By Alberta OUARCOOPOME
“You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk”..
Louise Smith
What is a morning huddle?
A morning huddle is a meeting leaders use to gather their team members at the start of the day. The purpose of a morning huddle is to motivate participants by encouraging everyone to maintain a positive and productive work environment
A workplace huddle is more than just a staff meeting. It is a regular discussion in which attendees address key performance indicators and areas of improvement. These meetings can take place daily or weekly.
The purpose of team Huddles are to drive employee engagement and to serve as a self-correcting measure to keep the company on the path toward achieving its goals.
Managers are expected to keep their staff abreast with all relevant information from both internal and external sources. There are several ways of communicating with team members.
Meetings, E-mails, intranet, whats up groups, letters, etc are all good, however, in modern management, the morning huddle strategy is one of the most effective strategy that managers adopt to keep the team alive. It should not be too formal and long. Staff meetings are used for more structured and well-prepared agenda.
The purpose of morning huddles
The daily huddle is a short meeting meant to occur every day so that the entire team can get informed and aligned on the work that needs to be done. It’s a regular discussion in which attendees address key performance indicators and areas of improvement.
These meetings can take place daily or weekly. The purpose of team huddles are to drive employee engagement and to serve as a self-correcting measure to keep the company on the path toward achieving its goals.
Building a morning huddle ritual will help make your team more effective by getting your team to vocalize what they are working on to their colleagues. It also gives everyone a chance to know what is keeping everyone busy and should add depth beyond what your team task management tool is giving you.
The new expectations
being a manager is sometimes misunderstood. A manager needs at least two basic skills to be successful: Technical Skill and Cognitive skill. The certificate of a leader does not make one an instant success. It is said that your technical skills will make you get the position, it is your attitude that will take you far.
It seems to me that many staff meetings aren’t very productive and are, in fact, seen as pointless by the attendants. Some do not think they are important. There is one kind of meeting, however, that distinguishes itself from other kinds. This is the huddle meeting.
The huddle meeting is quite simple and precise and to the point. It also allows everyone on the team to be on the same page. They get to discuss pressing issues that need to be discussed briefly, and then they get back to work.
It is a modification on the traditional meeting in that it seeks to make meetings achieve the purpose for which they were first designed: helping everyone be more productive and making work processes move along more efficiently. A team huddle is a useful alternative to the traditional meeting. It energizes the workplace and gets everyone to save time while still talking about important issues.
The Benefits
Morning huddles are different from staff meetings. Introducing daily huddle meetings is a great way to increase productivity, accountability, and team morale. Keep huddle meeting short, 10-15 minutes maximum. Keep them consistent, daily/weekly, same time, same place if possible.
How effective are morning huddles?
The key lies in the purpose of the team huddle. Your goal is to check in with team members about what your day will look like. The huddle is not to plan your week or projects – that is what all the other meetings are for. An effective morning huddle is chance for your team members to share information with each other and deliver project status checks.
So how can you make your morning huddles more successful? Here are a few things you need to consider if you want to run the most effective morning huddle.
Tips on managing morning huddles
- You can sit or stand, depending on the situation. Keep it short. Your purpose is to share the status of the work, not to solve problems. Problems are solved within a more involving space.
- Everybody speaks. Everybody must say something during the morning huddle. Don’t you think its more interesting if each person should have something to share about what they’re working on. These updates in front of the whole team will lead to greater commitment and task accountability from each team member.
- Allow staff to share some previous experiences that others need to know, to prevent their recurrence. For example, the cause of a Teller’s cash shortage or overage. Good tips for beginners to write down.
- Certain discoveries about a customer that others must be wary of or appreciate. Treat customers not equally, but fairly.
- One person should not hijack the meeting.
- The morning huddle is not for reporting to the team leader. It is for team members to communicate with each other, pull together and know what each is working on.
Typical cases discussed at Morning Huddles
- Not all that glitters is gold. An experience of a Teller Intern who did not know that the balance on a customer’s account has no bearing with how he or she is dressed.
- Keeping pleasant faces: In a branch environment, members should serve customers with pleasant faces, even if the smile is not forthcoming due to a headache (ha ha). It is not easy to be a front liner!
- How the office CCTV was able to identify a fraudster.
- The good or bad experience of a front desk staff during an account-opening process.
- How a language barrier between a staff and customer was breached.
- How to create opportunities for cross selling during interaction with customers, either in-person or virtual.
- Generating leads for sales and marketing teams.
Remote teams
The emergence of zoom has increased the workplace practices to involve a larger number of staff working remotely. Daily team huddles are not just for teams that share the same work space. Remote teams can also benefit from them. The same general advice applies to remote teams. The biggest advantage for remote teams who do daily team huddles is probably the commitment and task accountability that comes from sharing status updates with team members.
Building a morning huddle ritual will help make your team more effective by getting your team to vocalize what they are working on to their colleagues.
It also gives everyone a chance to know what is keeping everyone busy and should add depth beyond what your team task management tool is giving you.
I will pause here. Next week we shall examine more tips on morning huddles and go on to valuable discussions that managers can discuss with their sales teams.
How do you run your morning huddles? Any tips to share on making them effective? Do you do huddles weekly or daily with your team? Share with me on my personal email: [email protected]
For more insights on this topic, please book a copy of new book, “THE MODERN BRANCH MANAGER’S COMPANION” which involves the adoption of a multi-disciplinary approach in the practice of today’s branch management. It also shares invaluable insights on the mindset needed to navigate and make a difference in the changing dynamics of the banking industry. Call 0244333051 for your copy.
TO BE CONTINUED
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alberta Quarcoopome is a Fellow of the Institute of Bankers, and CEO of ALKAN Business Consult Ltd. She is the Author of Three books: “The 21st Century Bank Teller: A Strategic Partner” and “My Front Desk Experience: A Young Banker’s Story” and “The Modern Branch Manager’s Companion”. She uses her experience and practical case studies, training young bankers in operational risk management, sales, customer service, banking operations and fraud.
CONTACT
Website www.alkanbiz.com
Email:alberta@alkanbiz.com or [email protected]
Tel: +233-0244333051/+233-0244611343
