So you’re managing a team and you need some help with synchronicity. Need to know what’s going on with everyone in your team? Daily Stand-ups sound like just the thing you need! Learn about daily stand-ups or daily scrum. These meetings are not just a status update, it’s an essential tool.

Read for our tips and suggestions with team development.

There are three main parts that we will cover:

1. Defining Daily Stand-up
2. Why you need it as a leader
3. Implementation
4. Why you need Focus

Defining the Daily Stand-up

Daily stand-ups, daily scrum, daily meetings or whatever name you know them as are all the same thing. They are daily check-in meetings you have with your team.

Daily Stand-ups are timely, informal, and get to the point. No need to prepare presentations or rehearse, just go down a list of critical information you need to share. Your team should provide information on their obstacles and possibly what they’re doing to mitigate these problems.

The advantage to daily scrum is that you can give your input right away. Give some criticism or share some helpful tips.

You can even shut down ideas and help narrow down what your team should be doing.

These meetings originated as a tool for development teams-Agile development teams that it. Agile teams are defined by the Harvard Business Review here: Agile at Scale. They’ve grown since then and should be utilized by all teams, non-technical or otherwise.

Why you need it (as a leader)

These daily scrum are vital for team coordination. They are an effective form of communication that help you stay on task.

When your team is in sync, you can achieve more. Get better results, faster results more efficiently.

For example, you want to have your team post on the company’s social media everyday. Creating a calendar and delegating the tasks is the first step. If someone misses a post or creates something not to your liking, a face to face meeting, even over video call is the best way to communicate your message. A quick call can aid in overcoming misunderstandings.

Daily stand-ups prevent critical issues from growing.

These frequent stand-ups don’t allow for issues to fall through the crack. Because problems can be address easily as they appear or even before they’re noticeable, they can be tackled on the spot.

Daily Stand-ups are not just individual reports.

The benefit of doing daily stand-ups is its notable difference from a normal meeting or report. If you treat these daily stand-ups like a a report meeting then you lose it’s value.

Here are some examples of how you can stay in sync:

1. Write a mini agenda/list so that the team can view
2. Don’t go off topic in daily stand-ups
3. Stay active in group chats
4. Use Focus (more details below)

At Focus, our main goal is to help teams achieve the most! We want to share our technology and OKR guides so that no matter how big or small your organization is, it can reach it’s full potential. We believe in daily stand-ups and that every leader should give it a try!

Implementation

So now that you’re ready to start having these daily scrum with your team, here’s what you need to know.

Rule #1 is to know your team’s schedule. Find a time that works for everyone and that means everyone. Having expected attendance and participation gathers respect. You show respect for your team and take time to check up on them, so they should share their honest thoughts and comments in return.

Rule #2 is to keep it short. This is not the time to have long, deep in-depth conversations. These daily stand-ups can delve into personal topics, but should ultimately stay light and focused. You want to understand what’s going on and any obstacles. Any “blockers” that need more than 15 minutes to explain should be saved for a later meeting, which you can plan during this daily check-in.

The length of daily stand-ups are a great advantage. Each party has to equally participate and the limited time helps everyone stay focused to not only talk about their plans but also actively listen.

On a side note, these meetings are short, so remember to be on time!

There’s no space for uncomfortably in daily stand-ups.

Rule #3 is to always address impediments. If your team never has any issues then it’s because they don’t feel comfortable diverging information. As there are always ways to improve, there will always be obstacles to your goal. Leaders should aid in teamwork, meaning your team should not be too intimidated to let you know what issues they face. Be wary of this secrecy. Even if your team is at their peak performance, have them share their impediments and how they can address them.

There’s no time for passivity.

The last major rule is to stay committed! Don’t give up on these meetings. Daily means daily. As casual as they may be, your team should treat is an a important part of their day. The more you value these stand-ups the more your team will as well. Lead by example and you’ll soon enjoy the benefits of daily stand-ups!

