The Power of Daily Huddles

In this episode, we're celebrating a milestone—it's our 50th episode! And in light of this, we're exploring one of our most recommended transformative business practices with you all—The Daily Huddle.

We will be unpacking the concept of the daily huddle, a structured, focused, and time-bound meeting that's designed to supercharge communication and coordination within organisations. We'll share our personal experiences with this practice, highlighting its benefits and addressing potential challenges.

A typical Daily Huddle is a brisk 10 to 15-minute meeting involving a small group of five or six people. It's a platform for discussing yesterday's triumphs, today's tasks, and any potential hurdles on the horizon. It's all about making sure everyone is on the same wavelength and fostering synergy among the team.

We'll also touch on how businesses of all sizes can implement daily huddles, emphasising different methods of cascading information based on your organisation's size. Plus, we'll explore various formats for these meetings, from traditional face-to-face gatherings to digital platforms like Slack or video conferencing tools.

Ron and I will stress the importance of routine and discipline in these huddles, showing how they can lead to time-saving, boost productivity, and put an end to unstructured, aimless meetings. We'll discuss how daily huddles create a two-way information flow within the business, promoting a deeper understanding of each other's roles and responsibilities and encouraging further exploration if something seems off.

Key Points Discussed:

• Effective Communication in Business: Both Ron and Brenton emphasize the importance of communication and getting everyone on the same page in a business. They discuss how improving communication is often identified as an area for improvement in businesses.
• The Daily Huddle: Ron introduces the concept of the daily huddle, also known as the toolbox meeting. This regular, focused meeting at the start of every day is designed to improve communication within organizations. The hosts recommend cascading these meetings from the top to the bottom of the organization.
• The Agenda of a Daily Huddle: The daily huddle should be short (10-15 minutes) and focus on achievements, tasks for the day, and anticipated challenges.
• Routine and Structure in Business: Regular meetings with set agendas can save time and prevent unnecessary meetings. The hosts discuss three essential meetings for running a business: operations, sales and marketing, and strategy.
• Importance of Face-to-Face Communication: Daily huddles with staff create a network for information flow within the business. Face-to-face communication allows for a better understanding of others' emotions and work lives.
• Action-Based Daily Meetings: Daily meetings should be action-based and coordinated by a designated person. Asking specific questions like "What did we do yesterday?" and "What are my blockers?" can lead to productive discussions and problem-solving.
• Join the Conversation: Ron and Brenton announce the creation of a LinkedIn group for the Business Builders podcast, where listeners can provide feedback and join the conversation.

In this special episode, we'll show you how to make your daily huddles action-oriented, coordinated by a designated person and how embracing this practice can lead to significant improvements in efficiency, productivity, and o

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Transcript

Brenton Gowland: 0:00

Hey there Business Builders. Today we're diving into the secret sauce of successful businesses. That is effective communication. We'll be unpacking the power of the daily huddle, and how this quick action based chat can transform your day to day operations. So let's jump into the world of business communication on this our 50th episode. You're welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland,

Ron Tomlian: 0:26

and I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland: 0:27

And Ron, you have just come back from Borneo.

Ron Tomlian: 0:30

Yes and wonderful experience too.

Brenton Gowland: 0:33

Now if you're a listener, you know, we did an episode last fortnight. Well, Ron, and I pre recorded that before Ron went away to Borneo. And I was telling everyone in one of the latest episodes that I think you are one of the best. I have seen it actually getting that work life balance, right, because you have a few holidays a year. Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 0:53

Yeah. Absolutely. Work hard in between. But by the same token, I like my holidays,

Brenton Gowland: 0:59

Just out of interest. Have you always done that? Have you always gone for the we're going to go on holidays thing?

Ron Tomlian: 1:05

No. Yeah, yeah. When I first became a tech chair, I took six weeks off and went to France. Oh, wow. And the next time we got together as a group of chairs, somebody said, one of the problems of being a tech chair is that you can never take time off us all. I just took six weeks off last year, is how did you do that? I said, Well, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to. That's how I did it. That's good.

Brenton Gowland: 1:28

So you've just had that ingrained into you forever, because I've been pretty much the opposite. I've never taken time off. I wouldn't

Ron Tomlian: 1:33

use the word forever. I had to learn the hard way that it was important. Did your wife teach you? I think my family taught me. My wife in particular. Well, that's really good. Yeah, I have to take now, at least two weeks off every around Christmas time because you're in Australia. Of course, Christmas isn't summertime. So I take two weeks off. And that's my recharge time. Yeah. And if I don't have that the year goes badly.

