Daily meetings can be productive and creative
More and more groups and teams are using daily meetings.
These are very popular in software development teams in particular and even have their own name – Daily Scrums.
Daily Scrums as the name implies are short, daily catchups of a team typically working on a Sprint.
As Scrum.org defines it ‘A Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team to synchronize activities and create a plan for the next 24 hours’.
There are many advantages of this process.
‘Daily Scrums improve communications, eliminate other meetings, identify impediments to development for removal, highlight and promote quick decision-making, and improve the Development Team’s level of knowledge. This is a key inspect and adapt meeting.‘
But the idea of a daily meeting has been used in many other industries for years.
Think of newspapers or television or any other media organisation.
In fact, in my interviews with leaders with a national television channel for example, one of the producers told me that the difference between the programs was the quality of their daily meeting.
Enter The Daily Creative Thinking meeting
The daily meeting is great for productivity – no question.
Yet there is another wonderful yet often neglected benefit.
It’s a powerful way for groups and teams to enhance their creative thinking.
New ideas can be presented, discussed, enhanced and evaluated.
New questions can be asked.
New stimulus presented.
And new conversations started.
It can be an effective tool for leaders to build greater engagement, collaboration and most of all trust.
It’s not a separate meeting but the daily creative thinking meeting is just a new way to view what many groups and teams are doing already.
So rather than close your daily meeting goes off track for a moment try and let new ideas, perspectives and solutions emerge.
The daily creative thinking meeting can be fast as well.
In the image above these are the single one word descriptions of a Speed Thinking session I recently ran with a group of not-for-profit leaders.
In summary:
If your creative thinking is a muscle than the more you practice it the stronger it will become.
Having a daily scrum with your group or team can boost both productivity and creativity.