4,000 Daily Huddles and Not One Skipped

Lis­ten to the Arti­cle (4:25)

Part one of a three-part series on Hazel Jack­son and Biz Group, pub­lished along­side our new case study.

I’ve known Hazel Jack­son for about 20 years. She’s the founder of Biz Group, a lead­er­ship and learn­ing firm based in Dubai, and one of the sharpest oper­a­tors I’ve worked with in three decades of doing this. Today it’s a 60-per­son firm serv­ing Jumeirah Group, Emi­rates Air­lines, and Almarai, and this year it was acquired by Nema Hold­ing after 33 years of organ­ic, debt-free growth.

I recent­ly sat down with Hazel to talk about what actu­al­ly built that busi­ness. We cov­ered a lot of ground. I’ve been teach­ing the dai­ly hud­dle for close to 20 years and she offered a real­ly unique per­spec­tive that I appreciated.

Read that twice.

Many lead­er­ship teams get the dai­ly hud­dle back­ward. They treat it as a sta­tus report. Yes­ter­day’s num­bers, read out loud, nod­ded at, filed away. It becomes a for­mal­i­ty, then a chore, then the first meet­ing to get skipped when things get busy.

Hazel’s team has run a dai­ly hud­dle every work­ing day since 2001: 8:58am sharp. Over 4,000 hud­dles and counting.

But the num­ber isn’t the point. The lens is.

Look­ing For­ward, Not Back

Hazel does­n’t let her team treat the hud­dle as a score­board. She trains them to lis­ten for the trend under­neath the number.

That’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent skill than read­ing a met­ric. It’s pay­ing atten­tion to your peo­ple, not just your dashboard.

Mak­ing Sure Peo­ple Actu­al­ly Listen

After 25 years of run­ning the same meet­ing, Hazel knows the real risk isn’t peo­ple skip­ping the hud­dle. It’s peo­ple going through the motions.

So her team built a small inter­nal tool that ran­dom­ly pulls two names dur­ing the meet­ing. One has to say what the oth­er per­son­’s focus was that morn­ing. A sim­ple way to ensure the team keeps pay­ing attention!

It sounds like a game. It isn’t, not really.

That’s the actu­al func­tion of a hud­dle: cross-pol­li­na­tion. Some­one on your team is stuck on a prob­lem anoth­er per­son solved last month, and nei­ther of them knows it, because nobody’s real­ly lis­ten­ing. A good hud­dle clos­es that gap in real time, every day.

The Panadol for Everything

I asked Hazel what sin­gle dis­ci­pline she’d hand a new CEO if she could only give them one thing. She named the dai­ly hud­dle, and described it like a prescription.

She means the med­i­cine cab­i­net sta­ple, the thing you reach for first what­ev­er the symp­tom. Over­seas that’s Panadol. Here it’s Tylenol.

I’ve heard a ver­sion of this before. Roger Hardy (founder of Clear​ly​.ca — and now Kits Eye­wear), anoth­er CEO in our com­mu­ni­ty, once told me it’s like brush­ing your teeth. You don’t real­ize how impor­tant it is until you miss a cou­ple of days.

Hazel recent­ly hand­ed Biz Group to a new CEO. He’s free to change almost any­thing about how the com­pa­ny runs. The dai­ly hud­dle isn’t one of those things.

That’s how you know a dis­ci­pline has become a sys­tem, not a per­son­al­i­ty trait. It sur­vives the per­son who built it.

CHAL­LENGE:

If you don’t run a dai­ly hud­dle, install one this week. 10 – 15 min­utes, same time every day, stand­ing up, three questions: 

1. What’s up (in the next 24 hours)?
2. What do the met­rics say?
3. Where are you stuck?

If you already run one, sit in on it and ask your­self honestly: 

• Is my team report­ing on yes­ter­day, or think­ing about win­ning today and tomorrow?
• How could I engage their minds more in these meeting?

Watch the full inter­view with Hazel below.

Resources relat­ed to Hazel’s Story

• Biz Group Case Study: 33 Years of Human Capa­bil­i­ty Engineered
• Inter­view with Biz Group CEO, Hazel Jackson

Addi­tion­al Resources

Arti­cles

• Running to Catch Up or Lead­ing the Pack? The Dai­ly Rou­tines of Suc­cess­ful People
• How to Increase the Veloc­i­ty in Your Team
• Meet­ing Mas­tery for CEOs

Growth CEO Interview

• Inter­view with Dec­o­rat­ed Air Force Pilot, Kim ​“KC” Campbell
• Inter­view with Push Oper­a­tions CEO, Tina Lum

Growth Case Studies

• Action Solar: Foun­da­tion Over Fast Money
• Bund­aberg: The Local Brew­er That Became a Glob­al Sensation

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar

About Hazel Jackson

Hazel Jack­son is the founder of Biz Group, a lead­er­ship and learn­ing firm she built from a con­vert­ed watch­man’s room in Bur Dubai into a 60-per­son com­pa­ny serv­ing clients includ­ing Jumeirah Group, Emi­rates Air­line, and Almarai. Over 33 years, she grew the busi­ness organ­i­cal­ly and debt-free, a rare feat in the region. This year, Biz Group was acquired by Nema Hold­ing. Hazel recent­ly hand­ed the CEO role to her suc­ces­sor and remains close­ly involved in the com­pa­ny she built. Based in Dubai, she is known across the region as one of its most dis­ci­plined operators.