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Episode 208: The Power Of The Daily Huddle For Firm Owners
•Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers
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How much time would you get back if your meetings actually worked?
In this episode, Kristy walks through the daily huddle, the simple meeting Wize teaches firm owners to run with their team every day, so you can build a quick daily touchpoint that keeps your team aligned and nothing slips through the cracks between conversations.
You'll learn: ✅ Why the daily huddle is one of the simplest habits that changes how a firm runs ✅ The difference between something you unblock right in the huddle and something that needs its own follow-up: the PUB meeting (production unblocking meeting) ✅ How to know when it's time to hand the huddle off to your production manager ✅ Why rotating who hosts the huddle keeps the team engaged and brings fresh energy to the room ✅ How daily huddles build real connection across remote and hybrid teams ✅ What changes in your firm's production line once the daily huddle becomes a habit
This is a real look at how one accounting firm built a daily rhythm that keeps the whole team aligned, told by a mentor who has been running daily huddles for years.
If you've ever wanted your team to walk into each day already knowing exactly what to work on and where things stand, this episode will change the way you think about your team's daily rhythm and what happens once that habit takes hold.
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Welcome to The Wise Wave, the show for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who want more time, profit, and freedom, and a business that can run without them. I'm Brent Ward, your host, and each week we deep dive into the real stories, proven strategies, and battle-tested tools from successful firm owners just like you. Our wise mentors want to share their journey of how they've scaled and systemised their way to freedom so you can too. If you're stuck in the grind or you're ready to scale smarter, this is your blueprint. Let's get into the episode.
Welcome to today's coaching call. I am Christy. I'm one of the mentors here at WISE Mentoring, and I am your host. Today we're talking about the Daily Huddle. So I remember when I first joined WISE, gosh, five years ago now, and I was in our one-on-one program with Thomas, and he was going through my action items, and we got to the daily huddle as something
to implement. And I was like, Thomas, how am I going to find time to meet with my team every day? It's hard enough to meet with them once a week. You are crazy. So I was a little bit of a middle adopter and resistant for a month or two. We did discuss it in more than one board meeting. But then I finally, okay, you have to implement, do the things, they work. So I implemented the daily huddle and annoyingly it changed my life. And I had to say to Thomas at the next meeting, you were right. It's great. So it's really important that not only do you implement every one of the 101 steps, because they do work, but it's you do make the time for the daily huddles because it actually gave me back more time. There were less questions throughout the week. I was chasing up less things throughout the week because I knew exactly what my team were working on. We could unblock the blockages quickly in the meeting, or we could have a follow-up together. So it's a really critical one. It might seem simple, it might seem unnecessary to do as frequently, but it really helps everyone stay on task. We have a bookkeeping firm, so sometimes we have very repetitive things every day and every week, but it's important to ensure that the team are clear on their priorities. So three very simple questions to have each person speak to.
Maybe a colleague has already figured that out so they could help. So keeping them on task, you may choose to have your team share on the screen the workflow details of what they're working on to see the priorities, and then you can move things around. We don't expect our production team members to be able to consider all of the different priorities of things. So can also be really useful when you hear a production person listing five or six things that they're working on today and feel like that's a bit overwhelming, gives the production manager the opportunity or client manager to say, that job can wait till tomorrow because I need these other ones done today, or that's not a high priority, that can wait till Friday. So again, it just keeps things through flowing through the pipeline and allows the team to know exactly what they need to get done and have that rhythm and routine.
