The 3 Keys to Stand-up Meetings for Better Team Communication

There’s a lot of excitement when it comes to being part of a team that’s rapidly growing. There are new skills brought to the group, new personalities added to the mix, and you see accomplishments stacking up faster than ever. But growth comes with some challenges also, and over the last year our team has been right in the middle of the excitement and the obstacles. A year is a relatively short amount of time for a team to almost double in size, and one of the big differences for our group was trying to keep up with effective communication.

Yes, we talk to each other constantly as a result of a very open floor plan in our office, plus we have lunch together most days, and there are always Slack messages being traded. While those are all great ways to have a quick chat, we still needed a way to make sure that within the Growth team every individual stays up to date on all of the pieces that make up the larger puzzle, so to speak.

One of the best ways we’ve found to keep everyone in the loop are weekly stand-up meetings. Every Monday morning, our team gathers in a circle to share a quick (15-20 minute) update about everything going on in Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Data Customization, Support, and an Executive update as well.

Eric leads a stand-up discussion on analytics

How to host stand-ups

First things first: we’re serious about keeping these sessions at a minimal amount of time so that we’re finding the right balance between increasing communication without taking away from our productivity. To help ensure that the session stays quick, each team member is required to update their notes on a shared Google Doc prior to the start of the meeting. This way, we breeze through and nobody has to stop and think about what they need to say.

There are 3 topics that make for a successful stand-up:

• Recap of accomplishments the prior week: The key here is to highlight a few tasks that are not part of your regular weekly routine. For example, as Marketing Coordinator I wouldn’t tell the rest of the Growth Team that I completed a few blogs during the week because that’s a given. I could instead talk about the changes made to an email layout that increased click through rate by X% because it’s a special project, plus measurables are always a great thing to share when possible.
• Focus for this week: Again, make sure the plans you talk about for this week are not part of your ongoing weekly functions. This is your opportunity to reference some of the special work you’re focusing on that will be a step towards completing a big picture project.
• Obstacles that are impeding progress (especially ones that may need team help to conquer): Some weeks you’ll find that you don’t have any obstacles to mention, and that’s fine. However, let’s say I’m working on a blog that needs some data from a specific gauge and the data doesn’t appear to be correct. I would mention this during stand-up time because it gives a heads up to the Data Customization team that I’ll need a few minutes of their time to get the data sorted before I can finish my task.

a sample of the topics covered at a recent standup

If your team is in need of a fresh take on keeping everyone in the loop, give stand-ups a try. We really enjoy the opportunity to have a quick group discussion on the big picture items and also understand what our counterparts are working on each week. Plus, if you find that you need updates more often, take a page from our Product Team’s playbook... they host a standup every morning!