The Ten Commandments of a daily review meeting

The Ten Commandments of a Daily Review Meetings

1.??????You shall derive daily operational Goals from a well laid out overarching team Vision & have a demonstrable co-relation to it.

2.??????You shall select goals that are mainly process input focused and only a few for results or outcomes themselves. These are to be your top goals and iterations later are ok.

3.??????Each goal should be well defined, calculation mechanism well understood & auditable.

4.??????Goals/KPI shall be such that, it can be tracked & updated daily, and the data comes preferably automated.

5.??????You shall represent all the KPI’s Visually with targets and clear illustrative color codes for actuals in a standard format.

6.??????Set and respect all meeting rules: a non-negotiable start time, duration, facilitator’s presence, creating a respectful environment focused on problem solving, with operational intent and avoiding strategic deviations.

7.??????You shall prepare for the meeting and not see the data you are accountable for the first time in the meeting.

8.??????You shall focus on the outliers/deviations from targeted goals to save time. Explain and understand the reasons for such aberrations. Agree on further root cause analysis with timelines if needed.

9.??????You shall seek support as the solution demands, assign responsibility and agree on an action plan that is specific, measurable and time driven.

10.??There shall be follow up to confirm closure, or to repeat 8 through 10 till conclusion.

Daily operational review meetings started for me about 7 years back and has ever since been a regular feature of my workday. Over a period, the exposure to some good manufacturing excellence programs, great work practices I saw in organizations I visited, the rich text that is available on this subject has simplified and shaped my understanding of what goes into a good daily assessment meeting.

Like in most cases, its mostly about getting the fundamentals right BEFORE the meeting itself. To start with maximum grey matter needs to be spent in defining what will be discussed, is it the right aspects that are meaningful to our success, does it tie up back to the vision the team is being led to, will it lead us to useful actions to influence result? Many times, new KPI’s evolve during this stage and often gets enhanced, dropped, or modified when you learn more about the shortcomings as you review. The temptation to fall back upon known and familiar KPI is high, but in most places the focus on outcome KPI’s is high as that is what is summarized for the management for updating month end pulse of how things were. For many operational meetings, the real influence you can do to the outcome is with the input process KPI’s and they may need some creative thinking to form in the first place.

This needs to be followed by setting the data right, accessible, and online. If from the previous step, many new KPI comes about this step is that much harder. Also, since the data is needed every day, usually by morning, automation saves tremendous NVA time in reporting. And the data and its conversion into the metric needs to be understood and validated…that indeed it really does throw light on the input KPI we wanted to monitor and has minimum noise is helping us get that judgement. This then needs to be followed by standardized representation that wont change later. Many visual tools hit home the right information and the one apt is to be chosen and stuck with. Familiarity lends itself to a fast interpretation thereafter.

Finally, the participants of the meeting should get to appreciate that this is a productive meeting with different ground rules. No one can saunter in late, hold up the meeting, waste time. If they own a KPI, they come prepared else they are wasting everyone’s time and nothing useful happens in conjecturing possibilities. All participants are respectful of each other and work hard to create a safe environment where the problem is attacked and not the person. I have often seen leaders set a bad example here in the interest of protecting their team, reputation, or any such politically motivated reasons. The facilitator plays a key role in maintaining all the above code of conduct and has a backup to do so in his absence.?

As you can see, these occupy commandment 1 through 7 and are the most fundamental of requirements and all happen BEFORE the meeting. This is like sharpening the saw. You got to spend maximum time here for greatest benefits later.

What follows is more natural cycle of reasoning, gathering support and completing. Reasoning should not be conjectures. They need work, experience, deep analysis, sometimes as project and validations later. Support and action need resources: people, budget, priority. However here the last step is more important and a serious failure point, as a meeting without closure of issues is going back to wasting time. Not just time, you loose credibility as a leader, pride as a team and gather cynicism by the truck load about the whole process. Whether through minutes, documented action plan or plain memory, it is important to review actions agreed, to be and to hold people accountable.

The benefits will be there to see. Alignment of the team on what is important to the organization starts with great definition, A deep understanding of what influences those results and how, comes with a good measurement of the KPI, Capability, camaraderie and respect builds with a strong team that discusses ideas and not people, Empowerment raises with closure of actions and Recognition beckons when results show up. ?

Results can come many ways and it often does. But excellence – a combination of reliability and results both comes with well laid plans. Excellence is when we adopt good practices, that despite the variations caused by VUCA events, increases the probability of desirable result. A good meeting can be an excellence practice. Online or offline, these can work, and these must. You pick up any engagement survey today, a poor meeting is a grievance issue to be addressed. And it can be….

For easy remembrance of the commandment, we can also break it down to DMAIC. Define the goal well (1-3), Measure the KPI’s (4-5), Analyze (6-8), Improve (9) and Control (10).

Let me know what you think!