Brenton Gowland: 1:58

And for those of you who don't know, Ron originally comes from Chicago, Detroit. Did I get that wrong? How did I do that? I don't know. Detroit, my, my bad. Anyway, so yes, in Australia, we basically get forced to take two weeks off for Christmas. Because even if you worked over Christmas, no

Ron Tomlian: 2:15

one else can cut it down to a week or something like that. But the truth matter is we've got so many public holidays at that time, that unless you're in emergency services, it's forced. Well, all I can

Brenton Gowland: 2:27

say is I've been I think I've been working with you on and off for 20 or more years. Absolutely. But I've really been impressed, particularly in the last few about how you prioritise going on holidays and taking time off. And I said to everyone, when we did the same penzo interview about Two episodes ago, that I think that's something that we should all attain to do. So when you went around, I was talking positive about you. Oh, thank

Ron Tomlian: 2:54

you very much. So you guys should be now we're on something special

Brenton Gowland: 2:57

today. It's our 50th podcast episode.

Ron Tomlian: 3:00

I can't believe it. I think it's fantastic. We've got to that little milestone. But I also think it's worth not necessarily spending a lot of time during the episode reflecting but at 50 episodes, I would like to offer something listeners that I think if I look back at all the topics that we've covered over this time, we've done marketing, we've done strategy, we've done series on networking. What's to me, what's important is that we offer at this stage one thing that really I think would make a difference. So what's the one thing that would make a difference? From your perspective, if you had in terms of what in terms of business, we're talking to business builders? Yeah. You said, there's one thing you can do that will make a significant improvement in your business, what would it be?

Brenton Gowland: 3:54

Okay. And just to put that in context, because again, if this is the first time you're listening, yes, we call ourselves the Business Builders podcast. And our definition of a business builder is someone who works on themselves like I was talking about with you and taking holidays, I need to work on myself and take more time out, but as someone who works on themselves in order to improve their business, so what I'm hearing you're asking me is, what would I do within my business? To improve it the most? Yeah. And I'll take when I was running an advertising agency, for example, I think the most important thing is to make sure everyone's on the same page. And with the clients I work with at the moment, I work with clients that have probably, well, one of them has about 130 staff and other one has 20 staff and other one has 50 staff. The biggest thing I see is that people don't know or they're not all on the same page, or they're in siloed departments, whatever it might be. But I think it's getting that communication piece, right. Everyone knows what's going on. Everyone knows the vision of the business. Everyone knows what they're meant to be doing. I think that would improve people's weaknesses the most from my observation. And that

Ron Tomlian: 5:02

would be my observation as well. I've never been in a business that has asked me to come in and look at how can we improve things and talking to people, it's always communication, we need to improve communication. The question is, how can you do that? easily and effectively, it's not an easy task overall. But there are some things you can do. And I'd like to share the one thing that I've seen, that makes a huge difference in a business, and it's the simplest thing you can think of, and it's not my idea. It comes from Vern Harnish in the Rockefeller habits, Ito, he does an entire chapter on communication, and the way people communicate with an organisation. And the one thing that makes the biggest difference, and I've seen it time and time again, yes. When people don't have it, and they introduce it, or they have something and they start using this discipline. I call it the daily huddle. Vern Harnish quote, of the day they had put some people call it a toolbox meeting.

Brenton Gowland: 6:06

Can I work with some manufacturers and they call it toolbox meeting? Yeah, absolutely.

Ron Tomlian: 6:11

But it's that idea that to prevent a lot of the meeting, noise that happens, have a regular, focused meeting at the beginning of every day. And Vern Harnish his book, The Rockefeller habits comes from his reading of I think there was the book giant by John D. Rockefeller, okay. Where he had a discipline with his executives. In fact, he went to the next level, he actually bought them houses. I think it was in Lincoln Park in Chicago, and so that they would have to walk in together to the office every day. And then they will walk home to have a boss advise you a house. Yeah, great. Yeah, it was, it was quite impressive. He recognised the importance of having a regular daily, get together with the people who you're working directly with, to talk about what happened yesterday. Yes. And what's going to happen today? Yes. And what are the potential problems or obstacles that you foresee gonna happen today? So that's the structure of it. That's the end, it's simple. The End The why is to prevent all the coordination problems, all the communication problems that inevitably happen, because people don't know what other people are doing during the day.

