“Nothing productive ever happened in a meeting,” a friend once stated. He is a thoughtful guy, and his comment was not one to be idly dismissed. As you ponder this during the next meeting you attend, consider the value of a daily touch base on operational issues.
DAILY? Surely you jest.
Whether in crisis or not, a daily session is imperative in any well run operations area. And believe it or not, the meeting can be accomplished in under 10 minutes! It’s all about predictability and preparation.
Predictability
When running meetings like this, use a conference bridge with the same ID each day. Attendees shouldn’t have to search around for the contact information. Use an acronym if you can (the Morning Operations Meeting can be referenced as MOM. A conference bridge of CALLMOM (2255666) is easy to remember.
If there’s a critical mass of people at one location, try to use a conference room at that location to run the meeting. Far flung attendees participating by conference bridge is one thing, “locals” can come attend the meeting (rather than sitting at their desks reading emails!)
Pick a time when everyone can attend, based on your business day. Financial services companies will want to have the meeting well before the US stock market opens at 9:30AM (8:00 AM is a good time). If you are a retailer with stores opening at 8:00AM, an earlier time may be more appropriate.
Start the meeting on time each day. Nothing ruins the attendance and contributes to time creep than a meeting where the start time waffles. To do this, a backup chairperson should be in place to start the meeting if the chair is delayed.
The meeting should have the same agenda each day:
Minutes should be captured, and emailed to each of the areas.
Preparation
Preparation is another key to this meeting. Since the agenda is the same each day, the “areas” for review can be pre-populated on draft email. Over the 24 hours from the last meeting, Operations and the Help Desk should “contribute” major customer impacting issues to the draft. So when the meeting actually happens, the Chair is following a script of the meeting (literally reviewing a draft of the “minutes”.)
As the meeting is held, the chair can “prompt” speakers if certain issues are glossed over or missed. In this manner, major issues are not missed.
Details are not covered in this status meeting. If the issue is still active, it is placed on “follow up,” and brought back to the meeting. The chair has discretion for cutting off a discussion.
Once the meeting is completed, a brief Summary should be added to the email (suitable for reading on a BlackBerry) and the send key pressed. A wiki can also be used for this.
With predictability and preparation, the meeting will flow smoothly. Plan the meeting will run long the first week or so as people adapt to the meeting style.
Once the minutes start being read, it’s common for people to start wanting the “edit” the minutes after the fact. Some will want immediate retractions issued. My recommendation is to offer to add a “correction” section at the bottom of the minutes and issue as a part of the daily cycle. Do not get into multiple MOM minutes.
Savvy areas will want to review the “script” in advance. Why not? It allows the overall product to be stronger provided the information is factual.
And one last fun suggestion. Play into the MOM (as Mother) theme. “It’s OK to tell MOM anything. MOM is here to help.” It allows a subtle mindset shift.
And remember, you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool MOM.