There's not really too much more to say on the daily huddle because you just need to do it. But to also remind you of resources that we have in our WISE Vault soon to be located in the WISE Hub, Selena, you're amazing. Is we have a resource for those of you that use carbon in your firms. You can even set up a work item in carbon to use for your daily huddle. Some team members like to have that functionality. They like to have a system, a software to use for it. And we've also got tools and resources on the Daily Huddle to remind you of these three questions to ask. Something I brought into my team as I started to withdraw was we put a note into carbon at the end of our daily huddles with a copy, a loom video of the meeting. And then my admin documents the three priorities for each person. And at the end of each day or the beginning of the next, the team members are responsible for commenting back on that task what they completed or where they got stuck. So then it gives me visibility across how the team is flowing and working when I'm not there every day. I thankfully don't have to go to the daily huddles
anymore, which is great, but I did for a long time. I then was able to sit back and let someone else host. And we now have a rotation. So my senior and assistant client managers host two days a week, and then the production manager hosts one day a week. And that's just sort of helped change up the pace of those meetings as well, because a lot of our work is repetitive and can be a bit boring, and even the daily huddles can get a little bit stagnant, where you know you just feel like it's become by rote that you hear the same things from the same people day in, day out. So we've changed it up a bit by having a different person host and bring their flavour to it. So Helen, when she hosts on a Monday, she gets the joy of hearing how everyone's weekend was, and Sue, when she hosts on a Friday, gets to send everyone off for their weekend and hear what their plans are. So it just allows a little bit of that casualness as
well. It was interesting. I was looking at a wheel of life response for a team member of one of the firms that I mentor yesterday, and one of the things that scored really low was their connection to the team. They felt quite isolated and they made a comment that they find it difficult not being in the office with their colleagues. I'm a fully remote firm, so none of my team have ever been in the office with each other. So we've had to work really hard on building that relationship and rapport with each other in a remote world, and the daily huddles form part of that as well. Before we had the daily huddles, sometimes team members wouldn't see each other for a week because they only met once a week. By having that light touch each day as well, just builds that relationship up. You hear little snippets of how someone's going. Your emotional intelligence gets to see if someone's having a bit of a flat day. You might check in on them a little bit more. So beyond keeping the production work flowing, it also allows you to have that strength of culture within your teams
as well. Mina, I'd love to know if you remember what it was like before Daily Huddles and after Daily Huddles. Probably going back a while for you. You've been around a while.
SPEAKER_03
We thought it was impossible at the time when it was raised, that it just simply couldn't be done, it wouldn't be done, and then now it's being done every day. And if if it were to go away, I don't think we could function without it.
SPEAKER_00
Love it. Couldn't have put it better myself. That's really great. Marlene, I'd love to hear how it's changed things for you in your team, having the daily huddle in place.
SPEAKER_01
It allows me to actually all of us to keep better track of where we are with with production and to set back clearer priorities. And it makes it easier for us to hit our our targets and our deadlines because we're actually reviewing things daily instead of less frequently. Ummunication, better keeping track of things.
SPEAKER_00
Justin, be great to hear from you if you've got the daily huddles happening consistently and how you found it. Do you do anything a little bit different in yours?
SPEAKER_04
I've just come back for monthly and I've you know I've I've noticed the huddles aren't being done as often. I look I still sort of chair the huddle at the at the moment while we grow the accounting team, but I certainly find them super helpful to keep everyone on track, uh, especially if if we don't have people in the office, we're still uh operating a bit of a hybrid model. We've probably got half our production team in the office and half at home. And I find that it definitely keeps our offshore team and our team working from home more engaged and on track. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, awesome. And uh in your team structure, do you have a client manager or a production manager?
SPEAKER_04
I have a production manager. I am still the client manager, unfortunately. Hopefully, uh we're not uh won't be saying the same thing in about six months' time. So yeah, we're getting there. We're just growing the team at the moment.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, cool, exciting. So uh have you got your production manager leading the meetings when you're not on leave to to get them to really commit to it?
SPEAKER_04
That was the idea, and I had a couple of conversations with her while I was away, but she was sort of struggling with the she was taking a lot of my responsibility while I was away. Yeah, uh as the client manager as well. So she was finding it difficult. She did say to me, Look, I'm I'm really only getting to them every second day. So I've come back from leave, she's gone on leave, I'll catch up with her. Yeah, exactly. She's she's uh she's back later this 40. So yeah, we will sort of restart the process again.
SPEAKER_00
It's really important to have team buy-in and to be consistent. And I know for me, before I had other team members I could delegate it to, I had to make it work every single day to lead from the front, and now I can lead from the back because my team have got it in hand. So even something to consider when you're unpacking it with your production manager when they're back, it allows more calm in the chaos. Even though you think it's too hard to honor a 10 to 15 minute meeting, when you're carrying the load of client manager and production manager, it's even more vital to have that very quick touch base with the team so that you know exactly what's coming and you know your calendar, you know the meetings that are coming up, and you can drive the team to help you meet those. When you move out into the silo model of not meeting every day, that's when it becomes more chaotic. So it'd be a good lesson for them to learn.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Wise Way. If today's episode sparked an idea or helped you see things differently, please don't forget to leave us a review. And if you haven't subscribed to the podcast on your favourite platform yet, please go ahead and do that as well. Let's continue the conversation here through YouTube or any other social platform that you can find us on. And just remember, if you're not a subscriber of our weekly Friday tip newsletter, get that to your inbox every week going forward. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, you don't have to do it alone. Let's build a business that works for you the wise way. See you in the next episode.
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