Sitting At Standup Is A Huge Red Flag
Sitting At Standup Is A Huge Red Flag
Why do we standup and how sitting down can indicate Apathy in a team.
I was once asked spend some time with a team, observe their behaviors, and offer some recommendations for how they could reignite the engine of continuous improvement. Something I observed in the first ten seconds of the very first standup I attended bothered me so profoundly I had trouble letting it go. I even lost some sleep over it. In that very first standup, over fifty percent of the team sat the entire time. When I eventually gave my “grade” to the leader that asked me to help I, without hesitation, gave the team a failing mark. “But Tristan, it’s just standing up at a standup. How important is following that rule?” Newsflash: It had nothing to do with rules and everything to do with a complete lack of respect and an utter lack of passion for delivering great solutions to their customer. That’s my hot take. In this Tidbit I will quickly unpack why this seemingly insignificant act is indicative of something far more sinister.
Standing on Principle, Not Rules
If you know me you know I am not a huge fan of rules. For me, Kanban isn’t actually about rules. It’s about principles that we actualize by running repeatable patterns - not rules - that, once proficiently run, we should feel empowered to optimize and improve. I’m in the business of change management, not rule enforcement. So the natural question around this “rule” of standing up each morning should be, “Why should we even stand at a stand up?”
So we don’t take a second longer than we must.
That’s it. We stand at a stand up because the standup is supposed to be a quick huddle. “Hey guys, let’s huddle. What should we be super focused on today so we can serve that group or customer with some really great solutions as fast as humanly possible?” When you sit down to have this huddle, it almost immediately turns into a meeting. Almost every example of teams sitting down happened when the team relegated the huddle to a meeting room. I’m not a fan of that. Huddle right where you work. Huddle where the work is. It’s supposed to get the energy up, blood flowing, and entice people to be quick about getting to the point: an action plan for that day. Not a status update. Not “what did we do yesterday.” It’s all about what we should focus on for today.
Could The Real Human Beings Please Stand Up?
Some of the complaints I often hear in response to my coaching on standup are, “If the point of a quick huddle is the action plan for the day, then why are we talking about all the cards? How come we give status updates about all our work? How come we solution each thing we are working on? It takes a long time and standing is just too much.” Interestingly, instead of realizing those things a team should be fighting against allowing in a standup, teams just let them fester and then they start to sit so they can “settle in for an awful status update.” How did this happen? How did we as a human race decide to so consistently just sit down and allow our fate to happen to us? It’s garbage. STAND UP!
Respect?
Here’s the thing, my real frustration with the initial example was that the team said, within the first ten, tone setting seconds, “Tristan, you’re gonna notice some bad behavior. We sit at our standup, and we know it’s wrong.” “SO WHY ARE YOU DOING IT?” was the thought that immediately crossed my mind. There is not easier way to completely show disrespect to someone that has devoted their life to coaching this stuff than to blatantly say, “We know what we do is wrong, we acknowledge it, and we own that do it anyway.” As it would later turn out, this team was not the, “Well oiled machine” they purported to be. They weren’t even the same machine. They were parts of disparate machines that didn’t fit together. This was all diagnosable in the first ten seconds of that first standup. “How?” you may be asking. Because a team that is bold enough to act this lazy and complacent in front of a coach is a team that has no discipline to hold themselves accountable when a coach is not around. If you don’t ascribe to giving respect before it’s earned, at least don’t openly disrespect people. It’s garbage. STAND UP!
Customer Service?
One of the best ways to ensure, every day (pronounced EHV VER REE DAY), that we are on the right path to providing the most critical solution that will change lives is to have a quick huddle each morning to ask the critical question, “Hey everyone, are we still working on the most critical thing? Does anyone need anything?” I can tell you with 100% certainty that every team I have observed team members sitting at a standup, the team completely lacked the ability to deliver quickly. They often took that same laze-fair attitude to the way they worked. They took that same lack of respect and proliferated it throughout their process. But hey, it’s just sitting down after all. That’s garbage. STAND UP!
Get Up, Stand Up
Will sitting at a standup doom a team to failure? No. Is the goal of standup to stand up? Nope. Blindly following a rule is not where I want people to go either.
I’ve seen someone sit in a standup after knee surgery. The team still delivered.
I’ve seen wheelchair bound people, with zero choice in the matter, sit at a standup. The team still delivered.
In both scenarios, the team was healthy. Oddly enough, though, in both scenarios the person sitting down was physically unhealthy.
I’ve also seen some teams that do stand up religiously still struggle to deliver. Standing up alone is not a marker for success. But sitting can be a marker of impending doom. My point is to call attention to the kind of apathy towards a principle or ideal that says, “Haha, even though the coach is here we are still gonna do our bad behaviors,” as though it was some malformed badge of honor. The best teams, the ones that deliver quickly and have the power to pivot, have a daily huddle and gut check.
Landing the Plane
I was talking to my leader when he brought up an experience with a team that was pushing back on the idea of standing up. They though standing up was just a draconian rule that made little sense. He gave me some insight that will forever stick with me. The way he put it was this, “Tristan, we spend more time at our job than we ever will with our wife and kids. Who in their right mind would want to spend that time being so apathetic that they can’t even stand up for five minutes for a quick huddle to make a plan for their day?”
If you’re reading this and you don’t stand up at a standup, ask yourself why. If it’s because the standup takes too long, fight that and don’t just give in by sitting down. If it’s because you don’t care, fight that! If it’s because you are virtual, fight that! I’ve worked virtually and in almost every standup I still stood up! If it’s because you are 9 months pregnant and you can’t stand for longer than 9 seconds without pain, for the love of everything please sit down. Can I get you anything?
For everyone else…Just stand up!
Until Next Time,
Keep on learning. Keep on growing.