Top 10 best practices for an effective morning meeting, even for remote work

Working from home can impact the coordination of a team. That's why, when working remotely, it is vital to maintain the team bonded, as much for efficient projects' progression tracking as for maintaining cohesion. That's why you can try our ready-to-use Templates: with GoodMorning Meeting, you start your team's day in the right way. At this short daily kick-off catch-up, everyone shares the plan for their workday, clearly and concisely.

1. Share information useful to everyone

What is the purpose of a daily morning meeting? It is important to start a team's day with a moment of synchronization, especially when working remotely. This time together, also called a "morning briefing", has several objectives for each team member:

• Start the day with a clear understanding of the day's tasks;
• Ask if the team needs help;
• Be aware of each other's issues as some actions may be related;
• Move forward together in a coordinated manner.

Overall, it allows the team to get straight to the point, while being clear and concise. Everyone shares the tasks they have for the day, those they completed the day before, and brings up any blockages. This is not the time to debate, still you can take advantage of this morning meeting to raise a topic to be explored later in the day with the stakeholders concerned, without mobilizing the rest of the team.

This time of discussion also allows for solidarity between colleagues to strengthen the team. For example, it is an opportunity to ask for or offer some help, in order to rebalance the distribution of the workload if someone needs to be relieved, while others have bandwidth in their agenda for the day.  

With this pooling of information, everyone knows what they have to do, but also what others are working on. This avoids misunderstandings and ambiguities, since everyone hears the same thing at the same time. In addition, it can create bridges between the tasks of different collaborators. It's an excellent way to anticipate organizational problems, to simplify coordination between jobs, to connect actions that can be related, or to pool skills... In short, by synchronizing every morning, the team becomes more efficient! Discover here the example of Crédit Agricole des Côtes-d'Armor, which adopted this daily ritual and found real benefits in it.

2. Always start your day with this meeting

The morning meeting is a team ritual and a priority appointment. To work well, it necessarily plays an important role in the schedule of all team members. As its name highlights, the GoodMorning Meeting always takes place in the morning, so it is the first thing you do in your day! In the same way that we have a good breakfast with vitamins to start our day, we hold a short morning team meeting to launch our working day, and especially while working remotely!

Right after this daily meeting, employees would rush into the tunnel of their often busy agenda, caught up in their list of things to do, meetings and appointments... The principle of a ritual is to be recurrent and always be part of your team's schedule. Everyone knows that this morning slot is always dedicated to this, so they must set their other obligations after this daily team ritual - except in cases of force majeure, which are of course quite exceptional.

3. Bring the whole team together, whether they are in the office or working at a distance

The daily team meeting is not optional! It concerns the whole team without exception and without hierarchical distinction.

The GoodMorning Meeting would lose all its meaning if it was an optional meeting, since it is precisely an opportunity to coordinate your actions of all the other team members, even those who do not interact on the same projects.

So, except in cases of force majeure, every morning, the entire team is gathered in one virtual workspace, and this is one of the factors of success of this daily meeting. If you are exceptionally absent, add an idea beforehand on the online whiteboard to warn your colleagues. And of course, you will be able to check the Board afterwards, asynchronously, to get an overview of what was said.

4. Manage the duration of your daily meeting: 15 minutes, ready, steady, go!

Framing the duration of this recurring morning meeting is essential to preserve its benefits. The ideal duration of this daily meeting is 15 minutes, plus or minus 5 minutes depending on the size of your team.

The "morning briefing" should not exceed 20 minutes, as it is a short kick-off rather than a classic meeting. It must be concise to remain dynamic and efficient, and to set the tone for the day. Of course, you are allowed to share topics beyond work, a personal anecdote or a joke, but it has to fit in with the rhythm of the meeting.

If someone rambles or goes into too much detail on a topic, don't hesitate to gently refocus the topic to keep the meeting on track. If the morning meeting tends to run over frequently and disrupts everyone's agenda, the result will be counterproductive: the team will start their day frustrated and late!

To deep dive into some specific topics, there are other and more appropriate formats of team meetings. For example, the weekly meeting is more conducive to deepen current topics. To learn more, check out our Weekly Template!

By using the GoodMorning Meeting Template, you have access to dedicated features on your Klaxoon Board to set the duration of the meeting. With Live, the integrated videoconferencing tool, you can automatically set a duration of 15 minutes! A small alert tells you when the Live meeting is coming to an end, so you can add the extra 5 minutes when necessary.