My personal tip is to thank people for their time! As quick as these meetings are, it’s always polite to give a “thank you” to the person for their time. It’s better not to assume what your team’s schedule might be. Last minute changes can happen to these meetings, and you might not know what plans they had to move to make it on time. Take advantage of this time to recognize your employee’s hard work and build your professional relationship! It never hurts to be polite and friendly. This relationship can translate into work and in turn improve your team’s commitment.

Daily Stand-ups go a long way.

Read our tips on one on one meetings:

9 One on One Meeting Tips

What are One on One Meetings

Why you need Focus

At Focus, we pride ourselves on being communication-oriented and solution driven. Our use of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) helps our team to stay on task and figure out creative solutions.

Read more about these OKRs on our blog:

What are OKRs

We use many forms of communication to let our team know our status. Focus had daily check ins where you share your actions and tasks as well as meaningful insight. Every member of the team can see what everyone else is doing. To make this process even more convenient, we have a Slackbot for these daily check ins as well. Weekly team meetings and one on one meetings are a must for our team. Our blog serves as evidence of this synchronicity!

We post about the changes Focus has gone through on our blog:

Focus Update

Daily stand-ups, check-ins, and OKR are growing in popularity so you and your team should give us a try! Don’t lag behind all the teams and start-ups. With Focus, you’ll find ease in fostering clarity and teamwork across all types of departments and projects!

Schedule a meeting with our CEO and team at Focus.

Let me know what you think about my article and share your experience with daily stand-ups below! Follow our Facebook and LinkedIn!

The post Daily Stand-ups are a Must! Here’s Why. appeared first on Focus.

We always hear that we should shoot for the stars, but what does that really mean? It’s great to set big goals but how big should you aim for? What are these Moonshots and Roofshot OKRs and in which context should you apply them? Which one is right for my company or team? These are all good questions and you’ve come to the right place.

Now that you know about OKRs and the basics of making OKRs, let’s go even more in-depth. This article introduces and describes the differences of Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs. These are the two types of OKRs that you can make. Read about the fundamentals you need to know about Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs and the guide to utilizing them correctly. At the end of the article, there are extra tips for your team to have successful OKRs.

A quick refresher on the fundamentals of OKRs:

OKRs are Objectives and Key Results.

First, the objective is where the team wants to be or what the teams wants to achieve.

Secondly, key results are the metrics or milestones that track how the objective is going to be fulfilled. These are meaningful performance measurement tools. For each objective, there should be at least 3 key results. There can be up to 5 Key results, but 3 is recommend.

OKR is a goal setting framework that adapts to work for your team. It values the bigger picture and measures what matters. Transparency is key and this structure gives everyone a clear goal to focus on. OKRs also provide a clear explanation or impact of what the team’s achievement of the key results will bring.

You can read more on Focus and why our company revolves around OKRs: Founder’s Story.

This article covers 5 main sections:

1. Moonshot OKRS
2. Roofshot OKRs
3. Table Comparison
4. How to use Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs
5. Extra Tips

Moonshot OKRs

Moonshot OKRs are those that seem overly ambitious. These stretched and aspirational goals challenge your team. It’s a new project that no one has touched upon yet. It pushes everyone’s limits and set a new definition for what’s possible. Since it requires the team to “shoot for the moon” and as a result, the goal will seem almost out of reach.

The pathway to this goal is undefined, unstable, risky and require experience.

Often time all the resources are not listed out and the research you have is limited. Your team has to pave the path and should start off having no real knowledge of the step by step of how to attain the end goal. This type of OKR is fluid and has room for variance. The team’s understanding of the status quo is broadened. Most companies, such as Google, use Moonshots. As a result of this formidable objective, success with a Moonshot OKR means achieving 60 to 70% of the key results.

The drawback to this type of OKR is that your team would be highly unlikely to fulfill 100% of the goal. The consequence of this drawback could deter investors or funding, so planning ahead for the unknown is a necessity.

Teams that know how to set Moonshot OKRs and afford the damages should stay cautious whilst realizing that even though they fail to “reach the moon”, where they land is still a remarkable accomplishment.

These types of goals help the team to curate revisions, assess their action plan, and find areas for improvement. The results are used as data to create the next Moonshot OKR.

