How to run a growth standup?

6 step actionable guide for your next standup.

Welcome to the 33rd edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more

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Meetings ≠ Outcomes🙄

Meetings = Monologues 🤖

Monologues = Waste of time ⌛️

The why? 💭
The leader in the team should know why there is standup meeting. If the meeting is to micro-manage each team member, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Standup meetings are to solve for each team member, period. Get everyone aligned on the “why”.

What’s the single source of truth? 🤔
Each standup should have the prep-work by the team member. If you are doing early morning meetings, spend 5 mins at the start to help the team write their blockers/updates onto a single tracker.

We recommend Airtable for a no clutter experience. This should be the only place everyone has their task pipeline & blocker callouts.

Cut the noise 🚫
Most standup meetings have this problem. They pick a topic & spend 50% of the time into it. The organiser should create a quick breakout room if that’s needed.

No topic should extend by 2 minutes if you have 10 member team standup. Also, never have a standup with 10+ folks; it doesn’t work, period.

Get each member to listen 🙉
If the why is clear, everyone would listen to the meeting speaker most of the time. If that’s happening, you will get unblocking done for everyone.

If everyone isn’t listening, the meeting should be a slack thread.

Get a standard format 🚀
Simple 3-step format to solve for any blocker.
→ What’s the exact blocker?
→ What’s been thought through?
→ Where do they need help?

If the blocker isn’t in the standard format, don’t pick it.

Get a moderator/scrum master 🤩
Democracy is not for stand ups. Running a standup is a skill - get someone who has the authority to delegate & unblock. The scrum master impacts the outcomes for each team member.

Every team member shouldn’t need to be a scrum master.

That’s all for now 🙌

Wanna know how we run standups at GrowthX?
Download the GrowthX daily standup template for FREE? 👉 👉