1, 2, 3, BREAK! Go team!

I think setting the tone on a daily basis is as important to consider as first impressions are lasting and important. How you start the day with people, what people’s first impressions of you are on any given day, particularly if you’re in management, has a profound impact on the day’s productivity. You have to be able to mask some of the things that are going on outside or in your personal life. When you get into the office it can’t be a situation where you’re first reaction to somebody is a negative reaction or somebody bears the brunt of something that’s a personal issue that you’ve brought into the work place. I think that a lot of the productivity that occurs during any given day with the people that you have is based on how they get that day started.

I know that we start off every day as a company with a morning scrum and there’s a lot of value to it as a manager in terms of understanding what people are doing and being able to allocate resources. It’s also a great approach for us to better understand how we’re resourcing things to facilitate problem solving in a light way and ensures we are managing things appropriately. Added bonus is it’s only 15 minutes so there’s not an enormous overhead that’s required. The other thing that I think it does is it enables us to, as management, capture some of the first interactions that the people have in the day and ensure that it’s positive. Not to say that we always succeed in that, but that’s one of the goals is to come in and get people started in the right direction. So it’s a chance to not just make sure somebody’s working the right task, but to maybe provide some positive feedback. Even doing something as simple as a smile when you first come in helps to frame people’s days in a positive way is important. So that scrum provides us with an opportunity to as a company and management, get things off on the right foot. So I’m curious what other people think about that. Is it something that’s important enough for you to focus on, ensuring that people get off on the right foot with everyone on a day to day basis? Is it something that other people are paying attention to or believe in the validity of? I’d be really curious to know what other people think about the importance of starting off the day in a positive way with other employees and team members.