A Case for Consistent, Daily Huddles
Huddle, align, but on your own terms.
I read a post from a similarly grizzled Agilist recently that counted the cost, in dollars, of holding a daily stand-up.1 The idea was companies spend around $3M per year. It was an excellent article and it outlined a practice I have done dozens of times around counting the cost of time.
⏳ Time is Money. And every moment you spend in a useless, frustrating meeting is a waste of something of which we have finite stores—time. If you’ve read my work, you know I hate wasting time.
Even given this potential issue, I still advocate heavily for teams to have a daily huddle. Not because a book or framework says so. Because I know the value of a well held daily sync. My wife and I still huddle. My team in The Café huddle. “But Tristan, a Daily Stand-Up is just to compensate for a lack of collaboration.” Hog wash. Nonsense. Pishy poshy, as Uncle Felix from Christmas in Connecticut would say. Having a daily huddle is a great reset.
Think about it…do you and your team go home for the day? Do you sleep? If you’re like me, sometimes you go on vacation. The idea is, before every play, you have the option to huddle up. Sure, some teams run the no-huddle. But there is no verified record of a hurry-up team ever not calling time-out to stop, reset, and align on the goal. In fact, I checked and no team running a no-huddle offense has ever won a championship at any level. Fact checkers, come at me!
I know we are not playing football. We are building solutions that delight our customers in ways that work for our businesses. That doesn’t change the fact that pausing, even from the collaboration and work, for a moment to just sync as a team is a great way to align.
My gut says most of the vitriol is because this team-owned meeting has been co-opted by Project Management and has become a soul-sucking status update. Fix it. Don’t toss it. Take back the time, huddle with just your team, and align for your day. Then collaborate and ship value. Rinse. Repeat.
Until Next Time,
Keep Learning. Keep Growing.