Brenton Gowland: 7:32

Okay. So the reason the why why would you have a daily huddle, and that is simply that to make sure that everyone understands what's going on? Yeah, every day.

Ron Tomlian: 7:42

And you've think about the discipline of doing that every day. And you don't miss out. If somebody's away, okay, they're away. That doesn't mean you don't have it. I've seen more excuses than I've had hot dinners about why we can't do this. And yet, when people start implementing it, start instituting this as a daily ritual across the direct work group. And that's the thing, it's only with your direct work group. So you know, you can trust that you can cascade it down from the top to the bottom of the organisation, but everybody has that daily, get together with their direct work group. Yep. So it's probably no more than about five or six people, right? It's no more than 10 to 15 minutes long. Yeah, you're not tackling any other problems. If you identify any issues, or you identify that more coordination or more communication needs to happen, happens outside of the meeting. It's 15 minutes. And there's only a couple of things on the agenda, what we achieve yesterday, what are we got on the plate for today? And what do I anticipate the challenges or obstacles or problems that they're going to be? That's it, move on next person.

Brenton Gowland: 8:49

So it's really about making sure that everyone's on the same page for the day and then look, oh, go into this in the agency that around, we used to do this. And that was, we would actually do it via slack? Because obviously, with people working from home and there's a push at the moment, if you're reading the media, or if you're in any big business, people are pushing people to get back into the office, even I read zoom the other day, the people who benefited the most one of the businesses, I think we would agree that Zoom grew exponentially during COVID pandemic. Oh, boy, do I wish I had shares and, yeah, well, they're now insisting that people work three or four days a week in the office. I was reading that the other day and thinking, that's interesting, isn't it, the people who were leading that work from home Revolution by making it possible for people and obviously, teams have got their video platform or their conferencing platform. Google has their platform as well. Everyone's got their video platform, but the video platform themselves zoom in encouraging people to get back into the office. But while we were away, or even, we used to do this because you know, design agency, we might be sitting at desks next to each other We'd still do it via slack, we'd have those similar three questions that we would answer at the start of every morning. People would put in, what they're working on that day, what they saw as blockers and what help they needed from other people. It was those three points.

Ron Tomlian: 10:16

I think, identifying what went on yesterday and where the flow goes, today is important because it starts with blade chief something. It's just a it's a mindset, more than anything else. Yep. But it's important to cover those points off and limited. If somebody starts on a tangent, we need to solve this problem, or there's a bigger issue that I've identified. Yes, there's another meeting for that, or there's another forum for that. This is just about coordination for the day. Yep, everybody's on the same page, you can start the day with everybody knowing how they're contributing, and what other people are doing, and where the coordination points.

Brenton Gowland: 10:55

And that would work well, from a very small business to obviously, very large businesses, if we do what you said. And that is to cascade the flow of information in whatever fashion that might be, right. But if you think about in a small business, where everyone's sitting probably two to four metres apart, or whatever it is, that process becomes very easy. And like you said, with Vern Harnish, and talking about the Rockefeller habits and having execs walking to work together, where they're going to discuss things, you have people sitting near each other, where they're going to discuss things. And as long as, like you said, at the start of the day, they talk about what they're doing for the day that you can see how that would work really well, everyone's working together for the same result. But when you start to get into a bigger company, where cascading of information needs to start happening, where it gets more complex, I think that's where a structured daily huddle, that you might call it something different in a small business, like I said, we did on Slack and bigger companies, and companies with a younger generation who are using messenger apps, and all those kinds of things would naturally gravitate to messaging and so forth. And it's, in a sense, similar to standing and having a conversation with someone, it produces the same results, so great, but what I'm getting at is that a larger company would have a lot more benefit, I think, from spreading information around if they had those daily huddles in a structured way throughout their organisation. Absolutely. And I know your examples.

