Risk & Business Magazine McFarlan Rowlands Spring 2016 | Page 9

Daily “Adrenaline” Meeting
Sticking to Your Agenda
BY: VERNE HARNISH, AUTHOR OF SCALING UP

T

here 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

SPRING 2016

9