Productivity Hacks: Starting the Day with a Gong

This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share their secrets to being more productive. See all their #productivityhacks here.

Like just about everyone, I’ve found that eating well, meditating, exercising daily, and making sure I have enough time to get ready in the morning all make me more productive. But I have a secret weapon at the office that stands out above all the other little productivity hacks I’ve come across in my career: our daily stand-up meeting.

A quick search for daily stand-ups offers a huge variety of techniques and goals. For me, the goal is simple: get the entire team on the same page as quickly as possible. Here’s quick primer we run our stand-up:

I like to start our daily stand-ups with a gong. A really big gong. Why? First, there’s nothing to get you going in the morning like a gong. You can hear it from anywhere in the office, and it acts as a starting gun for the day. Plus, no one can ever say that they didn’t know the meeting was starting.

At the sound of the gong, we gather around a board and review everything we are working on, from site issues to support issues, project status updates to new candidates.

The average meeting length? Seven minutes. That’s right: about the time it takes me to brew a cup of coffee. Most people who swing by are stunned that we’re able to get so much in within such a short amount of time.

The trick? We’re ruthlessly focused on keeping the meeting short. Any item that causes disagreement or confusion becomes a follow-up task for the relevant people. At the end of the meeting, we close it out with a gong to signal that we’re moving on. Planning and prep are over. It’s go time.

So why is this such an important productivity hack? It works toward three big goals for our team every single day:

1. Efficiency.

In a very short amount of time, we cover a very large amount of information. As a matter of practice, we call out the total time spent in the stand-up in a company-wide email after the meeting. Sometimes I’m even shocked at how much we’ve covered. Everyone leaves with context for all of our key projects and I am fully aware of any red flags or pertinent issues. Imagine how many emails back and forth it would take to get that same context? Our stand-up feels like a 30-minute meeting or sixteen-email conversation done in just five minutes.

2. Building great products is a team sport.

The best way to build great products is to get a bunch of smart people together and make sure that we’re communicating directly with each other. The daily stand-up ensures that we can look at one another and have direct conversations. Because it is designed to be so brief, it forces people to gauge if they are on the same page as the rest of the team and speak up if they aren’t. We reward teammates for “throwing the flag” and identifying tasks or projects that might be at risk -- it’s about making sure that we’re acting like a team and looking out for each other. Finally, we don’t want people to have to wait to schedule a meeting on an important topic. By bringing it up at the stand-up, the team ensures that we move fast and in coordination with each other.

3. Prioritization is key to productivity.

The daily stand-up helps me prioritize my day and my team’s day. It allows us to change priorities in real time and focus on the most urgent issues first. I often find that my day is radically altered after the stand-up. It could be anything from a urgent new recruit to a blocker on a design decision or a site issue that needs my full attention. If we counted on email to bubble these issues up, I might not know that we need to change course until the end of the day!

A true productivity hack should be smart, fast, and highly effective. Our daily stand-up is all of the these in just five minutes. What’s more, it keeps us all focused on what matters most: moving the needle for our team, our product, and our customers.

Do you run a stand-up? What works and what doesn't for you?

Photo credit: DJ Patil