How Long Does it Take to Develop Trust in Daily Huddles?

In the fall of 2020, Kaas Tailored hosted a series of Zoom calls unpacking our Daily Management System (DMS). Each month we focused on a different element of our DMS starting with strategy, then discussing daily huddles, then talking about Visual Management Systems (VMS), and ending with Leader Standard Work. In this post,  Jeff explains how Daily Huddles help organizations build trust quickly.

How Do You Know Daily Huddles Are Working?

It all comes down to Trust: the currency of relationships.

When it comes to building trust, I am a big proponent of looking at interactions within the team to determine how the system is performing. We actually did a little bit of math and said, “How many interactions did we have with each other if we were to measure all the interactions in the company a year ago today?” I have asked several people, “How many interactions are happening now?” And we think it is a tenfold increase. We are interacting much more frequently, which means the information is in smaller bits and the likelihood of making a bad product decreases.

How Does Meeting Daily Build Trust?

If you have ever spent time with us on a tour, you know that batch production leads to Overproduction, which is the most evil waste since it hides and causes all of the other wastes. When you do batch production and make a hundred at a time, if you make one wrong, you have a hundred wrong, and it’s a big deal.

Most people do not carry over that learning into the communication aspects of their business. What we were doing before our daily huddle was batch communication, maybe one meeting a week. For example, Ken, the general manager, and I would speak about once a week. Now we talk three times a day, at least, and sometimes four. Another example is that we were also meeting as a leadership team every Monday for 30 minutes to have a similar discussion that we have during our daily huddle now. The number of interactions is actually causing us to quickly know when we are going sideways. Daily Huddles allow us to build trust. There is a word also that is familiar, and it is hope. And hope is usually built on a foundation of trust.

Daily Huddles Help Build Trust Quickly

When I raise my hand in the daily huddle and say, “I am going to get it done,” there is a decent chance I am going to get it done. That is, I would say, the building blocks of trust. Of course, trust can be lost in a minute. So it is something we will always have to work on. We saw a drastic increase in trust after 3-4 months of daily huddles, which is really fast for business.

If you would like to learn more about how to implement a Daily Management System within your organization or more about Kaizen and Continuous Improvement, consider signing up for a Kaas Tailored Waste Tour.