Is The Daily Meeting Imperative?

Absolutely everybody in a growing company should be in some kind of five- to 15- minute huddle daily. I don’t mean they all have to be in the same meeting, just in some meeting. To me, this is non-negotiable.

Of course, the immediate push back I always get on this is, “We’re too busy!” People moan and groan about how thinly they’re spread, or how much they’re traveling. They can’t imaging getting everybody in the same place every day for 1 minute, let alone 5 to 15. Or, if the company is quite small and travel isn’t that big an issue, they’ll tell me, “We don’t need a meeting when we’re seeing each other all day long.”

Each argument sinks of its own weight. First off, thank goodness for cell phones. The meeting doesn’t have to be in your conference room or around somebody’s desk. A conference call or a speaker phone session will do just fine when people are on the road. And what’s 5 of 15 minutes? The equivalent of a bathroom break! Second, this stuff about working too hard or seeing each other too much already is besides the point. Casual encounters fail to take advantage of the three most powerful tools a leader has in getting team performance: peer pressure, collective intelligence, and clear communication.

The meetings I’m talking about save you time. By maintaining a rigorous daily meeting schedule, you’ll always be able to find one another for a substantive consultation. If you need an answer to a customer question, you don’t need to say, “I’ll try to find her and get back to you sometime today.” You can name the time, because you know you’ll have the answer by the end of the daily meeting. Nor will you be going over the same water-cooler conversation three or four times, as is the case when you rely on chance hallway meetings for communication. Because everyone’s together in a daily meeting, things get quickly and accurately communicated. No more “telephone game,” where the message changes as it gets passed along.

Do you have a daily meeting scheduled for your team? How does it work for you? Share with me in the comment box below or on Facebook and Twitter.

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