Huddle Up!
Is your team missing seeing each other as you are working from home with only the occasional day in the office? Or perhaps everyone is working fully remotely? Are you feeling the loss of those random sparks and laughs you used to enjoy when you would connect with your teammates at the office? You may want to consider introducing a daily huddle.
I first heard about daily huddles in 2015 from Brian Scudamore and his team at 1-800-GOT-JUNK and O2E Brands, whose award-winning workplace culture I have always greatly admired. At that time, I loved the idea behind their daily huddle, yet didn’t feel the same format would work for us.
So instead of a 7-minute daily huddle, we started hosting a huddle once a week for 15 minutes. We would gather in person for an all-hands stand-up meeting, to communicate important metrics and updates. Our huddles were fun but as our team grew, they started to run long often becoming 20 and 25 minutes, as we had more important information to convey, so we moved to hosting a huddle twice a week.
When the pandemic hit and suddenly our entire team was working remotely, we felt communications become more challenging and our normally playful camaraderie was waning. We needed to improve the connection among our full team. So in the summer of 2020, during the heart of the pandemic, we started having 7-minute huddles every day.
It felt a bit awkward at first, but we stuck with it and our daily huddle has become a fantastic touch point for our entire team to share good news, key metrics, and important updates, as well as enjoy some laughs altogether.
We run a tight agenda, with a rotating schedule of hosts, so everyone from student interns to the C-suite takes a turn. And while the agenda is the same each day, every huddle feels unique and filled with important information and playful connections. It has become a highlight of my day.
If you would like to see our huddle agenda or watch a quick video to get a feel for how we run them at JAM, head over to www.kristiherold.com/huddleresources/ Consider implementing daily huddles in your organization and taking another step towards a thriving workplace culture!
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