I have experienced times where culture prohibits the speaking out in a group setting. There are also issues of saving face that make it difficult to share the brutal facts. Ammex Corporation have found a way to make the daily huddle work in that environment. They have become rather serious about making the process of scaling up faster and easier.
In four years they have seen sales increase from $6.7M to $20M and profits increasing over 400%. In that same time period they opened up two new warehouses, added a dozen new suppliers and opened their first overseas office in China. They also developed a one2one marketing program through their CRM tool to manage and enhance the relationships with their 13,000+ clients.
They hold daily huddles to determine quarterly themes and maintain a monthly and quarterly off-site program for team leaders and members. They believe that the creation of these rhythms has produced these positive results.
Steven Ilg, AMMEX Vice President of Marketing calls out the appreciation and value of partnership and internal processes that stress collaboration and communication among team members. The daily 5-10 minute "huddle" is what connects across departments. They usually lead to small breakout sessions for solving specific problems. "It allows us to act very quickly and makes AMMEX as nimble as any startup company."
