Whether you're the CEO, the office manager, the warehouse supervisor or a construction crew leader, you face a common problem - ensuring the people working for you work effectively and efficiently as a team, toward a common goal. To achieve this - at whatever level you are in the organization - the single biggest tool you have at your disposal is the morning 'ops' meeting. Used consistently and effectively it can directly raise your profitability by improving communications and teamwork, thus reducing waste, redundancy and errors.

What's the purpose of a morning Ops meeting?
Unlike other group or team meetings (like monthly management meetings or strategic offsites), the morning ops meeting is focused solely on the short-term "here-and-now" and has two purposes:

1. To review the operational details of the day ahead and ensure that they are executed as effectively and efficiently as possible; and
2. To (briefly) review any potential operational logjams on the near horizon (i.e. within the next few days).

As we'll see, an effective morning ops meeting will be short, very focused on immediate operational issues and constructive. Let's take each of those in turn:

How Long Should the Morning Ops Meeting Last?
Because it's typically held right before most people settle in to their day's work, this meeting needs to be as short as possible while remaining effective - 5 to 20 minutes is ideal.

A small team, say working on a construction site, can afford a shorter meeting - as short as 5 to 7 minutes - as they will continue to work in close proximity during the day. A team of senior executives will need longer - 15 to 20 minutes - to cover matters of more complexity and because they are highly likely to disperse afterwards (and so team communication becomes more difficult).