The Power of the Huddle!
Among the many thinks 'Lockdown' has taught me on of the most important is the power of the huddle! For us at Cluster Reply UK a huddle is a 15 min all staff video call every morning at 09:00 am. It is not about work but about having a small amount of fun to kick the day off. It also allows the management team to get a chance to pick up on any of the team who may be going through a bad patch with the 'lockdown'.
From the start of the 'lockdown' we put this in place. Each week we try to have a fun theme where individuals are invited to speak or show and tell on the topic of the week! We usually get through 3-4 'victims' a day and nomination is by the previous caller.
So, what sort of things are we doing I hear you say. Well here's a bit of a precise of the fun so far!
Team Sing-That-Song - Quite early on we decided to do a 'feed the world' style version of a well-known favourite. Everyone had at least one line. The song: Queen Boeheim Rhapsody. The result wasn't too bad and a lot of fun.
What did you do this weekend - This was the call just after the Easter 'break' and solicited quite a few fun and interesting tales.
Lock Down - Three questions very pertinent to the situation:
- What are you missing most?
- What have you done differently over the lock down that you've not done before?
- What is the first thing you want to do post lock down?
Again, we had many great responses from the team.
New Sports - A chance for everyone to learn about a new sport and really the same to the rest of the team. The rules were very straight forward - pick a sport you don't normally do or know nothing about. So far this week we have had:
- Croquet
- Bog snorkelling
- Basketball
- Camogie - Female Hurling!
- Polo
- Darts
In parallel with this the team are encouraged to post pictures and videos both of themselves and of a humorous nature. So far, we've had:
- My very first sports picture
- The young me
- And many others...
With the team's background addition, we are also seeing many, many different backgrounds appearing - best so far was John Anderson in a Top Gun cockpit!
Finally
We also have setup the end of week 'pub' visits with a quiz or other activity - this Friday is Bingo night!!!
The outcome of this is morale is still high and the level of delivery in the rest of the day has been excellent. One other bonus - as the boss I'm also able to provide a 2-minute update to the team of anything that is key to the company.
So please adopt the huddle!!