Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Daily Standup Meeting

Wow, it's been a long time! I've been having the time of my life at my new job. My wish for you is that at some point you also will have the job of your dreams -- I can't believe how wonderful it is to come home everyday and be able to report that I had a great day at work.

I'm managing a super group of folks in my new gig. One of the things we are experimenting with is a daily "standup" meeting. Every morning, after everyone gets into the office, we have about a 7 minute meeting, standing up. Every person says what they are working on today. This gives us an opportunity to celebrate the tiny milestones that make up our lives, and to hear about obstacles as they appear. It gives me the opportunity to call to mind some aspect of our mission that I'd like to have people focus on.

Today we did it a little bit different. I asked people to quantify what they were going to accomplish today. As they reported, I wrote it on our white board. Then, at the end of the day, before they left, I asked everyone to either put a check mark next to their names if they accomplished it, or if they exceeded it, to strike out what they had and write the new information above it. If they didn't make the progress they had planned, I asked them to note that too. Tomorrow we will look at what we did today and see if we can draw any conclusions.

This kind of situational awareness is one of the ways that we understand what we are doing collectively, and also understand how what we do makes an impact on the rest of the team. This kind of intelligence is invaluable!