“Huddling Up”: Improving Communication and Teamwork at an Entrepreneurial Startup With Workplace Huddles

Abstract

This case focuses on events that took place at Green Technologies, an entrepreneurial startup that was purchased by a larger conglomerate. The case provides a real-world account of an incoming CEO’s implementation of workplace huddles as a means for addressing challenges that the startup’s employees were facing. Specifically, this case describes the CEO’s efforts to introduce, leverage, and empirically assess huddles’ effectiveness in facilitating positive organizational change. This case posits that the benefits and logistics of huddles make them an effective tool for dealing with organizational challenges during periods of transition and change and charges students with evaluating the efficacy of this organization’s use of huddles as an intervention.