Hearts was one of my favorite card games in college. I remember staying up deep into the night regularly with my roommates playing it. I recently taught our kids how to play and have been playing with them more regularly of late…and I was reminded how much I enjoy the game. No metaphor or simile is perfect, and this one isn’t either, but it occurred to me the other night that being a CEO is a little bit like playing a game of Hearts. First and foremost, you have to play the hand that you’re dealt. No matter how proactive you want to be about running your own agenda, things happen around you — with your people, your customers, your…
Archives / May, 2017
Why Our Executive Team Does Daily Standup Meetings
Another CEO with whom I trade notes on the craft of running a company asked me this question the other day, and I thought the answer would make a for a good blog post. Any product team (or other kind of team) who has Agile practices, does some kind of a Daily Standup (DSU) meeting in which each team member reviews progress against goals for a given period and highlights issues where he or she is blocked and needs help. I wrote about Return Path‘s journey to implement Agile across the whole company last year here. My meeting routines have been shaped over the years but the current versions are largely influenced by Lencioni’s Death by Meeting, which is worth a…