By Kevin Meyer
Last week I started a discussion post in the Lean Six Sigma LinkedIn group on Gemba Academy's latest featured video showing the morning executive standup meeting at my old company, Specialty Silicone. I had started the morning meetings years ago, and my successor has added some really interesting daily accountability components to it. The meeting works very well to ensure daily discussion and progress.
I've been rather amazed at some of the comments to the post in a lean-oriented group, with many suggesting that the stand up meetings are a waste of time, or that technology-oriented solutions should be used instead of in-person meetings with whiteboards and Post-It notes. I'm not against technology – in fact I'm one of those geeks that will often stand in line to get the latest. But there's a place.
I've seen many companies start the daily five minute meeting because they hear it is great, then after a couple weeks they change it to every two days or once a week. It immediately fades away into non-existence. It takes time and discipline to stick with it.
Similarly I've seen many companies try to transition from handwriting numbers on a whiteboard to typing numbers into a computer so they are displayed on electronic boards. Seems to be an improvement, but the learning and understanding that accompanies handwriting goes away, and soon they become "just numbers" instead of something meaningful. I recently wrote about the power of writing by hand.
Perhaps one analogy is why and how Zen Buddhism teaches mindfulness – intentional awareness. Sometimes you need to simply slow down and really sense and understand your surroundings. One exercise is washing dishes by hand, taking the time to really feel each dish and understand the movements and process. You notice things like small chips and discolorations in the dishes, which you usually wouldn't when just loading a dishwasher. Applying such mindfulness leads to improved creativity and focus – exactly what we often need in business environments.
That's very similar to the issues that come up in an in-person five minute standup meeting. After finishing the regular agenda, almost invariably everyone says they have nothing more to discuss, then someone mentions something minor. That minor issue turns into a deep discussion of a previously unnoticed underlying problem, leading to awareness and improvement. Almost every time. That's what you capture and act on, which a computerized database with data entered remotely wouldn't provide.
Don't forget the value and power of the human element, the manual element, and becoming aware.
Craig Case says
Our production department has been holding daily standup meetings for over a year now. They have expanded the meeting include us support personnel as well. I find the discussions of minor issues, which come up almost daily, really help me keep in touch with what is going on in production.
Shrikant Kalegaonkar says
Hello Kevin,
I’m ambivalent about meetings in general. But, I’m extremely skeptical of daily standing meetings used for discussion.
They held such morning meetings at several large manufacturing companies I worked at. They all followed a similar format. Everyone would gather in front of the wall of charts and fuss over why the latest data point went down (or up) and how far is it from the target. There would be a discussion of possible reasons – usually made up on the spot. And, action items followed. This was terrible. It was a classic example of the “do something” mindset in action and what quality professionals would recognize as tampering.
I don’t believe the purpose of such meetings should be to unearth problems. Problems should be unearthed by immersing yourself in a particular process; by deep review of process performance. The only value I find in such standing meetings is to facilitate a handoff or pass-down between the previous shift and the next shift.
I’m not against all meetings. In fact if a problem that spans departments is identified, it is necessary to get all affected in the same room to deal with it. Such meetings will have a definite purpose (or focus), an agenda, a plan of actions and timetable designed to address the problem. They will have defined scope with little or no creep.
Kevin says
Thanks for the comment Shrikant. The daily morning standup has been the single most important and effective component of a lean transformation at each of my last few companies. Interestingly, as someone who prefers to lead by guiding, the morning meeting is about the only tool I’ve had to implement by edict as well.
The key is for it to be a brief, very disciplined, communication meeting – not an open discussion meeting. The daily alignment created by human interaction is very powerful. There is some discussion within the framework of a tight agenda, but the issues raised are some that would never have been identified and brought up in weekly or biweekly staff meetings. Even if they were, in that format you’re trying to address something that happened too far in the past – or has grown to significantly affect the present. When issues are brought up in a well-run daily meeting, the sole action item is to the process owner to investigate – not debate solutions and fix at that time. The types of issues and problems unearthed are completely different than those that would be identified by a “traditional” immersion in the process – they require multiple sets of eyes and connecting the dots between processes. That’s what you get when everyone stands together for just a few minutes, every day.