Enrich your standup meeting with WIFLE & 02(Occasion Opinion)

I'm sure, many of you have already attended many standups before reading this blog. If you are not familiar with standups, below are some useful links.

In short, a standup helps you to keep track of your team's progress on a daily basis. Stand-up is a 'self reporting' meeting. In Agile, the team members don’t necessarily report to a team lead. Its main objective is to self organize a team. According to me, standup is a great opportunity to meet all your team members at the same time & get an idea about the lists of tasks an individual is doing during today's schedule & whether any assistance is needed to accomplish those tasks! The meeting should not last for more than 15 minutes for 5-6 teammates!

Alright so we're convinced with standup meetings. We conduct standups daily. Everyday we come, we meet, we discuss & we work.(How boring! I felt really boring while even adding this sentence) We need to add some spices & have some TADKA(tempering) in order to make our standup meetings really interesting. Here, I want to help you make your standup meetings really happening using some out of the box ways!

WIFLE - What I Feel Like Expressing

Basically, in this concept we ask each team member, how are they feeling both personally & professionally. There is no pass, everyone has to participate. It enables each member to express what is currently going on, in his/her personal and business life. Below are some useful links to know more about WIFLE.

http://www.actioncoach.com/What-I-Feel-Like-Expressing---How-to-Build-a-Championship-Team?pressid=35

Interesting! Isn't it? I want to know if you have the same feeling after reading about WIFLE, we have been conducting this concept as a part of the standup since 1-2 years. Believe me it's really amazing. It helps to understand team members & their thoughts which allows you to come closer. Also, you connect to each other personally. If we conduct WIFLE correctly, the team bonds together much more effectively.

This also opens up shy people who are hesitant to talk or who want to have own privacy. Having WIFLE would definitely add value to our daily standup meetings! I would suggest to conduct WIFLE once in a week, preferably Monday. Many people hate to work on Mondays(I really kick off new things on Mondays mostly).

That could be one of the reason, majority of my plans don’t work. Ask each team member about what they feel like expressing both personally & professionally. Professional aspect is very important here. As a Team Leader/member it's important to understand what people feel. Some might talk about problems whereas some might talk about interesting things in work that they are implementing.

O2 - Occasion Opinion

The idea behind this O2 came in my mind during the Dahi Handi(Read more on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahi_Handi) festival where a team forms a human pyramid. The first thought that came to my mind, was what exactly makes them a good team or what qualities a Govinda(Team member) should have & I decided to discuss with the team on the same during the standup. It was nice discussion around team building & from then, we started conducting O2 almost once in a week on various topics(celebrity B’day, large organizations foundation day, recent AWS outage etc)

Also, we should not conduct WIFLE daily. If we do so, we will definitely lose the real intention & everyone would eventually feel bored. So here is the alternative, you can conduct 02 whenever you want! Basically, the team needs to share what great things happened on the same day. For example, today is Amitabh Bachchan's(Bollywood Legend) Birthday. Ask each team member what qualities made him a Bollywood superstar or you can even ask what qualities one should have to become a superstar in your field! This should not be very fancy & doesn't take more than 6-8 mins to conduct the activity among 5-6 people. In this, mostly talk about qualities, team bonding etc. You can even ask about festivals/day's & try to relate it to your own work.

Recently, we had a discussion on Krishna Janmashtami. In Maharashtra, we celebrate this festival by having a human pyramid & dahi handi. This involves team work so everyone shared their views about what makes an ideal team, importance of team bonding etc which would boost everyone to work as a great team.

Conclusion

Standup meetings are very important for your team/project/organization in order to track daily work. It is one of the best ways to stay updated with team members instead of having ad-hoc meetings!

WIFLE helps to open your heart & bond with your team professionally as well as personally. Occasional opinion tightens team bonding & gives an idea of what/how an individual thinks!

You can't measure success of these activities as soon as you start but definitely it's an investment where you get maximum return & most importantly, people love to become a part of your team!

Go ahead & conduct these meetings with your team. You need not need a title(Team Leader/ Manager etc) to enforce your team to include WIFLE & 02 in your daily standups & do share your ideas on WIFLE and O2.