Align Your Team in Six Minutes a Day With a Daily Huddle

Though it’s a simple tool, we’ve found that it’s powerful enough to build positive momentum within our teams, foster a culture of transparency and create happier team members - all in six minutes a day.

That tool is our Daily Huddle. It’s been discussed in multiple groundbreaking business books, including ​Verne Harnish’s “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits”​, and thousands of companies around the world have discovered the benefits that this simple meeting provides. Though it’s clear that a great deal of work goes into cultivating the traits that make successful teams, we’ve found that the Daily Huddle is one of the most important internal tactics we employ.

The Daily huddle is a short, 5-10 minute, all company meeting that occurs at the same time every day. It’s designed to keep everyone aligned while raising the energy of the group. The daily huddle generally follows the same agenda every meeting. Here at Yeti ours is 6 minutes, and includes 2 minutes of good news, 2 minutes of updating metrics and two minutes for a rotating team update ​(Check out our daily huddle agenda and tips here)

Though it’s short and simple, a Daily Huddle will provide your team with multiple benefits.

1. It creates a culture of transparency:‍

Transparency is a trademark of any successful organization and is often cited as the number one factor in determining employee workplace happiness. Transparency builds trust and stronger relationships, which in turn increases employee happiness and decreases employee turnover.

Transparency is also key in generating innovative solutions to problems. By regularly sharing problems occurring within the company, you are providing your team with the opportunity to supply a solution, allowing issues to be solved much more quickly and efficiently than if you were working alone.

At Yeti we’ve found that our daily huddle is one of the best forums we have for creating transparency within the company. We’ve structured our huddle around keeping the entire team informed and updated of the day to day business of the company by including good news, daily metrics and team updates in our agenda. The opportunity to ask questions is built into these agenda items, allowing everyone to remain informed and aware of the reasons behind company decisions.

2. It creates happier team members‍

We all have the very human need to feel appreciated for our efforts. Feeling recognized and appreciated for the work we do is often more important than the amount of money we get paid to do it. Recognized employees are happy employees, and happy employees are good for the company - they become more productive and engaged, are less likely to leave their jobs andfeel more committed to their workplace.

However, it can be difficult to find the time and place to give that recognition - often times managers will wait for an annual review to give their feedback and show their recognition which isn’t very effective in creating a feeling of acknowledgment in team members, especially when it’s paired with criticism. Positive feedback should happen as often as possible, and certainly more than once a year.

We’ve found that our daily huddle is the perfect time to recognize team members for their accomplishments and hard work. Not only does it fit seamlessly into our agenda, it’s also an opportunity to recognize individuals in front of their peers, magnifying the positive effects of the simple act of acknowledgement.

3. It creates positive momentum‍

Just like a snowball that eventually turns into an avalanche, a small dose of positive energy can gather the momentum that turns a team into an unstoppable force, pushing them past distractions and roadblocks and straight into success.

Though our team's positive momentum begins during our weekly goal setting meetings, it’s the daily huddle that propels that momentum forward. Consistently reviewing our goals and assessing our progress each day allows us to maintain our focus, and adds fuel to the fire that is propelling us forward, while taking the time to celebrate small successes each day, provides us with the motivation to keep going strong.

The daily huddle has become an indispensable part of our day to day business here at Yeti. It serves as our company touchstone, allowing everyone to remain up to date on important projects and goals, while motivating our team with the positive energy it creates. It's become such an integral part of our internal process that we even designed and built our own Daily Huddle board to help us track our teams goals and updates - check it out!

Interested in starting a daily huddle for your team? Check out our Daily Huddle Agenda and Guide.