Whether by design, or out of necessity, many office workers are working remotely. This introduces a new challenge for team leaders. How do you keep people engaged and in sync?

I’ve asked this question of multiple business owners and a remote work expert on my business podcast recently.

I noticed a common denominator between them all. They all highly recommend a consistent (usually daily) check-in.

One effective way to do this is the Daily Scrum Meeting.

The Daily Scrum Meeting

Scrum is a way of organizing work and managing projects that’s popular with software development teams. I first experienced its usefulness when I worked in IT.

One major component of Scrum is the Daily Scrum Meeting. This meeting is a check-in that lasts a max of 15 minutes.

During this meeting each team member answers 3 questions:

1. What did you do yesterday?
   This question holds each team member accountable by matching up what they said they were going to do with what they actually got accomplished.

2. What will you do today?
   Asking this helps everyone think about their priorities and communicate them to everyone else. This also gives the opportunity for you to reprioritize if you see that someone is focusing on the wrong thing.

3. Are there any impediments in your way?
   This question helps people think through what is holding them up. It also gives you an opportunity to identify who should get involved to help them get over the hump.

Daily Scrum Meeting best practices:

• Designate who will run the meetings.

• Each team member should only talk for 2-3 minutes.

• Any impediments should be identified and worked through separately with the appropriate people involved.

• Keep the meeting hyper-focused and stick to 15 minutes.

That’s all folks! If you’ve noticed that your team isn’t making the same forward progress that you used to, I highly recommend that you set up a regular morning meeting.

Do it daily and I think you’ll be surprised at the results!