time and place each week day. Place this calendar block in all the leaders calendars. I prefer meeting first thing in the morning but I know others who have their meeting over lunch every day.
- Limit the meeting to 15 or 20 minutes
- Choose a room for your meeting that has few chairs. The business leader’s office is usually a good spot
- This is a mandatory meeting and is not optional. If someone cannot attend they must inform the leader prior to the meeting
- This is a stand up meeting. It is not meant to be long so standing tends to keep it at 15 to 20 minutes
The agenda for the meeting is very simple:
- Go around the room and have each attendee explain what they are planning for the day
- This can be tied into the 6 X 6 process discussed in a previous blog post
- Each person only gets a few minutes to discuss their items
- Use the rest of the meeting time to discuss overlaps, misalignments, collaboration opportunities, goals, etc.
- The meeting needs to be facilitated by the leader to ensure everyone gets a chance to share and all identified issues are assigned to a person for resolution
Establish the 15 Minute Leader Huddle in your organization today. Improve communication, grow relationships and drive alignment amongst your leaders!
What leadership behaviors and relationship improvements are you going to target with your 15 Minute Leader Huddles?
“Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation.” Peter Drucker
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