Ron Tomlian: 12:22

But look, I exercise, Vern Harnish many years ago in Adelaide. Yeah. And here's a guy and he used to go we talked all probably something like 1213 years ago, okay. And one thing you said right at the beginning that turned me off, absolutely. Turned you off, turn me off. He said routine will set you free. And here I was having just been in a very structured organisations. And I was out on my own now. And the reason I was up and on my own was because I wanted less routine. Here's a guy saying routine will set you free. And I thought I do not need to listen to this. In fact, I left at morning team. Did you seriously did absolutely. I thought I've got better things to do with my life, can't see any pride. They're wrong. And what I learned, unfortunately, over the next 12 years after that is he was absolutely right. If you do things that allow just a little bit of discipline, a little bit of routine, you grab back so much more time and his whole premise, when I finally read his book, his whole premise was have regular meetings. So you don't have to have those intermittent meetings, that nobody knows why they're there. It's about coordination, but there's no set agenda, don't really know what's going on. But let's waste half an hour. And I reflect on my time in corporations, when those were the order of the day, have a regular routine meeting. It's only short. But it covers all the stuff that you need to do for the rest of the day. And if something doesn't happen, if something that you have to go and see somebody, you have to have a meeting with somebody that's out of the norm, the norm is you are catching up with them every day.

Brenton Gowland: 14:04

If you do it properly, you reduce the amount of meetings you need anyway, right? Absolutely. And that's what he said, and I should have listened. So I always with my clients I talk about, I always suggest to people that there's three meetings that it takes to run a business, and that is operations, sales and marketing, because I do put them in together because you have a marketing minute, you can have a sales meeting, but you got to get those two groups talking to each other. So there's two. And the third one is strategy meeting. So your directors or higher level management should have information cascading to them from those other two meetings. Absolutely. And at least once a month where those meetings might be weekly, at least once a month, you got to review the strategy, look at where you're going make decisions and then cascade the information back to those other two meetings.

Ron Tomlian: 14:51

And if you read the Rockefeller habits version does talk about all that structure of meetings in exact To the format you talked about, he talks about quarterly meetings as well to set the theme for the next board, all that sort of thing. But it all comes back, all of that structure comes back to having every day coordinated well, and starting well with the daily.

Brenton Gowland: 15:17

So we're talking about really a fourth meeting, which is fine. And I see what you're saying here. But that fourth meeting, it almost becomes like the feelers within the business, right? Because you've got those, let's say, you've got three meetings, something like that, anyway, you might have different departments. So you might have more meetings, depending on the amount of departments you've got. But having those daily huddles with your staff then creates a network within the business where information can flow into directions.

Ron Tomlian: 15:45

Absolutely. And people talk about the old mechanisms that are available now slack messaging, zoom. And it's fantastic. Because what remains now is that everybody really has no excuse, not for at least participating in some way. But my experiences, especially in terms of the two way, there is nothing that allows you to get a feel, yes, but what's going on in other people's lives, and their work lives and so on. As face to face communication. You can hide a lot of stuff on Zoom, you can hide a lot of stuff behind messenger, but you can hide that perception of nervousness or anxiety or reticence or whatever it is when you're face to face with someone which Trump

Brenton Gowland: 16:34

Trump's other questions. Right? Absolutely. When you see that, it's like, Ron, what's going on? Yeah, okay.

Ron Tomlian: 16:39

And you take that outside of the meeting. And it's not about the coordination, it gives people who are in authority or a leadership, the opportunity to explore if beyond that, if they sense that there's something wrong.

Brenton Gowland: 16:51

So as we discussed, as I mentioned earlier, like the three questions that we had back in my mind, I was involved with that agency, was, what am I working on today? What am I blockers? And what help do I need? So therein lies if you need help, you might arrange a meeting with a creative director. You might arrange a meeting with your management like myself, you might arrange a meeting with someone else, because you need more information you might have, we might have to arrange a meeting with the client because we don't have everything we need. But those questions and reporting or what am I blockers are? Well, this is a blocker. I have another project, which is bearing down on me, which is going to threaten this deadline. All right. Can we redistribute what I'm getting at is it's an action based meeting. Yep.

Ron Tomlian: 17:37

And needs to be somebody coordinating that meeting. It's not just we're all getting together. And it's a free for all having a chinwag. It's a person running a meeting, asking for the answers to those four questions. What did we do yesterday? What are you on today? What are the potential blockers? And where do you need help or questions? And then moving on. And if you identify that this person needs help, okay, who who needed to help them? Okay, immediately after this meeting you and you need to get together. Okay. And

Brenton Gowland: 18:06

then you talk about it the next day? Because I think you were saying that the meeting structure that you were talking about was what happened yesterday? Yeah. And we? We do so when

Ron Tomlian: 18:16

I was somewhat someone who has Look, I don't know information about client X, actually have that information. Can we meet right afterwards? And I'll give you that info here in five minutes is all we need? Yeah, that's fantastic. Or, actually, you need to read this, or you need to explore this.

