A friend of mine recently asked me what I thought of the idea of a daily stand up meeting. I like it. A few years ago I was working as a consultant and the group I was working with had a daily stand up meeting. That daily meeting was very helpful to me because it instilled in me the principle that I call “Daily Delivery.” The principle is this:
Every day at work, I try to focus on one (or two) things that I can get done and deliver.
This principle was a direct result of the stand up meetings. Because every day I would report my work to the rest of the team, I wanted to make sure I had something to report. Some days, particularly at first, I had to be creative and come up with something to say. But as I got into the routine I found that having the meeting meant that I was planning my work in smaller chunks of 2, 4 or 8 hours. Not only did I FEEL like I was getting more done, but I actually WAS getting more done. It is hard to be focused on a large, nebulous task. Having a very concrete, short term task makes it easy to focus. And it is harder to put things off. When individual tasks are measured in weeks or months, it is all together too easy to procrastinate.
Even after I had moved on from that consulting job, I found that the principle of Daily Delivery stuck with me and has become a habit. I find that I am better at planing my work, more focused and more productive. Maybe all that isn’t just because of daily stand up meetings, but I think those meetings sure helped.