5 easy ways to enhance your stand-ups
Ryan May, Tender Specialist (Perth)
Stand-up meetings are an incredibly useful way of keeping a tender on the straight and narrow. They provide a consistent and frequent opportunity for people to gather, ask questions and provide clarity on the tender as it changes and evolves. For these reasons it’s important that your stand-up is as effective as possible. Wondering how to ensure that it is? Try implementing these five easy methods.
Ensure the relevant people are present
Obviously, for a stand-up to be effective those who have been invited actually need to attend. If content in a tender response or returnable schedule needs to change drastically and the content lead is absent from the stand-up, it’s going to be difficult for them to action those changes. Some may argue that this information can be conveyed to those who were absent after the meeting, but this means that someone else is now spending time repeating this information when they could be doing something more productive. It also increases the risk that not all the information is conveyed, or that the person absent becomes confused without an easy avenue to ask questions and clarify, depending on who is informing them and what they’ve missed.
On the flip-side, don’t waste the time of those who don’t need to be there. Do you need Bill the estimator to attend every single stand-up, or is the majority of his time better spent estimating? Consider who does and does not need to attend before sending out those invites.
Be concise
Stand-ups are meant to be relatively brief, a fast way to communicate progress and changes to the tender. Don’t get tangled in the minutiae of a response schedule if you don’t have to. There are times where it will be valuable to have longer conversations to clarify how a document lead should proceed within a response, but if the discussion isn’t relevant to the majority of those attending consider speaking with whoever you need to after the stand-up so that everyone else can shift their attention back to the task at hand.
Update the Tender Management Plan (TMP) as you go
A TMP is an excellent tool to use during a stand-up – you should always have it projected onto a screen where everyone can see it so that they can follow along without getting lost. As you receive updates from content leads, write these changes up in real time. Don’t think to yourself, ‘I’ll add these changes after the meeting’. I can promise you that even if you do, they will not be as relevant or robust as those you could have made in the moment. For those who take notes as they go, consider typing those notes directly into the TMP instead. This isn’t to say you can’t add or make edits to the TMP after the meeting – it’s more about ensuring the important information is noted down now so that it doesn’t fall through the cracks. If a review date is shifted, people need to know immediately!
Ensuring the TMP is updated quickly and efficiently will mitigate confusion and issues caused by miscommunication.
Highlight the past week’s successes
Make a note of the wins people had in the past week and bring them up in your stand-up, or ask those in the meeting about an achievement they feel they accomplished during that time. It doesn’t matter if you do this at the beginning or end, it’s a good way of maintaining team morale and giving everyone a boost for the week ahead. Happier people are more motivated and work better. This is especially important toward the tail-end of a tender – as things grow more stressful, notes of positivity will have a greater impact.
Make sure all questions are answered
Before you conclude the stand-up, ask those attending if they have questions. Notably, if you have any new contributors joining you on a tender, make a point of asking them directly. Regardless of whether this is a new coworker or an external consultant, knowing that it can be difficult to raise your voice in a room full of strangers is important. Of course, we’re all professionals – if they have a question, it is their responsibility to ask it. But, providing them an opening into the conversation will make it easier for them to voice that question or any other concerns they may have, helping to improve the tender and the relationship you have with them.
Tenders can be unwieldy, but stand-ups are an excellent way to reliably steer your team through even the most confusing projects. Implement these methods and you’ll be sailing off into the sunset in no time.
Curious about what Tender Plus can do to help you on your next tender? We pride ourselves on our mastery of all things tendering, such as tender strategy, tender coordination, tender writing and a variety of additional tender services. Don’t hesitate to get in touch – we’d love to hear from you!
If you found this article interesting, you might enjoy some of our other blogs, such as How to communicate on winning tenders and 5 crucial details to track during meetings to streamline your tenders.