Brenton Gowland: 18:32

So when I was talking to him about the four day work week, and one of the things I know you haven't listened to it yet, Ron, you got to do your homework.

Ron Tomlian: 18:39

You're shaming me? On Air.

Brenton Gowland: 18:42

See me if you're listening. Ron hasn't listened yet, but he will by the next time he sees you're still in holiday mode. See him said that really interesting thing. They on? Five days when they were doing the normal week, they had a bunch of meetings. Can you see where this is gonna go? Oh, absolutely. Right. So they reduced to four days a week, and the billable hours. And he said it was acceptable that we had six billable hours every day. They're now much more efficient, because they've been forced to necessity drives. Necessity is the mother of invention. So they reduce their amount of meetings. And one of the things they do now is a daily huddle first thing in the morning, go figure. But they also Now Bill, the same amount, roughly that they used to bill in a five day week because of efficiencies they've been driving and the reduction of meetings. So they've really created an ability for their staff to be able to focus on what's important.

Ron Tomlian: 19:34

And I bet you, I might be wrong. I haven't listened to the podcast, you remember, I bet you that his his staff are happier as a result. They're getting more done. They're feeling more fulfilled. And the efficiency is all about what communication,

Brenton Gowland: 19:49

we'd have to talk to his staff to work that out. But I would say probably yes, I know a couple of the guys in there so they seem like they enjoy it.

Ron Tomlian: 19:57

So my argument is in our 50th Prasad, if you want to supercharge your efforts with very little effort, with very little effort, how to supercharge your efforts, can

Brenton Gowland: 20:08

you guarantee people it's very little effort.

Ron Tomlian: 20:10

If you're not doing a daily huddle, it's a discipline and people will resist it, I've got too many things to do, because they don't recognise that actually is going to free them up. Routine will set you free wrong routine will set you free, I finally learned it. Thank you, Vern. If you try it, and you do it for two weeks, you will find a significant improvement not only in the efficiency of your organisation, and in getting things done more effectively, you will find that people are happier. And it gets to the point where they say we can't start the day without something like this.

Brenton Gowland: 20:45

Fantastic. Now, I'm going to ask you, in wrapping up a few questions, to give some tangible advice about how to do this to our listeners. And the first question is more a bit about the why, and how these meetings have actually changed people. Because when we were having our pre discussion, you told me about someone, we don't need to mention names, who was vehemently against doing this, and now they won't live without it. What happened? And why is that?

Ron Tomlian: 21:18

Okay? I had one of our tech members who said, look, there's no way I can get everybody to participate in the meeting every day. And all over the place. Some people are, you know, off in another location locations, at times, they'll resist it, I don't believe in it myself, I can see how it's going to. I said trust me this, let's do it. It was about six months that we kept having this conversation on a monthly basis about how he should be doing it kept coming to me with problems, usually about coordination within the organisation. I said, Look, whatever you got to lose, just give it a try. And he was quite, I wouldn't use the word desperate. But he wanted a solution to his coordination problem. So he promised me he would give it a try. And he did have a lot of resistance from other people. I can't afford it, we can't find the right time. And he just kept persisting. Okay, and I kept persisting, asking about it. After about a week, he found people are starting to talk and oiling the wheels, he had to be disciplined about making sure that if you're not in the office, you call in no excuses, except for if you're on holiday, just kept pushing the point. And then one day, he wasn't there. And somebody said, Well, if he's not here, we still need to have this meeting, because we can do without it. And that's when he knew that it was worthwhile. Okay. And how long ago was that? That was about five years ago. And he's been doing it ever since. He's been doing it ever since he was in a different organisation at that time. I think subsequently that organisation hasn't been doing it. And I don't know, but he's certainly doing it in his new organisation.

Brenton Gowland: 23:00

Fantastic. Okay, so that's one. So we can see that. That's a really interesting insight to write that the staff actually went, Oh, we can't do without this. Because it became something that they needed, or they saw they needed. They did. It's funny, sometimes we don't know what we need, until we actually

Ron Tomlian: 23:18

have it. Yeah, that's why you go to a doctor.

