The Morning Huddle Podcast

[00:01]Hi, I'm Randy Hall with VetLead, and welcome to the Morning Huddle. It's good to have you here. This is our first morning huddle, which is what we're titling this podcast. I feel like having regular opportunities to support you, as you do important work in the veterinary profession, really matters.

A couple of things about the Morning Huddle here in episode one. One, I hope we get these out every week. I want to make sure we're here for you, that we're consistently supporting you as you do work in the veterinary profession, and that we help you do it in a happier, more successful, more efficient, more productive, less stressful way. That's what we're working on. We are the enemies of stressful, toxic, unhappy, disengaged cultures and teams in veterinary medicine. It doesn't have to be like that, and the Morning Huddle is part of how we help.

[01:30]I have the opportunity to go into hospitals consistently and watch them transform into organizations that do higher quality work with less effort and stress. They build high-performing teams. They create a different future for themselves. They let people work at a pace where they can be at their best, instead of being frantic and behind all the time. We don't need to live like that in veterinary medicine. There are places that don't. Everything we do points in that direction: a happier practice, with more successful, more productive, more fully engaged people.

[02:26]We're going to talk about those things here on the Morning Huddle, and we're going to break them into little bite-sized pieces. My goal is not for this to be ridiculously long, or for you to feel like you've got to set an hour aside to listen. It's about taking a little bit of time to start your day right. To think about your goals differently than maybe you have in the past. To work in a way that represents a better future, and work you're more proud of. If we can create that space for you in just a couple of minutes, in little bite-sized pieces, then that's the goal.

[03:10]So welcome to episode one. The thing I want to cover today is exactly that. I'm calling this the Morning Huddle, so I should probably start with the value of a morning huddle.

I work with practices that have a huddle every morning. What they do is organize their work, clarify their communication, and get people aligned around the important things for the day. We know the big picture. We know our veterinary medicine matters today, our patient care matters today, our client service matters today. We know those things on some level. But that doesn't mean we've planned to do them well. It doesn't mean we took a couple of minutes in the morning to set ourselves up for success.

[03:55]There are differing degrees of how we do these things. We can have poor patient care. We can have lousy client service. All of that is possible. So we're building sets of tools and habits that make sure we do our best work in this space, not just our work in this space. Those are two very different things.

We can go through a whole day and not get any better. Not get any more organized. Not get any more effective. Not improve in any way. In fact, maybe even degrade, because people are burnt out, tired of doing the same things over and over and feeling like they're wrong, not working together well in teams, not communicating well. That tends to degrade over time, because we didn't plan for it to upgrade over time. A morning huddle can do all of those things, or at least begin the process.

[04:47]Here's what I hear when I ask practices, "Do you have a morning huddle?" They say something like, "We don't have time for that." We don't have time to organize our work. We don't have time to plan for our best day. We don't have time to think about who wants to learn or grow today. We don't have time to manage the fact that somebody called out and we've still got to get the work done. So we don't plan. We just rush after the work with our hair on fire and try to get it all done. Nobody does their best, or feels their best, in that environment.

[05:30]A morning huddle is one small step you can take. It can be five minutes. You'll hear this theme throughout a lot of the work we do: if we can't do five minutes, we can't do ten. And if we can do five, we can do eight.

Here's the other thing people say to me: "Everybody's not here. Our shifts work differently, we split them up, and not everyone's around when we want to start." Okay. Let's start with who we have. Let's start with a huddle that gets some of the people there, and just begin. So much of our learning is in the trying. If we can't come up with the perfect way to do it before we start, we don't start. That's a way of thinking that keeps us standing still.

[06:25]"What could we try, even if it's imperfect?" is the question that helps you do something that represents forward. Something that represents better. If you had a three-minute huddle with four people, or two people, and said: "What do we want to focus on for the next hour to do our best work? If we want to get these animals on the table in a way that starts the day off well, what do we divide and conquer on? Who else needs to be in that loop? What's our best way to organize this work so we can do it more efficiently? If we wanted to learn or grow today, what could we practice to get a little better for tomorrow? Who needs to know what we talked about and wasn't here?" If we ask questions like that at the beginning of the day, in some organized framework, call it a huddle, call it a meeting, I don't care what you call it.

