A standard huddle agenda
- Safety first: any incidents, near misses or hazards since the last huddle, and today's safety focus.
- Yesterday's performance: safety, quality, delivery, cost and people measures against target, with a short explanation of any miss.
- Open actions: what was due, what is done, what is overdue.
- Today's plan: priorities, staffing, known risks, who needs help.
- Problems and escalations: new issues with an owner, and anything to pass to the next tier.
- Recognition and improvement ideas, if time allows.
The same agenda every day, in the same order, in the same place, at the same time.
Why huddles work
- Problems surface within a day instead of at the end of the month.
- Everyone hears the same priorities, so the shift does not depend on who spoke to whom.
- The board does the talking: standing in front of the measures keeps the conversation on facts.
- It builds the habit of raising problems, which is the foundation of continuous improvement.
How to run a good huddle
- Stand up and keep it short. Ten minutes is plenty for most teams.
- Review the board, not a report. Measures, actions and issues should be visible without opening a laptop.
- Give every problem an owner and a date before moving on.
- Escalate, don't debate. If the team cannot fix it, pass it up with its context and move on.
- Rotate the facilitator once the routine is stable, so the huddle does not depend on one person.
Common failures
- Turning the huddle into a status report to the manager.
- Solving problems in the meeting instead of assigning them.
- Letting the board go stale, so the measures no longer reflect yesterday.
- Running it only when the supervisor is in.
Huddle, stand-up or tier meeting?
They are the same practice with different names. Daily huddle and stand-up come from general management; Tier 1 meeting is the term in tiered daily management, where the huddle is the first level of a linked set of meetings.