Brenton Gowland: 23:22

So you're a business doctor on. I wouldn't

Ron Tomlian: 23:24

like to think of myself with any near that sort of expertise. But from my experience, and resisting myself, the message that someone like Vern Harnish gave on when he had seen Oh, he had the insight to look into the way Rockefeller ran his business. Yes. I resisted it. At my own detriment. Yes, until I was looking for something. And I found that this worked.

Brenton Gowland: 23:49

Okay. So my next question is, how do we implement this? So if you're in a business, and you are listening to us, how would you recommend to those people who are listening, how to go about establishing a daily huddle? And then we'll talk about after that, that cascading structure? So let's just start with if we're a business of, let's say, we're a business to 50 people, how would you go about doing it?

Ron Tomlian: 24:15

We're going to improve coordination, we always keep talking about communication improving around here. I've heard about something that that tends to work, we're going to try it for a while. That here's the discipline, here's what we're going to do. And get people into the routine. Get people into the cadence, that's often the hardest thing that I've seen. So

Brenton Gowland: 24:33

you're going to advertise it throughout the business world or first to market it, I would

Ron Tomlian: 24:37

started at the top. Okay, so if you have a team of 50 in all probability, you've got an executive team or leadership group started with them. And say, Okay, guys, now that you see the benefit of this, I want you to take this down into your

Brenton Gowland: 24:51

so in other words, the Exec. If there's five people, they're going to start first. And they're going to do a daily huddle every morning.

Ron Tomlian: 24:58

Yep, yep. And Look, you don't have to be at the executive level of an organisation to do this with your team. Well,

Brenton Gowland: 25:06

there's all sorts of different business structures, as you know, but we're using that as an example for the time being. So I was

Ron Tomlian: 25:11

structured, because modelling is the way most people learn. Gotcha. Yeah. So model from the top.

Brenton Gowland: 25:17

So whatever that top end looks like, whether it's managers, whether it's owners, whether it's a core group, there's going to be a core leadership group and a business of 50 people, right?

Ron Tomlian: 25:27

I mean, if I reflect back, I used to run an advertising group within an organisation. And we would go to coffee every morning, because we couldn't stand the coffee that was given up by the organisation, it was a little cafe around the corner. And it became, you know, didn't recognise the relationship. But it actually became our daily huddle was about 10 o'clock, it actually became a daily huddle in a informal way.

Brenton Gowland: 25:56

But that doesn't, the impression I get is it doesn't have to be rules on it doesn't have to be called a daily huddle. Doesn't have to be called a toolbox meeting, it can be called whatever you want it to be.

Ron Tomlian: 26:06

I'm suggesting that there needs to be a little bit of structure and discipline, if you want to limit the amount of time limit the impact on the amount of time people have to spend. Gotcha. So yeah, 10 minutes, I think, depending on the size of the team that you're talking about 1015 minutes is the absolute maximum

Brenton Gowland: 26:28

15 sounds like too much to me, but it depends on how many people you've got. But you've got the three questions you would ask, or is there four?

Ron Tomlian: 26:36

Well, I think we've worked out today, there's probably four, what did we do? What did we achieve yesterday? Yep. And what went well? What do we what are we got on our plate for today? Yep. What are the obstacles? We see? The blockers? And what help do I need? Now you might be able to? What are the blockers? And what else do I need? What else do

Brenton Gowland: 26:53

I need to get my job done today? Yeah, yeah. Yep. And that's it. So those four questions, you start asking those with the core group? Yep. And then how do you cascade that out?

Ron Tomlian: 27:04

Well, now we've done this with our team, yeah, at the executive level, take that down to your team, what have your people go on today? What's going on in the rest of the organisation, because you've talked to the leaders and other parts of the organisation, take it down to your team, get your people to take it under their team. Now, it could be that you have a shift in a manufacturing organisation that starts at seven o'clock, you're not going to prevent them from having their daily huddle. Just because senior leaders haven't had theirs yet. It could be that you coordinate from from the ground up, rather than the top down. All I'm saying is, if you're going to do these daily, huddles effectively start from the top of the organisation, but I did this and the advertiser group that they ran, and nobody else in the organisation did. And people started talking to me about how we could be so well coordinated. And I started doing it at my peer level.

