Your Team Needs a Monthly Housekeeping Happy Hour!
The counterintuitive practice that keeps high-performing teams from drowning in inefficiency
Your team needs a housekeeping happy hour: a two to three hour block of time, on the clock, at least once a month, where everyone stops executing and starts improving how you work.
I’m talking about dedicated time to update that clunky template, write the SOPs that only live in someone’s head, tackle overdue training, or fix the frustrating operating dynamic with another department. All those process improvements you know you need but never have time for… this is when they happen.
There’s a meditation principle that has always stuck with me: the moments when you feel you don’t have time to meditate are precisely when you need it most. The same paradox applies to organizational housekeeping. When your team is drowning in deliverables, carving out time for process improvements seems impossible. But that’s exactly when you need it most.
Figure out where to start by asking these questions:
What task or process made you think ‘there has to be a better way to do this’ in the past two weeks?
What question do you keep answering over and over because it’s not documented anywhere?
If you could eliminate one friction point that slows down your work every single week, what would it be?
Some of the housekeeping work I’ve done in the pats included:
Updating templates and tools my team used regularly so they reflect current processes instead of outdated workflows
Writing SOPs for tasks that only lived in one person’s head.
Completed training modules for a new piece of software that kept getting pushed to “later”
Streamlined handoffs with other departments and having the conversations I’ve been avoiding about what’s not working
Cleaned up shared drives, project boards, or documentation so information is actually findable when people need it
Made a workflow improvement I’ve been thinking about for months.
Cleared-out that backlog of ‘low urgency’ communications.
Here’s what makes this most effective: make it organization-wide.
When everyone is doing housekeeping at the same time, you’re not interrupting one another. No one is pulling you into their urgent priority, nor is your inbox or chats swelling with asks. Everyone knows what everyone should be doing. It’s easier to stay focused when the entire organization is aligned on the same priority. You create a collective rhythm of improvement rather than isolated attempts that get derailed.
The parking lot changes everything.
Once you have housekeeping sessions scheduled, you can then just maintain a running list… a parking lot, so to speak… for all those little fixes that come up. Whenever you encounter something that could use improvement but you don’t have time to address right now, you add it to your work plan for a future housekeeping session. Suddenly there’s a plan to address the deficiency. It’s no longer taking up mental space or creating low-grade stress. You know exactly when you’ll handle it.
You need to build in time to get better at what you do.
Because organizations that want to keep getting better have to build in time for getting better. You can’t optimize on the fly while you’re executing. The irony is that when teams feel most overwhelmed, they’re often drowning in inefficiencies they haven’t had time to fix … that’s likely driving the overwhelm. That outdated template adds fifteen minutes to every event setup. That undocumented process means the same questions get asked repeatedly. That frustrating handoff wastes time in every project cycle.
Housekeeping time is an investment that pays dividends. It’s the difference between running faster on a treadmill and actually moving forward.
Here’s how to get it right:
Schedule it now. Schedule it consistently.
Pick a recurring time slot. First Friday afternoon of every month, last Thursday morning, whatever works. Put it on the calendar for the next six months.Create your parking lot.
Set up a simple document or project board where team members can add items as they come up. This becomes your menu of options for each session. You can have an org-wide one and/or individual lots.Set the ground rules.
No meetings during this time. Email off. Slack/Teams/Messages on do-not-disturb. Come prepared with a plan for what you’ll work on from your parking lot.Make it visible.
Let everyone know this is happening organization-wide so they can plan accordingly and protect the time.
The work of working better together is foundational. Exceptional organizations understand this and intentionally create space for this work.
💡 Question: Does your team have a practice like this? What's worked (or hasn't) for creating space to improve how you work?
📌 PS - If you found this post helpful, would you please consider restacking it and sharing it with your audience? This spreads the word and keeps me writing content that will help organizations work better together. 🙏