Daily Production Meeting
If you have production staff like technicians or people who build or ship the product, you want to meet with them daily. Why? Because there is one thing that’s on the mind of most typical production workers: What’s going on at home? They’re thinking about what they need to do (or want to do) when they get home. They’re glued to their text messages or Facebook. It’s the job of the operations manager to hold this meeting every day to communicate how we are tracking on the vision, mission, and purpose.
This meeting should take place every business day! This gets the production staff focused on the goal for the day. It doesn’t have to be a long meeting. It can be 10 to 20 minutes. But the idea of production workers coming in and going straight to work with no leadership and no attitude adjustment is not
leadership.
Here’s a simple outline for your daily production meeting:
- Recognition (see previous page).
- Have a motivational quote or article that helps shape the values you want. For example, you can use Dale Carnegie’s Golden Booklet (see www.DaleCarnegie.com) or John Maxwell’s 365 Daily Reader, or Zig Ziglar’s Little Book of BIG Quotes. We have used all of these things and currently play five minutes of “A Conversation with Zig Ziglar.” He shares a couple dozen values on video. Teaching your staff about values will help them be more productive and positive.
- Have a technical tidbit of the day. Maybe something you learned at a seminar, or a best practice. Let your employees share also.
- Go over any special instructions for the day or any company announcements. If you have service tickets or routes, pass those out.
Weekly Manager Meeting
If you’re big enough to have managers, meet with them every week. For example, in my service company, I have a manager over each of the areas of business (Marketing, Sales, Operations, Administration). You may have one manager over some or all of that. Here’s what’s covered in that meeting:
1. Recognition.
2. Leadership training – Spend five minutes going over a section of this chapter.
3. Review reports – See Administration for the reports you need to be producing. These reports show how you are doing on your goals.
4. Go over any issues that need discussion or decisions.
(Reference Pages 210-211 of the 5 Secrets of a Phenomenal Business Book by Howard Partridge)