Brenton Gowland: 28:01

So group of 50 is starting at, you know, that core group of management, execs, whoever they are, then it's going down to the next level, etc, etc. Is there a leader in each of those groups? Absolutely. That's the person that coordinates it. And they're pushing information in both directions, or what we're and what I mean,

Ron Tomlian: 28:20

if you're part of another group that's having a daily huddle as well. And I'm leading a team, but I'm part of my peer level. So I'm part of a daily huddle as well, I suppose the only person who doesn't have that is the CEO. But don't forget, this is about two way communication, as

Brenton Gowland: 28:36

CEO should be reporting to the board, there's not really a daily huddle there, you're

Ron Tomlian: 28:41

not going to have that this is an operational thing. Yep. This is about coordination on a daily basis. So to find out what's going on,

Brenton Gowland: 28:48

okay. Okay. So it sounds pretty normal. Do you then review that structure at any point? Are you just

Ron Tomlian: 28:54

the important thing is once you have the meeting, regardless of who's there, so if there's not a leader of the group there, someone deputises and takes on the role of coordinating that meeting,

Brenton Gowland: 29:04

which is what happened with the Germany we're talking about from your time and the

Ron Tomlian: 29:07

only Yes, the only thing, the only thing that that role does is make sure that we've got 15 minutes, we're gonna go around the room. We don't have any rabbit burrows that we go down. We are just coordinating and when people start, as they will, I just came back from holiday. Let me tell you about my No, no, no, this is what we're talking about. Let's talk about your holiday over morning tea or whatever. Yes. So it's just about keeping the discipline. And so that's the only role.

Brenton Gowland: 29:38

That's great. So in wrapping up, what's your final piece? So it looks like the structure is fairly easy to set up? It just takes determination. Like whenever you start something like your friend, you have to have someone keeping them to account

Ron Tomlian: 29:51

and keeping it going for I would say there's plenty of research that shows that if something you can do for three months, it becomes a habit Okay, so there will be all sorts of reasons people say I can't come to this meeting, okay, you can come, but we're still having it. So you have to catch up. Okay? Because we're having that meeting, there will be people who just don't participate. So you can't make me. Okay. They will come into the fall by peer pressure. Oh, but you've got to keep it going.

Brenton Gowland: 30:21

That's an interesting one. I won't get started on that yet. But I would never have allowed anyone not to participate in that.

Ron Tomlian: 30:27

Yeah, depending on the culture of the organisation, but you have to take that into account. It doesn't matter. Because what I've seen happen is even in organisations that are permissive, people come into the fold, because they can't afford not to be. When you think about it, you're hungry for information and communication and find out what's going on. Here. You're telling them we're doing that on a regular basis. You don't have to participate, but boy, where you're gonna get your information from if you're done.

Brenton Gowland: 30:53

Okay, so in wrapping up, what is your final piece of advice for people who are considering starting a daily huddle? If they haven't? Nike? Wow, okay. Jeremy Moore, just do it. Yeah, okay. Gotcha. Well, that's a that's an was that a 90s? Comment?

Ron Tomlian: 31:12

Wow, no, no, it did seem trite to me. That's great. I

Brenton Gowland: 31:15

love it, just do it. Just

Ron Tomlian: 31:17

do it, do it and take my word for it if you want, or do it and give me some feedback on how it didn't work. That's fine. Now,

Brenton Gowland: 31:25

if you want to give feedback, we have done something we've started. Finally, everyone who's listening will be about time, we've started a LinkedIn group for the business builders podcast. So just look up the business builders podcast, you just need to send a application, whatever it is, you need to just apply to become a member. And then we just have a look. And click yes or, well, I will always pretty much click Yes. But you join the group, and you'll be able to have some ability to give us feedback or to add to the conversation. That would be wonderful. So look up the business builders podcast, the LinkedIn group, and I think that was pretty good. I like the idea of a daily huddle. It's a good thing to do. It will improve your communication.

Ron Tomlian: 32:08

Look, there's there's all sorts of things you can do. But what I found is the most effective for the least amount of effort.

Brenton Gowland: 32:14

And that's our 50th Episode Ron on the business builders podcast.

Ron Tomlian: 32:18

big pat on the back to us big pat on the back. Thank

Brenton Gowland: 32:21

you, everyone, for listening. We really appreciate you and the next 50 episodes start within two weeks. So it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye for me. Have a great fortnight everyone and we'll see you again soon.