From your own experience, describe the last meeting that you attended. How were decisions made? Was there a method to evaluate outcomes?
The last meeting I attended was what we call a huddle. After a large consulting relationship a few years ago, the concept of huddles were introduced to my organization. Not all teams use them, but most do. Some teams meet daily, some meet two – three times a week. Some even meet two times a day – all depends on their needs and type of work.
The huddle I last attended, is a team that I coach. They meet two times a week – Monday and Thursday. I attended both and coach the leader and team to efficiencies, connection, fill in information that I may have heard in other meetings, etc. This is a small team, 5 in all, and these are honestly some of my favorite meetings each week. The team consists of deeply dedicated employees and they are all really wonderful humans.
These meetings do have a method, for which the team follows each time. We kick off with morale and on Monday’s, the team shares weekend highlights. We use a huddle board (on One Note) so we follow a method on that page. Some folks post pics from the weekend. We move into recognition moments, then the deeper work. This is where they share important pieces of information, if something is needed, if a decision is needed, etc. Stories of success may be shared here as well – especially if a project or important deliverable has been accomplished. There may also be a moment of post-mortem during here as well. What did we learn from that? I often encourage that through my coaching.
This team’s outcomes are very much qualitative, so there are often moments of learning from the sponsors and leadership team. The method to evaluate success in their outcomes is what we call Voice of Client – our internal clients. They do complete a survey (although most ignore it) however, they are very happy and comfortable providing verbal feedback so this team can continued to be a valued partner to them. We often end the huddle evaluating those comments as most of the team is measured on that success measure.