Daily “ Adrenaline ” Meeting
Sticking to Your Agenda
BY : VERNE HARNISH , AUTHOR OF SCALING UP
There is one indispensable routine ; one absolute essential habit more important than any other I can teach an executive team ; one discipline that is non-negotiable – and that is an effective daily meeting rhythm .
Before dismissing the idea ( I ’ ve heard every excuse over the years ), consider that from the top teams at Goldman Sachs to the assembly floors of Dell Computer to the Oval Office of the White House , an effective daily meeting rhythm is at the heart of their management practices . And I ’ ve not encountered a single startup to mid-size firm that didn ’ t benefit greatly from initiating a short daily huddle organized around a specific agenda which I ’ ll detail below .
“ I lead a daily ‘ Adrenaline ’ meeting ,” explains Tony Petrucciani , CEO of Single Source Systems , Inc ., a computer services firm based in Indianapolis . Petrucciani gathers his management team ( five
including himself ) and meets each day at 10:07 am to discuss roadblocks . Their goal is to be out in 15 minutes . The name came from the substance which makes the heart beat faster . “ In our case , we wanted the business to pulse faster ,” adds Petrucciani .
“ Our key customers really like that we do these meetings and it has become a sales tool , differentiating us from the speed that our competition pulses ,” adds Petrucciani . “ It used to take days for issues to work their way ‘ to the top ’ to get authority to allocate resources – it ’ s now like Fedex – it ’ s there by 10:30 .” It wasn ’ t always like that at Single Source . The meetings were launched when they faced a large project in overrun status and their customer was getting angry . “ We implemented a specific Project Adrenaline daily meeting . Within a week , we were making much better progress , and had gained back credibility from the customer ( we told them about
Adrenaline ). This kept a 6 figure project from imploding ,” describes Petrucciani .
Since then , his team has implemented other types of daily Adrenaline meetings ( Channel Adrenaline , Sales Adrenaline ) that pulse just before his management meeting . If a major issue comes up in those earlier meetings , they pulse thru to the Management Adrenaline meeting , keeping the company operating at an effective pace .
“ The daily huddles are particularly key when you ’ re the busiest and spread the thinnest ,” notes Chuck Hall , founder and CEO of Charles Hall Construction in Clarendon Hills , IL . With a focus on clients with multiple projects across multiple regions , Hall has teams working all over the country . And with the economy picking up , he ’ s facing an onslaught of business . “ We have approximately $ 24M in contracts signed or under negotiations for work this year
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