Glancing up at the calendar it surprises me that we are still into our third week since officially launching TECHRISE. I’m not saying that we have been so successful that we can’t believe our achievements over the past third weeks. Rather, we are surprised at how much we have been able to progress based on our un-successes we have had. TECHRISE is not what it was a week ago, neither is it what it was a day before. I think we have been doing a pretty good job evolving daily, adapting and responding to the daily needs of our students and the market. The reason we are able to do this? I would attribute it most to out daily Stand-Up meetings.

Stand-Up meetings are short meetings daily that many start-ups and agile software developments adopt. They are intended to be short – short enough that people can do it while their standing up, hence the name Stand-up meetings. We use this method too, and what we do is go around the table each simply saying a couple of sentences on

1. What you have been working on
2. What you are going to work on today

That’s it. These are the two things we recite during our 5-minute meetings. No fuss and no lengthy discussions on this and that.
This method is amazing because:

  • It forces you to move on with tasks and keeps you accountable

    You certainly don’t want to be saying that you have been working on xx task for three consecutive days - that would be awkward.

  • It helps you understand who has been working on what

    It helps us communicate the progress made on the marketing team (Lakshman and Natsuko) and the developer team (Take and Aadesh) especially because we don’t work together so often. It also opens doors to ways in which we can help each other.

  • It helps set the mood for the day

    It puts you on the go mode!

Other than our daily meetings, another way we keep in check what we have been doing individually as well as a team is by writing weekly logs. Basically each Sunday we write in a Google Spread Sheet 1. What was good about TECHRISE that week, 2. What needs improvements, 3. What kind of personal growth you had. This really helps us get a more birds eye view on how TECHRISE is doing, and helps us create actionable goals for the week. The personal growth part I wanted to add in because I wanted everyone to feel his or her personal development through being involved in TECHRISE. I think this would be useful when the organization is in dooms day, because we can always look back and say “Hey, at least we learned something”.

Growing up in Japan, I’ve often found my self in long dreary meetings where frankly I didn’t find was really going anywhere. The 5-minute Stand-Up meetings as well as our weekly logs have been doing wonders for me though! I highly recommend this to any startup or organization if they aren’t already using this method. It’s life changing :)