Gudjon’s Blog

Short meetings are good.

If you have regular daily status meetings, I recommend you give them about 15 minutes time cap or max 3 minutes for each active attendee.

One idea is to have participants standing during the meeting so that all are more alert and attentive. Often its easy to get into a lazy comfort zone where each member starts rambling about their “story“. So, name your meeting “Daily Stand-up“.

The meeting does not need the background or the ifs and buts. We don’t need people to be either trying to look good or avoiding looking bad. Updates should be a true reflection of what happened or is happening. By doing the team can react to a real situation and not somebody’s story.

It is important that the meeting is facilitated, not managed. Furthermore, if some form of a presentation or interaction is needed by the members make sure you keep the tools you use at the meeting old-school and as human as possible. For example, moving Post-it stickers around the whiteboard as a group is far more powerful than when a single person is managing the mouse and keyboard on the laptop connected to the projector. That guy with the mouse automatically turns off the empowerment and the participation will of others. You need others to truly participate and care.

Each member in a daily status meeting should discuss three things and three things only. This being what they accomplished since the last status meeting, their next actions and what are their obstacles. All other discussions should be taken offline only between the relevant members, if needed.

By keeping it short, sharp and structured you keep the team strong. A strong team will deliver powerful results. Of course the most powerful results will not be instantaneous. As you integrate people into a process there will be some challenges and the need for adaptability. Such steps bring a team together though.

Focus on the first step, not the mountain. First step… keep it short!