In short, Moonshots are high risk and high reward.

Example:

Objective: Create a marking campaign and increase brand presence

Key Results:

-Increase daily blog readers from 10 to 100

-Increase social media following by 200%

-Sponsor 10 Influencer product reviews on Youtube

-Curate 2 Business Partnerships with Local Community targeting product demographic

Roofshot OKRs

Roofshot OKRs (also known as committed OKRs) include achievable goals. This second type of objectives are still described as difficult but still exist within the team’s known trajectory. Success for a Roofshot OKR means reaching 100% of the key results.

These OKRs are akin to contracts; Roofshots are a guaranteed commitment and results need to be met. You can expect this OKR to be successfully completed by the end of its timeline.

Once finalized, the common understanding is that the OKR will be completely fulfilled. Hence the reason it’s also referred to as “committed” OKR. An unfinished Roofshot goal should be met with serious discussion. While OKRs in their nature are inherently hard, Roofshots are a defined commitment that includes the tasks easily lined up. Missing the target with this OKR highlights that there is a critical blind spot in the team’s operation.

These OKRs provide the much needed results for teams that are looking for steady goals and stability. It can connect different interdependent teams by having them each know what to expect from the other.

Example:

Objective: Improve brand presence

Key Results:

-Create 5 articles

-Get 15 reader surveys and reviews

-Open Accounts on 6 Popular Social Media Networks

-Start a company hashtag that

Some more general OKR examples can be found here on the Focus blog: HR examples, Product Management examples, and Marketing examples.

Table Comparison

Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs have different purposes, meaning they should be used for different contexts. There are various advantages of each that should be considered. This table reiterates the lengthy description of Moonshots and Roofshot OKRs from above and compares them.

*Just a reminder that all OKRs are supposed to be inherently hard. They are not a list of tasks, but rather goals. No OKR, whether Moonshot or Roofshot, should be taken lightly.

How to use Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs

Start with Roofshots

Due to the overtly ambitious nature of Moonshot OKRs, experts like Felipe Castro recommend that beginners start off with Roofshot OKRs. You want to start off big, but still within reason. New teams need motivation and small successes are necessary. Roofshots provide the stable foundation that set your team off on the right foot. Using Moonshoot OKRs in the beginning can demotivate the team. It might let the team harbor an uncommitted mindset and culture of not reaching the full potential. Additionally, you take a gamble with the Moonshots compared to the guaranteed success of a Roofshot. Moonshots provide an opportunity for growth in the right context, so it’s best to wait till the team is ready to manage and take on bigger risks.

Transition to Moonshots

However, all OKRs should be designed with the intention of pushing the team out of their comfort zone. Some might even prove to be somewhat uncomfortable. Once the team matures, transitioning to Moonshot OKRs keeps everyone on their toes. It would force the team to develop creative solutions and ask more questions. Without changing to Moonshots, the team’s progress could stagnant. In short, the team should start with Roofshot OKRs to build and develop a results-based mindset then transition to adding Moonshots. The team could go further to expand their limits after orienting themselves to this way of thinking.

The Perfect Mixed Approach

The transition to using Moonshots means to combine them; creating a mixed approach. Your objective would include one Moonshot key result and the rest would be Roofshots. A combination of these OKRs when used wisely could prove a powerful strategy. It means having an attainable goal while setting aside 10 to 30% of the key results as a Moonshot. A combined Moonshot and Roofshot OKR allows for the advantages of both types.

The Moonshot and Roofshot OKR combined should be the endgoal because Moonshots on its own require quite a bit of caution and risk-taking. It’s my recommendation that non-OKR experts reach and stay using this combined method. A Moonshot OKR’s profit is not always promised and the pathway is unstable. Your team would enjoy the multitude of benefits listed above and avoid undesired business outcomes with the implementation of a Moonshot AND Roofshot OKR. This way the team finds space for development whilst maintaining most of their current success rate.