5. Prepare the meeting before it happens

Arriving on time means arriving with everything ready for the meeting!

Everyone should make sure that they fill in their boxes before starting the meeting, and that their camera and microphone are working properly if they are working remotely. Of course, whether you are in the room or working at a distance, it is important to be presentable and not look like you just fell out of bed.

6. Respect punctuality

A golden rule for all meetings, even more crucial for distributed teams, obviously applies to the GoodMorning Meeting: start on time!

Forget about those who say "We can handle it with 5 less minutes...", especially for a 15-minute meeting. So, every morning, be disciplined and punctual. And even if 100% of the participants are not yet gathered at the set time, start the meeting without the latecomers. After missing the start several times, the ones who missed the start will eventually be there on time.

Note that being late can happen to anyone of course, and with Board, as everything is written, visual and plotted, occasional latecomers are not harmed and easily catch up with what they missed.

7. Use the full potential of your visual management tools

On the whiteboard of the GoodMorning Meeting, when everyone sends their ideas, they need to refer to the color code related to the nature of their ideas:

• Yellow for the tasks to be done during the day;
• Blue for actions in progress;
• Green for what was completed on the previous day;
• Red for blocking points to give an immediate warning at a glance.

This is visual management, which has proven itself and is a key feature of the various Klaxoon activities, including Board.

8. Illustrate your point with media content

On Board, everyone can read the ideas at the same time as they follow the Live meeting. Having the content in front of you enhances understanding, and Board also allows you to enhance what you say.

Indeed, the colored ideas can contain text, but that's not all! On the virtual whiteboard, you can also share images, links to documents or web pages, videos, music... This diversity of media allows your colleagues to go one step further, and to look at what concerns them or interests them in particular. After the meeting, they will know where to find the content again at any time of the day, since the Board remains accessible to all participants outside of the morning meeting time.

9. Use this ritual as a team management tool

Being a remote worker can lead to some isolation from the rest of your team. By setting a team ritual each morning, a manager can easily allow his employees to maintain the bonds between them.

The climate at work is a key factor in the efficiency and success of a team. In order to take care of the team, it is necessary to remain attentive to everyone and to maintain conviviality.

To do this, with distributed teams, whether working from home, in the office or elsewhere, it is highly recommended to keep your camera turned on. Seeing each other promotes social bonding, allows us to be more attentive to each other, and humanizes the daily meeting. So, for your GoodMorning Meeting as a team, simply start a Live videoconference in the same virtual workspace.

Another very easy best practice to make remote meetings more dynamic is just to say hello when you start! The GoodMorning Meeting is your first meeting of the day, and the distance should never be a reason to skip being polite! Our work colleagues are above all people, and everyone has good mornings with bad ones... Always counting on the same "fun" colleague to inject energy and good humor into the meeting is too easy, don't you think? It is so much funnier when everyone does their part, with a smile and a minimum of enthusiasm, even if you're not a morning person!

If you are working in hybrid mode (a part of the team working remotely while the other being in the office), don't hesitate to have stand instead of seeting in front of your camera for the meeting. This format, known as "stand-up meeting", allows to energize the exchange. If you are equipped with a Klaxoon MeetingBoard, this is the ideal configuration for the GoodMorning Meeting. Whether you are standing at your desk or behind your remote webcam, this is also an ideal time for a coffee (or tea) all together. Have your cup ready before you start!

10. Break the routine, renew yourself!

A ritual, by its recurrent nature, can lead to a certain routine. But of course, you don't want your team to get bored! Especially since in the morning, some people may not be fully awake yet, particularly when working remotely, where there is no transition in the transport: it is therefore necessary to break the routine to maintain their attention.

How can this be done? For example, by changing the facilitator of the meeting every morning. With Board, it's very simple, since everyone can synchronize the screen and move on the boxes of each other. Alternating the person who takes the sync each morning is a good idea so that it's not always the same person who does it, while the others are passive and waiting for their turn to speak.

The facilitator is also responsible for keeping the morning meeting on time. Another trick to break the routine here is to regularly change the order of speakers. When you renew your GoodMorning Board, every week or month for example, don't hesitate to define a new order for the speakers!