Daily Check-In Chats

How to Perform Daily Check-In Chats with your team

Remote management’s biggest challenge

Obviously, we all appreciate the benefits of a remote-work environment. However, the remote lifestyle presents some unique challenges which must be overcome.

Because we don’t see our each other in person (or even virtually) on a daily basis, it’s important for remote managers to keep in touch with team members on a daily basis.

Critical conversations: Daily check-in chats

Daily check-in chats are the ultimate tool for keeping a close connection with your team. Drive operational efficiencies by making check-in chats a daily habit.

A single, daily check-in chat should last 15-30 minutes, and should be a structured conversation, not a free form discussion. Each chat should be driven by a single question that reinforces the current goal of the team.

Initially, you’ll use the same question to drive successive chats. Over time, however, the key question may change, as the goals for your team evolve.

Quality is a journey and not a destination. We all have room for improvement. Therefore, your driving question will likely be quality-driven.

If you’re managing one of the rare teams whose core KPIs are already high, then use your check-in chats to improve quality in other areas, such as adherence to the calendar, development of root cause analysis/deep dive protocol, or adherence to workflow.

Daily check-in chats in 6-steps

Check-in chats are critical for ensuring business continuity and quality performance.

Therefore, you should make every attempt to execute your chats in a timely and effective manner. Successful check-in chats consist of 6 steps, as follows.

Step 1: Pick your target

First, you must decide what the single driving question for your daily check-in chats will be. It is critical that you determine the driving question before you begin your daily chats.

Without a pre-planned question driving your conversation, it’s easy for daily interactions to get off track. You’ll counteract this tendency by leading each daily chat with a well-chosen question.

Here is a good example of an effective driving questions: “Yesterday, did you hit the quality target metric? If not, did you perform an RCA?”

Step 2: Block your calendar

Many managers attempt to perform daily check-ins on the fly. Because check-ins can happen in as few as 15 minutes, these managers mistakenly believe they can conduct their chats in an ad-hoc manner, or “between meetings.”

But this never works.

Without standing calendar events, it’s impossible to reach every team member, every day. Instead, schedule check-in chats in advance by blocking your team calendar and keeping standing meeting times.

This is the only way to consistently execute quality check-in chats.

Step 3: Decide who initiates

Within WorkSmart, you have the option to fill in the status of each check-in chat as the manager, or to allow each IC to initiate their own check-in chat.

To allow ICs to initiate, access the Check-In app in Crossover, then select Settings, and then turn on Worker Initiated Check-Ins, as shown below.

Step 4: Be consistent

Whether you or your IC’s are initiating your chats, it’s critical they happen daily. There’s no substitute for consistency. And no substitute for quality.

You’ll need both to make the most of your chats. Ensure your chats are executed daily, and with quality, and watch as they propel your team towards their goals.

Step 5: Document results

You, or your IC, will access the app to record the daily result. Select a pre-filled status selection, and add notes to clarify details.

The following are the pre-filled status selections you can select in the Daily Check-In Chat app:

• Not Done: Manager did not complete Check-In Chat

• On Track: Individual is on track to hit the metric goal

• Wrong Thing: Individual is working, but working on something that doesn’t affect the metric

• Wrong Process: Individual is working with the wrong process

• Needs Action: Individual stuck needing action or decision from another team or person.

• Too Hard: Individual can’t think of a way to proceed, or has tried ways to proceed, but they haven’t produced results.

• Work Not Defined: Individual cannot work 8 hours per day because management has not defined the work to be done.

• Not Working: Individual is not currently working

Step 6: Make data-driven improvement decisions

Believe it or not, Step 6 is often left out, completely, in spite of it being the most important step. Step 6 is to synthesize and utilize the data you’ve collected in steps 1-5 to improve quality.

If you perform the previous 5 steps, but stop short of synthesizing and utilizing the data (step 6), then you miss the benefit of the entire process.

Once you’ve completed your daily chats, and you have clarity on each IC’s status, you need to ask yourself, “how will I use this data to increase quality?”

Step 6 exercise: List the top 3 biggest challenges to quality your team faces. Then list the top 3 actions you’ll take to overcome them.

Its OK if you take action on #1, only. Determining the top 3, even if you don’t act on #2 or #3, is a beneficial exercise.

A caution: Be accountable

New managers often, mistakenly, assume that the issues which are surfaced during the daily check-in chats will belong, exclusively, to their ICs. That is, with their team members, and not with themselves as manager.

However, the opposite is generally true. Managers who fully utilize the daily check-in chat will find that they own as many opportunities for improvement as their team members do.

For example, even if a manager discovers that their ICs are blocked in various areas, it’s the manager who usually winds up with the longest to-do list.

And it’s the manager who can affect the highest degree of improvement by taking action on the data gathered from a batch of well-executed, daily check-in chats.