Extra Tips

Whether making a Moonshot or Roofshot OKR, labeling is one of the most important steps. The OKR should be transparent and understandable. It’s a signal of the team’s expectations; this is what everyone deems as achievable. Being clear is important because everyone on the team knows where to direct their focus and motivation. Who wouldn’t want to stay on track with the rest of the team?

A team that works with the same objective in mind is a team that conquers Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs.

While Roofshots have easily defined resources, Moonshots instead require the over usage of resources. An example of the usage of resources is involving everyone in the team and all the teams in the company.

A defined objective that everyone can focus on means everyone realizing their role in the big picture.

Another tip I have is to start off with a good team. Read our CEO’s article on building a great team as well as Forbes’ article on workplace team bonding.

Lastly, after learning about Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs, it’s time to make some! Be prepared for the unexpected and proceed with caution, but don’t let that get in the way of your excitement for the future.

The post Moonshot and Roofshot OKRs: Learn about the two types of OKRs appeared first on Focus.

Scrum standup is a daily meeting that helps product teams to be more effective and analyze their routines. The recommended length of the meeting is 15 minutes, however, it depends on the team size. All members of the product team participate in the standups, not only the product owner and scrum master.

Scrum meetings or Daily Standups might help product owner to optimize development and prepare the product for the launch without delays and issues. It’s a beautiful theory. In reality, effective and short scrum standups can turn into nightmare routine where no one understands what’s going on in the team. How to run really effective daily meetings?

The main goal of the meeting in Scrum is sharing the statuses of the work for each member. During the standup, everyone tells about the current situation in the job to align the team and create a total vision.

There are no tables and сhairs on the scrum meeting. It’s called standup and attendees participate while standing to make this meeting as short as possible. Difficult and long questions might be discussed after the meeting between a team leader and member who has the issues, but not with the whole team.

Nowadays, scrum meetings sometimes are considered outdated and are criticized by some companies. However, scrum standups generally are very popular across development teams. Product owners claim that standups help them to manage the team more effectively.

Running effective scrum meetings is not a unique skill for product owners. It’s possible to understand how it works, practice, and improve its power. The following recommendations will help product owners and scrum master to run the best standups.

8 simple recommendations to run standups effectively

1. Define the meeting format 

In Agile, standup meetings run while the sprint that is usually 2-4 weeks period. The team should specify the set of features and requirements from the backlog for the iteration.

An important goal of the daily standups is defining a timeframe for the meetings and remember that standup is not a usual meeting or retrospective meeting. 

2. Invite the team and define the roles

The best solution for the scrum meeting is the team of 8-12 people. It simplifies communication and makes it short. 3 main roles should be on the scrum meeting:

• Scrum master, who plays as a coach and helps the team to optimize processes and jobs;
• A product owner or product manager who prioritizes the features and communicates with clients and experts;
• The development team consists of members with different roles and responsibilities (developers, marketers, support managers, etc).

Other people like remote employees or partners might be are invited to the meetings. However, it’s better to restrain the total number of the meeting as it improves trust and confidence inside the team.

3. Choose the type of standups

There are two main types of standups you could run. The first one is the usual type for a team in an office. People gather in a room in a specific time and run synchronous standup. However, not everyone might be able to be in the office at a specific time, especially, it doesn’t work for remote teams. 

The second type of standups is an asynchronous meeting where the team uses a messenger or a special tool like Standuply or Focus for running events. At this type, team members send answers to the bot and managers receive daily reports with all information in Slack or web application. 

4. Pick up the time and place

There are no special requirements for the place where you can run standups. The board with stickers or displays with a special tool can be useful for the meeting but it’s not crucial. You need an empty area for offline meetings or communication software for running standups online. For running the asynchronous standups you might use special tools from the previous rule. 

Experts recommend running standups each day at the same time. Morning is the best time for scrum meetings because it helps everyone to prioritize daily goals. 

5. Participate while standing

Meetings where you participate while standing helps to focus on the main goals and run the event shortly. Some creative teams run standups while they doing some exercises like planks. You should choose the best option for you to run short and effective meetings.