[07:10]Veterinary huddles have become a thing. I like to think I helped them become a thing, because I talk about them a lot as a communication vehicle. We'll talk in other episodes about which communication vehicles we want, because a lack of communication isn't something we should accept in veterinary medicine. We do two things in veterinary medicine: we do veterinary medicine, and we do communication. We're only trained for one.

So putting processes, tools, and systems like a huddle in place, to help us practice the other, can be really effective. Wishing people knew. Thinking they should have known. Thinking we did this yesterday, so why weren't they ready today? Those things trap us. They're things we make up in our heads and then believe as if they're facts.

[08:30]If we don't have a system for helping everyone get on the same page as we begin a complex, challenging day, then wishing it had gone differently, or thinking it should have, without a system for it, is kind of insanity. I'm not suggesting we're insane. I am suggesting we have a set of habits that don't lead to our best work. One of the habits we can build is a two-, three-, or five-minute huddle. We can start with: "What did we do well yesterday that we want to do more of today?" Or, "If we do today well, what would help us have a great day together? Where do we want to start?"

[09:00]When we begin these things, like anything new, people will look at us funny. They won't want to participate. They'll wonder what to say. They won't have thought about their comments. You'll get some crickets. I don't want you to care. Do it for 30 days and see what happens. Build a habit around it, and watch people start to participate, find value, or tweak the system in ways that make it even more valuable.

Deciding we'll only do this if everybody feels ready and prepared and good at it, even though we've never done it before, is again insanity. Pull people together. I don't even care if you announce it.

[09:31]Grab them and say, "How do we get our morning off to a really good start today? Could we think about that for 30 seconds?" Even that makes us better. Let it evolve into whatever you want. But don't decide that because it's not perfect, or people might not like it, or someone might not know how to participate, or we won't be good at something we've never done, that we shouldn't try. Those things trap you.

[10:15]Look. If where you are in your practice is a place you're proud of, that you feel good about, that represents your best work, your best culture, your happiest team, where people are thriving and not just surviving in veterinary medicine, then do more of what you're doing. You've cracked the code. You have a unicorn in the veterinary space. Keep supporting it. Yeah, you've got to maintain it, but you're there.

But if where you are today isn't where you want to be, then let's do one little thing that starts to move it in that direction. And as we do that one little thing, let's know it won't be perfect. It won't feel good initially. Nothing does when it's new. It won't have a bunch of people acting differently tomorrow. It won't be an instant success or a silver bullet.

[11:00]But it will be a step in the right direction. It will be something you can keep practicing and let evolve until it supports you the way you want. It will be a marker for how people show up and begin to participate, because after a while it feels weird not to. It doesn't feel weird on day one, but if we keep doing it, people start to understand and figure out how to help. They'll move toward saying, "Yeah, I want to work in a place where my hair isn't on fire all day too, and this might help."

[11:30]It's a start. That's all we're looking for. That's all this podcast is about. That's all these conversations are about: a start. Let's do one thing that makes us better. Because if we do one little thing that moves us in that direction, and then another little thing, we're on our way. And as long as we're on our way, we're going to make progress. If we're not on our way, and we're just wishing things were different, we won't make any. We've trapped ourselves in a space we don't want to be in and don't have a way out of. Let's use the ways we have, because there are some, and we're going to talk about them here.

[11:51]Thanks for spending a few minutes with me for this Morning Huddle. I hope it mattered. I hope it gave you something to think about. So go make a difference in your practice today. Go be a leader in your practice today. It doesn't matter what your title or role is, or how much time you have. None of that matters. You can do something that helps you lead, influence, and create a better world that you get to be part of. So go do that. Thanks for being here. I'll see you on the next Morning Huddle.

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