Stand up meetings for effective team facilitation

Here is the scenario. You are working on a project that has tight dead lines, requires constant change and innovation, and has multiple stakeholders. Time is of the essence. But so is communication.

The last thing you need is to be bogged down into endless meetings every day.

Enter the stand up meeting

*Ideally you will all meet at the same time every day, early or late in the day. Everyone needs to be on time.

*Stand in a circle, and have one person go first.

*Share what you did yesterday that is important for the team to know. Who did you meet with, what happened, what worked, what didn't.

*Then share what you have on today. Meeting with x for what purpose, for example. Completing y task.

*Go around the circle quickly.

*Anyone who has a question ask at the time it is a question.

*Ensure the team facilitator keeps everyone on point, focused, and efficient.

Stand up meetings are about tactics. Activities that are occurring in the immediate future. They will save multiple emails, redundancies, miscommunication.

If someone raises an issue that is about strategy, the issue needs to be recorded and parked for a relevant strategy meeting, which has a different protocol to a stand up meeting.

Similarly, issues about governance or the nature of the relationships, human dynamics etc are also recorded and parked for a governance or "nature of the relationship" meeting.

It is not at these issues are not important. It is that these issues require more dialogue, time and contemplation.

If your team is virtual, then hold a stand up meeting as a conference call, with similar protocols. Have people stand up if they can, be sure that one person is responsible for keeping the meeting on task, and for recording issues to be raised in the relevant strategy or governance meetings.

Stand up meetings keep the movement going at a fast pace without loosing vital time in confusion and overlap. They also hold people to account. It is hard to say you will be doing x today and report that you have not done it tomorrow. People will learn to be concise and precise with their language. And they surface other issues, like reasons why we do not do x...such as lack of skill, lack of resources, lack of time...Knowing why people are not doing something early is far better than finding out later.

How would these types of meetings add to your work flow, team facilitation and efficiency? What would make them even more effective?

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