6. Follow the day agenda

Daily scrum meetings follow 3 main questions that everyone should answer:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you going to do today?
• What are the blockers or obstacles?

Answering these simple questions, the team can find out the problems that they must solve or optimize. It’s the best way to align the team and get areas for improvements. 

Don’t forget to take notes and share information with the team or use bots for standups that made it for you.

7. Simplify the process

It’s useful to visualize day agenda that everyone could see current tasks. You might use a kanban board that helps to prioritize daily goals and statuses. Here are a couple of examples of how you can use boards:

It’s crucial to see deadlines, the list of tasks your team should do, and what should you decline while it’s not a priority. In this case, the product owner should use some of the prioritization techniques. 

8. Communication and partnerships

Remember that daily standup is a valuable time where everyone participates in the process. Each team member should share the most valuable information for the team. The right communication is a core for productivity. A Scrum Master or Product Owner should stop useless communication to make the meeting more helpful.  

Avoid usual mistakes

There are most frequent mistakes on the scrum meetings: 

• A long period of waiting. You should explicitly follow the timeframe. Start standups in the same period. Don’t wait for everyone. If someone is late – it’s his or her fault.
• New ideas and topics. Daily standups are not about planning. It’s a meeting for sharing the statuses of the work.
• Vague and long speech. Long and vague speeches reduce the efficiency of the meeting. Focus on things that matter to the company and team members. 

There is no secret sauce in these recommendations, but it can help you to build high-performing meetings in a scrum team. Thinking about the team and focusing on the main things, the product owner can run useful and interesting 15 minutes meetings where everyone wants to participate. 

To run asynchronous standups and retrospectives, you can try Focus that helps teams stay in sync and work better together.

The post 8 Key Rules on How to run Better Scrum Meetings appeared first on Focus.

They’ve already achieved outstanding results in the area your organization operates. They are full of energy and tell anyone who will listen how awesome it is at work in your company. If you ask for working overtime, they do it – and happily. If you don’t, they unquestionably would if you did. They are the least likely to quit, and the most likely to pull others in your company. 

How did you do that? How did you create this team?

To answer those questions, let’s turn the clock way, way back — the time when the people were hired in your company. In this article, we talk about 5 crucial steps that help you to build a fantastic team.

1. Hire the best

You know, I don’t want to be captain obvious, but it’s easier to recruit the right candidates and give them all opportunities for achievements then hiring people whom you will be trying to motivate. The road from hundreds of resumes to your best employee is started with understanding the ‘right’ resume. 

Think about what’s really necessary for an individual to achieve the job’s goals. Define the job before hiring an employee. For example, persistence, listening skill, and learning ability often are more important for a sales manager than a degree from a cool university or work experience in your industry.

2. Company goals

To manage your team effectively, let’s try to do a little test. How many employees know your company goals? Just ask them about it. It’s crucial for team management that people know the main organization’s goals and understand how they participate in it.

Start asking employees about 1-3 main goals of your company. It gives a lot of insights into what people are thinking about the organization. Once you’ve understood all the opinions, keep going through the employee’s value. Show the individual how he or she impacts the company’s goals. It’s super important for people for getting value out of their job.  

Also, notice how different opinions you have now from your team members. Don’t forget to implement the workflow that helps you to make company goals transparent and show employees’ influence on it.

3. Personal goals

Alright! Now, that you’ve already built a transparent company’s goals in your workflow, let’s take the next step and create an outcome-driven culture. When approaching this, it’s really, really important to remember that employees do not want to devote their life to complete the company’s goals. They want to be passionate about what’re they working on and see their self-development. 

For that reason, your experience shouldn’t be defined by the milestones you create, but instead by the improvement of their life your company provides. Create individual development plans with employees that give your employees roadmap with measurable goals and timeframe for achieving these goals. You can read this article to get more information about individual development plans.

Take the time to get very clear on what kind of ‘better people’ your company makes. It will inform everything that follows from here, so it’s super important to get right. 

