How a daily huddle can keep your business aligned and on track

Intermountain Healthcare uses the rather simple ritual of the morning huddle to pretty much run its entire operation of thousands of people across 23 hospitals. Here at Gapingvoid we call it the “daily cuddle”, modeled on our friend Verne Harnish’s huddle.

“Beginning at 8:45 AM, care teams and managers in our hospitals and clinics gather in more than 1,500 Tier I huddles. At 9 AM, their reporting is considered in about 170 Tier II huddles, consisting primarily of directors of hospitals and clinics. By 9:15 AM, the reports of those directors are considered in Tier III huddles by hospital administrators and geographical clinic groups. Their findings and needs are, in turn, considered 15 minutes later in Tier IV huddles of affinity hospital groups such as trauma hospitals, rural hospitals, home care, and the Medical Group. Their reports escalate further to Tier V, consisting of major organizational areas such as all hospitals and community-based care. By 10 AM, vital information has risen to the executive leadership, which includes the CEO and his direct reports plus other assigned functional executives.”

We love this. Such a simple, elegant to solution to a problem ALL medium and large companies have: the fact that we are all drowning in data.

Culture change is a lot like marketing, in that “simple and elegant” usually works best. “Complicated and convoluted” is not only less effective, it rarely gets off the ground to begin with.