4. Communication

Communication often challenges for many teams. We receive a lot of new information in our email boxes and messengers. Everyone wants to get our attention in different ways. While you’re trying to avoid a lot of noise from various channels, it’s hard to build alignment across the teams.

You want your entire organization to be not only aligned around company goals but also has a workflow where everyone clearly understands each other. It’s hard, especially in that volume of communication. Many teams spend their time in the meetings to do their work better and build alignment. But you know that often meetings are not really productive. Regarding a Microsoft survey, an employee spends 27 hours per week for meetings. Wherein only 10% of employees called these meetings useful. People like to solve issues and make deals, but not discuss it.

When you design workflow for goals achievements, not discussing – it relieves a huge amount of employees’ energy and time. But how to set this kind of workflow, which reduces the time in meetings and synchronize the team? 

For each touchpoint, think about outcome-driven culture – what’s important to the company at that particular time? What the real goal of a meeting? In most cases, it’s planing, problem-solving, making decision, or synchronization with the team. And it ends with improving employees – the kind of people who can deal with all staff better than before that.

For most of these reasons, you can use a simple framework, which helps people understand what’s going and simplify communication between members. For example, you can use three questions to synchronize the team every day:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you going to do today?
• What was the biggest obstacle?

You can use it in different cases either on short meetings aka standups or on online meetings via text. Also, you can set asynchronous conversation when everyone answers to the questions when it’s convenient for the person. It takes several minutes per day and helps to focus on the main goals. No long meetings – more time for work. You might even automate this process by using special bots or software like Focus that helps to run standups each day.

It’s only one piece of communication that you can implement in your workflow. Just start thinking about focusing on outcomes and simplifying current procedures. It gives you a lot of insights that the company’s processes, which were invented long ago, are not optimized for the current structure. 

5. Recognition

68% of companies who implemented an employee recognition system report a positive effect on employee engagement. At the same time, employees don’t feel recognized in most companies. There is a huge potential for managers on how you can increase employee engagement. Just implement a recognition system. To understand better how to do it correctly, we need to talk about common issues there.

The main problems with recognition are:

i. Wrong recognition

It’s kind of like a bad-suited jacket – you’re giving appreciation to the employee, but he or she doesn’t like it. For instance, a person can avoid public recognition because of a person’s modesty. Sometimes you can give appreciation either in the not right moment or situation. It’s a manager’s job to know the characteristics of each member of the team and understand how and when sharing appreciation. 

ii. Non-specific recognition

General “thank you” or “great job!” are good, but you know, it’s not the best way for appreciation. To get them, a significant recognition begins to be specific like “Thank you for your help with launching a new product, especially, with creating the awesome design in a short time.” Also, show them which value you recognize in their work.

How to implement a recognition system?

That’s why it’s crucial to implement a recognition system in the team that helps everyone to be specific and recognize co-workers at the right moment. You should understand the character of each employee in the team and the ways how they react to appreciation. The common practices for building recognition system correct are:

• Do recognition regularly
• Do public or private appreciation, depends on an employee character
• Do it online to write down this moment. It’s like a ’success diary’ with their achievements. It helps you to see the traction and motivates employees to reach the new accomplishments.

Sketchdeck says feedback is the key to navigation remote-waters and we agree 100%.

Conclusion

Building an amazing team is challenging for any founder or manager. There is no secret mechanic that you can use for creating a really powerful organization. It’s always about a combination of things where you should be the pro. To summarise crucial parts for team management: 

• Hire the best candidates
• Set clear company goals and ask your employees about its
• Create an employee development plan with personal goals
• Build a simple and outcome-oriented workflow in communication
• Implement employee recognition correctly

In Focus, we eat our own food while creating software that helps teams increase performance and build high-engaged culture. Our goal is to simplify workflow with transparent goals, clear communication, and employee recognition. In Focus, it’s easy to create a company and personal goals when everyone will be able to see how he or she impacts the company goals. In fact, managing a company is hard, and we want to make it better when everyone in a team gets benefits from that. 

Share in the comments below your experience on how to create an exceptional team. 

The post 5 Essential Steps to Building an Amazing Team appeared first on Focus.